No Longer Are We Free

Chapter Twenty Four

Chapter twenty four ~ edited

Three months later...

The months had flown by and each day I let Fiona and Stacy work with me. For one and a half months we'd been working on my jumping and they say I'm a natural.

Never once had my worry for Star and Shadow died down. I still wondered if they made an attempt to escape or if they just gave up and stayed at the farm. Or were they sold?

The sun was just starting to rise, chasing off the bitter night air, like a guard dog chasing off an intruder. It's yellow glow seeped through the trees, until it rose over them and shone down on us.

I've made a few friends while here. They weren't as close as my other friends back home, but they were still friends. And they were horses. Midnight and I worked things out and we were back to how we were. When I was human.

Caleb was coming to check how we were doing. I heard Liz and Fiona talking about it. I couldn't wait to see him!

Midnight and I were both sixteen now. Midnight turned sixteen two months ago and my birthday was five days ago. It wasn't the worst birthday, but it wasn't the best either. Midnight and I had an argument about escaping. Obviously I won. We were still here.

Stacy walked out of the house and I whinnied and Midnight snorted. Even though we worked things out, we had occasional disagreements. He still didn't like it here. He wanted to be wild. I looked at him.

"Oh Midnight. Give them a break! At least they're looking after us." I said.

"Maybe, but I would rather us be back home, in the wild. With the herd." He said quietly.

"If you want to go, go! Jump the fence and run back home!" I snorted, walking further away from him. He walked over to me.

"Listen, I want to go back but I'm not leaving you by yourself."

"Oh isn't that sweet? I can look after myself. If you hate it here so much, go." I snorted, swishing my tail then trotting to the gate, putting my head over it.

"Morning girl. How are you?" Stacy asked. I nickered and let her scratch my forelock. Liz walked out of the house and made her way to Stacy and me. "Hey mum, when is that Caleb guy coming?"

"Around lunch time I'm pretty sure. He asked if he could take her for a ride. You okay with that?" Liz asked.

"Yeah that should be fine." Stacy answered. She looked at me again and smiled, resting her forehead on my head, just below my eyes. She scratched under my chin and I mentally smiled. It really wasn't so bad here.

~*~

It was hours until Caleb finally got here. When he got out of the car, I neighed and got his attention. He looked at me. There was no smile. I put one ear back and watched him.

I was separated from Midnight. He was taken into the stable. So I couldn't talk to him. Liz walked out of the stable and spotted Caleb. He walked over to her and talked before Liz walked back into the stable. Caleb walked over to me and I pranced around in my yard, nickering and shaking my mane.

Caleb stood at the gate and I trotted over, putting my head over the gate. Caleb smiled weakly.

"Hey, it's good to see you too." He said, stroking my neck. I nickered softly and closed my eyes. "I know what you are."

I shot my head up and looked at him.

He knew?