Finding Demons

Part 3

Allya lay down on her back and stared at the leaves swaying above her. There was no actual wind, but she felt the cold slapping against her skin as if there were."Why did I take the colour from the rose?" She asked Golding, who was pawing the ground and snorting impatiently. He raised his head and looked at her, strangely communicative for a horse. You do not need to know.    

"Why not?" She demanded. "You, or well, someone, expects me to go hunt some freaking demons, and you can't answer a simple question?"

Nope.

"Well, thanks. Is there anything else I need to know?"

We are bonded.

"Excuse me?" She asked, sitting up and staring at Golding.

We are bonded,  the horse said. Or well, Allya hoped that it was the horse talking to her, and not her own imagination. Because that would be embarrassing. Where you destroy life, I bring it. I was drawn to you when you started hurting yourself, drawn to the thing that was destroying it's beauty. But that is not the only reason I came.

Allya laughed, but she didn't find it funny. "Beauty? Ha, try telling that to, uh, everyone in the world."

I think you're beautiful.

"And I think you're a horse," Allya retorted.

Very observing, Golding replied. What Allya doesn't know, is that he would have given anything to have told her the truth then and there.

"I want to go home," Allya said absent-mindedly. She didn't know what time it was, she didn't know what was happening to her mother with her gone, her back was sore from lying stiff for so long.

She sat up and stretched. Golding trotted over to her and nudged her with his nose, gesturing to the flowers on the edge of the clearing.

Dawn flowers.

Star-shaped flowers were opening around the edge of the clearing, as if in slow-motion, shedding a kind of blue light from the inside as they bloomed. They were beautiful, but their light was blinding. Allya didn't want to close her eyes, so she squinted at the little buds.

Then there was a feeling of weight on her hand. She looked down, but the flowers' light drowned everything out. She couldn't possibly tell what was resting on her hand, or if there actually was something there, it was oddly soothing. And warm, like a real human hand.

Allya jerked her hand away as the flowers finished blooming to reveal a five-pointed star shape in a deep purple colour. She rubbed her eyes and looked down at her hand. Nothing. There was nothing there. She glanced up at Golding—who was lying awfully close to her—and glared at him suspiciously. 

There was something awfully wrong about her horse.