They threw rocks. Fat round ones, smooth to the touch. Jagged grey ones that weren't really rocks at all, but pieces of the old concrete bridge upstream. The best rocks were the ones they had dug up from under the house. The children had gone scavenging under the shack this morning to find better stuff to throw in the river. A few dirty pant legs and scraped elbows had netted them a box full of, well rocks. But not just regular rocks like the ones already in the river. These rocks were the best because they played with light in a way that the regular rocks couldn't. Even though the rocks all pretty much looked the same, they seemed to catch light inside them if you held them up to the sun. Like with most childhood fancies, their fascination with the shapes of the rocks faded, and it wasn't long before they were back to throwing rocks.
It wasn't much to do these days but throw rocks. Pop had gone east to find work more than six months ago. He'd sent money at first, and the rumbling stomachs had quieted for a time. But then the letters stopped, and the rumbling started up again.
Ma found a way to make money in the end. She'd taken to sewing for various men about the city. They'd come with a jacket or a hat or a Sunday's best that needed to be fixed, and sure enough Ma would send take them into her sewing room and set them right. Whenever a man would come knocking, Ma would send the kids off to throw rocks. On time another woman came, yelling at Ma for doing 'another woman's sewing' as she had put it. That was how they knew about Ma's sewing. That woman hadn't come back again, but her husband hadn't either.
Today was like most, they woke at dawn, ate a breakfast of porridge and ham before doing chores and learning their letters and adding and such. Then it was off to the river while Ma tended her sewing. Just the three of them, out on the river throwing rocks, the wooden shack at the edge of the woods behind them.
"You're never gonna get it to the other side" the middle child said to the eldest.
"Do it! Throw it across!" the youngest cheered from the very edge of the river.
"You're just jealous! Because I'm a better thrower!" jeered the eldest with a smile. "I bet your pudding, that I can make it across in one throw."
"Pudding! Pudding! Pudding!" chanted the youngest with enthusiasm. "Pudding! Pudding! Pudding!"
The middle child's sudden downward gaze was testament to the enormity of the stakes at hand. Pudding was rare.
"Pudding! Pudding!" the youngest continued, now dancing along the bank. "Pudding! Pudd-"
"Stop it all ready! Fuck sakes!" the middle child's profane rebuke stopped the gleeful dance along the bank, but not the quick jab from the elder child.
"You can't do it!" the middle child spat from the stream. A swollen lip slurred the declaration. The elder child picked the middle child from the stream with a sigh.
"You don't use those." the elder child chided in a soft voice.
"Ma uses it!" the middle child retorted as if repeating lines well rehearsed. "The men do too!" the middle child finished with a nod.
"And you aren't them. Now apologize." the elder child pointed to the younger child. They turned in tandem to see the younger child standing stock still. They turned again, this time to follow the eye line of their younger sibling. What they saw was astonishing to behold.
Far off beyond the wooden shack, and the town and the thousands of trees in between, a eruption of clouds leaped into the sky. A giant wall of something raced from the clouds, at a furious pace. It seemed to light the very sky on fire as it raced onward from its cloud. Before the kids had so much as flinched in realization that the speeding wall heading their way, it was upon them. They cried in unison as the wall raced by them and their corner of the woods, engulfing them in something that left them unharmed, but different somehow. They turned with shouts, their fear turning to astonishment as they looked into the gem filled river in which they stood.