Shortly after Rite returned, Gale had the three siblings lined up outside the cabin. Breakfast had passed uneventfully. Bulb was standing tall—as tall as she could—and her eyes were shining. Thanks to my Screen, she slept soundly, Rite observed. He was glad for it, but he knew he looked far worse off. He felt his shoulders sagging slightly, and knew his face must look a mess. Lake, for her part, was standing motionless and emotionless as usual, her face calmly calculating.
Gale looked between Bulb and Rite.
“Good morning, eh, little guys?” He smiled. “Today we’ll do some more relaxed training, some stuff in the shady parts of the woods. We’re going to be knocking pine needles off of tree branches, or that’s the goal.”
Bulb nodded vigorously. Rite looked at Lake, who didn’t seem to notice his gaze. ‘Little guys?’ It’s always been ’siblings’ before…
Gale led the way into the woods, the siblings following him. Lake remained silent. Rite’s sleep-deprived mind worked furiously to figure out what was going on. It kept returning images of the kiss, so eventually he stopped it entirely. He needed sleep, he needed sleep bad.
“Gale,” he began, legs wobbling slightly as they walked. “Gale, I’m empty.”
Gale stopped walking, and the siblings followed suit. Bright morning sun filtered through the pine foliage above.
“Why the blazes are you empty?”
“I… I was up early,” said Rite. “I took a walk in the woods, and got distracted Crooning the trees…”
Gale frowned.
“You must have been weaving a cartload of them,” he scoffed. “Well, go back to the cabin and rest up. Maybe you’ll be able to join us in the afternoon.”
As Rite nodded and turned, he heard Gale muttering.
“Bulb in the sun, Rite in the shade… these kids are impossible.”
Rite continued walking, ignoring Gale’s slight. He didn’t want to stand up for himself and say—hey! Hey Gale! I couldn’t sleep last night because you harassed my sister to the point where she snogged you to get you to shut up! He told himself that as long as no Scries were put on his morning stroll, he’d be fine; any images of him in the cabin at night would show him sleeping soundly. If it weren’t for his Screen, he knew, Gale or Lake might discover the shocked expression that had surely taken over his face at the time. He congratulated himself for thinking so far ahead, and then he noticed that Lake, who had been walking behind him in the lineup, was staring coolly at him.
He smiled sheepishly—I’m such a klutz, I exhausted myself already early in the morning, sis—and then he passed her and continued on his way back to the cabin. Once there, he lay on his back in the middle of the room, staring up at the shoddily-built roof. The sounds of nature outside were calming, and he temporarily forgot his sister’s stare, Gale’s odd behavior, the tree’s warning, the events of last night, all of it, drifting off with a breeze that rolled in through the cabin window and carried him through the fields of Thal, singing with the birds and watching flowers bloom.
It was a magnificent dream, and when he woke hours later, the midday sun streaming in through various cracks in the cabin ceiling, he wished it had lasted longer.
