Stone Circle Circle around, because I got a list of mentions

He had been snaking through Fox's Glade when his mother's call went out, and he dropped his pursuit to follow without hesitation. But even with his lengthened strides, a distance was still a distance, and when he finally reached Stone Circle, Merrit found most of the pack already gathered, and his mother already beginning to talk. He was late, and he ducked his head with embarrassment and apology as he slipped along the fringe of the throng.

Merrit glanced around the crowd for an opening he could steal through, but every empty space seemed to open in front of someone shorter than him, and eventually, he just gave up and settled at the back, shoulders hunched as though uncomfortable with his height. But as his mother announced his sister's promotion (since he'd missed everything in between...), the boy found himself straighten with a swell of surprise. Merrit had never given thought to another leader besides his mother, but this made sense - and he tipped his chin to receive his sister with the proud turn of a smile. He didn't know how Steph would be received by the other members of the pack, but if they had a problem with her, then they would have more than his mother to deal with.

But the meeting shifted after Steph's address, and Merrit felt the weight of Stark's absence sink against him again as he turned his face toward the Father Stone. His mother's words were sentimental, and he could tell they meant a great deal to her - but Merrit couldn't stand behind them. A rock couldn't do what Stark could do; a rock couldn't comfort or protect. A rock was a rock, and not his father.

Yet he was drawn from his thoughts when a familiar word tasted the air and he flicked his gaze back to his mother, until he found the Stone she mentioned just beyond the strength of her presence:

The Warrior Stone.

Merrit had hardly known Illecebra, but now, he wished he had. She had been a warrior, and he had never known. Not until now - but Illecebra was gone, taken by an illness that had snuffed out the fight in her, no matter how strong she'd been in life. The similarity between her and Stark was striking: they had been strong, but they hadn't been able to stop their sickness from ripping them away. And Merrit wondered - he could learn to protect his family, he could learn to fight for them, but if all the training in the world couldn't help him protect his family from this beast he couldn't fight with tooth and claw...

His gaze had since drifted toward the final stone: the broken beacon, meant to guide his father and their lost ones home. There had been a time Merrit might have believed that the power of this Stone was real and enough, but he was not a child anymore. The Stones brought comfort to his mother, and he let her feel that; he would never speak against them, and he would never take that from her, but he knew the rocks did nothing to protect. They did nothing to heal, and they did nothing to bring any lost one home.

Only wolves could do that.

There were no words to what he felt - but he remembered the river rocks he'd brought to his father when he had been around, and he wondered if anyone had moved them, or if they still lay abandoned in the hollow where Stark had lain. They weren't big, but they would be enough to start a trail from the Stone of Lost Souls to the border beyond. They wouldn't bring his father back, but laying them down would give him something to do. They would give him time to think, and they would give his mother comfort until the day Stark found his way home.