The Fire Horse

Chapter 11 - Kate

     I woke up around eight the next morning. I decided to head to the stables and see how Thunder was doing after everything that had happened. When I got there, the first thing I noticed was that both Shadow and Thunder were gone. I was worried for a minute until I saw the note taped on Shadow's door.
Kate and My,
We know where Nina is and have headed out to help. Will return ASAP.
-J
It was written in a quick sloppy writing as if she had scrawled it down quickly, rushing to leave. I walked over to Fox's stall and offered him an apple. He took and said "I saw them leave last night, Thunder's neigh woke up everyone in the barn!" "So what exactly happened then?" I asked curiously. "Well I woke up when Thunder neighed but it was pretty obvious he'd only wanted to wake up Shadow and Jacqueline. They talked for a minute but I couldn't hear what they said and suddenly Jacqueline jumped on Shadow and they galloped off!" Fox replied. That made sense with the note, of course she would leave quickly once she heard about her friend. "What about Thunder?" I asked. "He left about a half hour later, he seemed restless after the others left and eventually just unlatched his own stall door and left" Well that and the note explained where the others were. A couple minutes later My walked into the barn. She looked at the empty stalls but before she asked I said "They went to rescue Nina" and showed her the note. I also told her what Fox had just told me. Suddenly My exclaimed "Oh god! I totally forgot to call Lisa and tell her everything that's happened lately!" I didn't know who Lisa was or how she'd gotten that from what I told her, maybe she was thinking about something they did with Lisa. My grabbed her phone and walked out of the barn for a few minutes. When she came back she said "Lisa, Linda, and Alex are coming down here from Valedale" "Who?" I replied feeling kinda stupid. My laughed at my expression "They're friends of mine" she said "you'll meet them when they get here, probably around lunchtime if I had to guess!" Since I had some time until they got here I decided to do some dressage work with Fox. We went down to the riding hall and practiced a little. The practice went well. We did good and even Fox didn't notice any major problems. The only thing was at one point I couldn't remember a test and accidentally burned the letter A but that's not important right? After that we decided we needed to work on controlling that a little more so we walked over a shallow crossing point in the river behind the riding hall and practiced our fire magic in the Forgotten Fields. Neither of us knew what we were doing and I think one of us would've ended up in the hospital if our powers didn't make us fireproof. After about an hour we gave up realizing we were getting nowhere. Maybe Thunder or Shadow could help us when they got back. When we were done we realized it was around 11:30 and decided to head back. As we walked back I was somewhat disappointed that we couldn't control our magic. How would we ever become as powerful as the others? I remembered how they talked about how we were supposed to defeat this evil horse. How are we ever going to do that if me and Fox have no clue what we're doing? Maybe we're just holding them back...I thought to myself. I pushed the thought out of my mind as we reached the stables. I got there to see My talking with a girl with bright red hair. What I first noticed was this girl's horse had a blue mane. I walked in and heard part of what she was saying. "Yeah, she just randomly woke up early this morning we aren't sure how. We figured we'd ask Shadow and Thunder when we got here but from what you said they aren't back yet. She wanted to come with us when she learned where we were going." I didn't know who she was talking about or what had happened to them but My's surprised face told me it was somebody important. They turned at the sound of Fox's hooves on the wooden floor. "Hey Kate!" My said "this is Lisa, one of my friends who I mentioned before" "Hi!" I said turning to Lisa "I'm Kate" "Hey Kate, nice to meet you!" she replied. "Where are the others?" My asked Lisa. "Getting lunch" she replied "they'll bring it down here and eat with us so they shouldn't be long" Just as she finished her sentence three people rode into the barn. They all were holding sandwiches as they rode.  "Did you get me something?" Lisa asked them. "Ummm... No" one girl on a light colored horse said. The horse looked to be something in between a chestnut and a palomino and I wasn't quite sure exactly which. Lisa just laughed and said "I'll just get something later" the other girls then noticed me. "Who's this?" the same one as before asked. "This is Kate" My said. "Hey I'm Alex!" she said pointing at the others in turn she continued "this is Linda and this is Anne, I see you met Lisa already" we talked for an hour or two, and they introduced me to their horses. We then decided to go on a trail ride. They all seemed to know the area pretty well, at least better then I did. We headed out onto a trail but quickly abandoned the path to gallop across the Everwind Fields. We rode for only ten minutes before Lisa and Starshine suddenly skidded to a halt. The rest of us stopped instantly to see what she was looking at but couldn't see over the hill. Lisa sounded nervous as she told us "Umm... I think that's Ace"