The Kelpie's Cries (Completed)

One Night At a Strangers' House

The girl walked to the last door. Out of pure curiosity, she reached for the golden knob and turned it. She pushed open the door and found a small storage room. There were rolled up carpets at a corner, two wooden old desks resting beside a torn up mattress, wooden planks stocked up at the left wall next to what seemed to be firewood. That's odd.. I didn't see a fireplace... she thought suspiciously of the two strangers, like they were some kind of villain in a plot twist. The room had only one window that was opposite from the door which was left open to let the cold air in. "No wonder why it's so cold in here", she muttered under her breath before hugging herself for warmth. She could swear there were spider webs on every single nook and cranny of the room.

The girl proceeded to close the window with her delicate small fingers, seeing the weird salt water stained look on the glass, it looked out of place. The wooden window frame seemed to be soaked in water and covered in moss; she swore there were very small mushrooms growing on it. Right when she got a bit closer to the disgusting wood to examine it more closely, the sound of a crash interrupted the silence, making her almost jump out of her skin. She looked outside, only to see her horse friend standing tall by a big fallen tree and small smile formed on her fair face as she noticed that it was looking at her. That smile slowly faded, however, as it ran away back in the forest before a gunshot was heard throughout the meadow.

Out of instinct, adrenaline shot throughout her body. She ran out of the storage room and to the common room to see what was going on; surely that gunshot was that man, Henry, who wasn't with Elizabeth when she entered the room. There was another person in the room, a brunette boy who looked like a thirteen-year-old with curly black hair and dark brown eyes, wearing normal inside clothing. Not a second later, Henry came in the house from outside, holding a shotgun.

"Damn it! Missed again!", the man exclaimed angrily.
"Were you chasing that horse again?", the boy asked.
"Yes", Henry answered in a grumpy voice.
"What horse?", the voice of the little girl sounded from the entrance of the hallway. Everyone in the living room turned to face her.
"It's none of your concern", Henry sternly said, a bit calmer than before.
"Oh come on Henry! She's staying the night, might as well tell her!", Elizabeth said from the kitchen setting the table for supper.

"Fine", Henry sighed, "There's this... white horse that comes to the cabin every now and then and it keeps bothering us; it scares away animals and even steals vegetables from the back garden", he explained but the nervous tone he had wasn't reassuring at all. That's a lie... she thought. She was pretty good at telling whether people lied or not, even if the subject they were talking about was alien to her -kind of a privilege she got from observing how her classmates lied to the teachers and vice-versa.

"It's nice tho-", the boy started but was cut off when Henry threw a glare at him.
"Anyway, this is Cristian, our adoptive son", the woman said excitedly before walking over to the other two and hugging her son.

"And I'll be sleeping on the couch", the boy named Christian mumbled, escaping his mother's hug and disappearing in the hallway; probably to get a pillow and a blanket. After about five minutes they all sat at the dinner table and ate the wonderful dinner Elizabeth had made. The girl would sleep in the boy's room. It was more spacious than that storage room at the end of the corridor with a big desk and chair, a giant bookcase with big leather-clad books and small animal figurines carved out of wood, big open window above the bed. The mattress was hard but the girl was accustomed only to soft mattresses and she found it difficult to get comfortable.

As she fought with the covers in slightly dark room, something blocked what little moonlight came in through the window. The girl turned to look, only to find a big muzzle right on top of her. It was her horse friend, who came to keep her company. Tiredly, she smiled at the horse and pet its head until she fell asleep.