From loneliness to alone

Chapter 4

James didn't know what to do, this hadn't happened before, not in all those years they had done this. They had bought all the horses at age 2 and trained them themself, their first trip 5 years ago, nothing went wrong in all those years and they where confident it wouldn't happen, but here he was, running after Zena as if his life depends on it. He had yelled all kinds of thing to help the kid slow down the horse, but all fell on deaf ears.

He was running after them at full speed, but they where faster, it even looked like Zena was enjoying every single bit of it. He couldn't get closer, no matter what he did, his horse was getting slower, while Zena only seemed to go faster.

He had noticed before, how Zena always stood alone in the meadow, waiting patiently on her turn to eat without getting chased away. So they brought her to as many horse rides as possible, so she could enjoy at least this. She had never once ran away, just walking her rounds like a well behaved horse, so to see her enjoying running away was something he didn't expect to see.

After some time in pursuit, he couldn't see them anymore, they had gotten far enough that he didn't think he could catch up, let alone with a horse that's already tired. He decided to go back to where the others where in hope Zena would know the way back on her own, it didn't look like the kid had any idea of what was happening so he had to put his hopes on Zena.

Rosé staid with the group, not wanting all the other kids to be left alone even if she didn't think James horse would be fast enough to catch up to Zena. She and the other kids decided to get off the horses, not walking any further in case they got back. She tried to start conversations to get their minds off of it, but she only got short responses from everyone else.

They didn't know how long they waited until they saw James come back. Full with relieve she ran up to him only to see that he was alone. James didn't see Rosé ran up to him, to lost in thought about how this could happen and what was supposed to happen next. Rosé could read his look without much difficulty immediately copying his train of thoughts.

They decided to get back, this trip wouldn't be getting better with both organizers stressed and lost in their minds all the time, it would be for the better to get police involved and let them fix it. So that's what they did.

The police had opened an investigation, had asked questions, had called all parents and explained what had happened, while also trying to keep them all calm.

Rosé and James didn't know what to do when they stood in front of the parents of the lost child, parents looking not sad at all if not looking irritated. They had tried to explain what had happened while there words couldn't get out how they normally did. The parents didn't look the least bit interested.

The parents where annoyed to say the least, they where just enjoying their trip with their son, while they got a call that they had to get to a stable they hadn't heard of before. They had to listen to two people sobbing and trying to explain what happened, while they just wanted to go home. So when the two where done talking and they had talked to the police for a bit, they went back to their trip like nothing happened and no one was missing.

The police had closed the investigation after only three days, declared dead. There was no way a child and a horse would survive in the wild alone longer than three days.

Rosé and James had cancelled all planed trips, not knowing how to cope with what happened. Although they hadn't made it official yet, they thought about stopping all trips all together so that something like this would never happen again. They would keep the horses, giving them an early pension at around 10, only taking them on rides once in a while to seek for them, without any results.

The family lived like nothing had changed, because what had changed. They got another room to use, a little more money, so they had nothing to complain about other then having to do the dishes once in a while but what was that in a bigger picture.

The so called friends from school didn't change, it even looked like they didn't even know what had happened even though it was told to them. They decided they would hang out much more often, not having to choose one day specific, having the whole week without any unwanted attendees.

Their was one person that changed. She didn't know what happened to her friend. One day she was busy, her parents nagging her about all the things she needed to do, while the only thing she wanted to do was game with her friend, but what was she against her parents.

It took her a full week to complete all the tasks her parents asked her to do while also working on school before she had some free time to game with her friend again. She wanted to game more often and it had hurt her to say she was busy so many times, so when she had sent a message saying she had finally time to game and didn't get a reaction immediately, which she most of the time did get, she thought she messed up.

Weeks later she still hadn't gotten a reply. She had lost hope of ever getting one and decided to quite the game they always played together it wasn't the same doing it alone, she still wore this one piece of ornament in reminder, but she moved on. Never really forgetting, but she couldn't do a single thing without knowing where her friend lived so she decided to make something from her life. She decided to really focus on school and her future.