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I didn't want to go out and go through the test. I didn't feel up to it. And anyways, I had tried it many times before - what difference was tonight going to make? I didn't feel powerful or magical. That was someone else's job. Not mine.
The next thing I knew, I heard footsteps rising up the stairs until they were outside my bedroom door. There was a light knock - my mother's.
'Arra,' she called from the other side of the door. 'It's time to go.'
I slowly got up from the bed, pinning a brooch on my dark blue dress and looking at myself in the mirror, studying my appearance. It was the first time I had realised that I had been crying for quite a while. My cheeks were wet and my eyes were all red, puffed up from the constant weeping.
I wiped them away, squinting and trying to regain my composure.
'Arra?' my mother called again.
'I'm coming,' I replied, ready to go.
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I looked around my room, thinking of my childhood and reflecting on this passing into adulthood. I walked to the door, took a deep breath and opened it.
My mother was waiting at the top of the stairs, smiling. Her confidence boosted my moral and I smiled too, closing the door behind me. My father was waiting at the front door, dressed in his best clothes.
The fire was still lit though burning away on the last cinders. Everything looked and seemed calm within the house and the family within it.
'Let's go,' I said confidently, following my father out the front door.
I watched as the whole settlement slowly converged around the reincarnation site, coming in little lines from each and every house. The occasion felt momentous - more momentous than any other year - because I had a part to play in it.
As we reached the edge of the crowd, I kissed my mother and father goodbye as I headed towards the site itself where all the other girls,
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