° 𝘉𝘦𝘩𝘪𝘯𝘥 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘋𝘰𝘰𝘳 (𝘏𝘢𝘭𝘧𝘸𝘢𝘺 𝘋𝘰𝘯𝘦!) °

𝙁𝙤𝙪𝙧-𝙇𝙚𝙜𝙜𝙚𝙙 𝙃𝙪𝙢𝙖𝙣

As Arya waited in silence, looking at the figure slowly approach her, she got her fists ready. Who knows what the figure could be? It could be a wild animal in the forest, but she hoped it was her mother badly.

She saw the figure approach over the hazy horizon, but she could tell the figure was much too short to be her mother. 

Could it be Holden?

She didn't think it was Holden, but she really wished it was him.

The figure looked like a human from afar, and she hoped it was a friendly human.

She would be overjoyed if it was, she had not had human interaction for several days, and a human could help her a lot. 

Maybe the human knew the way out of the forest? 

Or maybe the human was not a good human, and this was a trap.

She couldn't run anyways.

However, this forest seemed to hide her worries away, and she hardly thought about anything. 

It was at least easier to worry about things when the music was not playing, whether it was because it was just plain distracting, making it impossible to think, or whether it was actually stopping her from worrying. 

Probably a mix of both, Arya thought, but her thoughts changed instantly at the sound of faint footsteps.

The footsteps slowly got louder as the figure approached her.

She listened carefully for the footsteps, hoping to hear Holten's thunk-thunk of his boots walking or her mother's running shoes, but the footsteps didn't resemble any of those.

Wait... no. Not footsteps... 

Hooftrots.

It was definitely an animal.

She could slightly see the outline of horse hooves trotting on the dirt path from a distance-

She looked up to see the outline... of a human's head?

There was no way that a horse's head looked exactly like a human's head...

Arya kept looking at the...... animal? 

It looked very human, two skinny legs, quite unusually skinny, and... a human head, at least it looked exactly like a human head!

The half-animal, half-human came closer, approaching her in a calm manner, but she still thought it was a monster creeping up to eat her or something. 

She could see features of a human face, eyes, neck, but after the neck....

After the neck- it turned into dark brown fur, going down the front, stretching from its front legs all the way to his back legs. Whatever this was, it had 4 legs, and was not to be trusted.

Arya was trying so badly to run away, but she couldn't move a muscle except for her head, which she used all her energy to move, even though it felt like the was full of energy.

The 'thing' came closer, it now was very visible in the fog. 

It galloped across the lawn and stopped only a few feet away from her. 

Through the thick of the fog, it almost looked as if she had been knocked on the head really hard and could not see properly, because all she could make out was a human face on a horse's body.

A billion thoughts raced through her mind, but the only thought that really scared her was the thought of- what if-

No- it can't be-

Could it possibly be? No way.... those were only in books. She often imagined them in real life, with a human body, but this was much too... real.

Is it?