Gypsy - T. Shelby

2.3. Cursed Horses and Blessed Voices

Florence didn't sleep, shed gotten home from the Shelby house around three AM after drinking sombrely with John and Arthur until she felt drunk enough to endeavour home without her thoughts eating her alive.

When she came home there wasn't any music. Only silence. She climbed the stairs to her bedroom slowly and looked at her bed with dread. The gypsy took off her clothes and slipped on one of her brother's shirts. She sat down on the floor where she had been a few nights prior and pulled her knees to her chest under the large shirt breathing in the smell of the shirt which didn't really smell like anything besides soap. Her mind drifted to Ada and her baby and of how she had told her Freddie would come back and she hoped with all her heart that was true. That night she'd have nightmares outside the usual but rather of Ada, of her dying. Over and over.

-

A banging at her door jolted her out of her sleep and she sat up listening first if she hadn't imagined it. But then it came again.

"Flora! Open up it's Charlie."

The Shelby's uncle was calling on her in the middle of the night in the pouring rain. Something was wrong.

She hurried downstairs to let the man in who was soaked to the bone outside her door and stepped inside gratefully, "You need to come quick, we've got a er... problem with the horse."

"Charlie I don't know that much about horses.", she couldn't imagine they believed whatever Curly couldn't help the beast with she would be able to.

"We're in bad blood with the gypsy clan we bought him from."

Of course. Always the witch.

-

Florence and Charlie made their way to his yard in great haste not only for the horse but for the intense rain that bore down on them. The pair were met outside the gate by Curly and Tommy, who was also in his nightshirt seemingly aroused from sleep.

Curly shouted something at Florence which she couldn't make out over the rain and beckoned the group into the dry stables where the beautiful white horse stood that Tommy has bought the day before.

"Why is she here?", Thomas looked at the brunette standing before him drenched in rain like himself. Florence didn't pay him any mind as she stood looking into the horse's eyes.

"Just watch.", Curly told him in a whisper, "They cursed him Tom! Seen curses like this before! Cant be broken!", Curly babbled on and Tommy covered his mouth with his hand.

"If it was the Lee's who cursed him, we thought you'd want to know.", Charlie said in a low voice while they watched Florence stick out her hand to stroke the creature. She had barely touched it before she lifted its hoof and saw the problem. She shook her head at the men and continued to stroke the beast compassionately.

"Everybody out.", Thomas half shouted.

"Tom-"

"Come on Curly.", Charlie ushered the man out of the door.

"Flora send him somewhere beautiful!", Curly shouted from the doorway and was given one final push outside by Charlie Strong.

Tommy sat with his hands over his face on a bale of hay.

"He's in pain.", he heard the voice from right above him and looked up into the gypsy who was dripping water from her hair, "I'll do it.", she held out a hand for his gun but he wouldn't give it to her.

"It's my horse.", when he looked up she saw his pupils were blown wide, she thought he may have been drunk but the haziness of his eyes reminded her all to well of a drug many men acquired after the war, one she had visited many times herself to ward off the demons.