Linda and I caught up with the rest of the group. They were getting worried we were taking so long.
We settled around the fire, and Lisa once again apologized for keeping secrets last time. She said we’ve become a sisterhood, and there’s no place for secrets in this circle.
We need to think about what comes next for us. Do we wait for the Keepers of Aideen to assign us a new leader?
Alex pointed out that having Elizabeth to tell us what to do didn’t mean we listened to her anyway. The soul riders always follow their hearts, orders given or not.
Anne said that may be what’s making the circle fall apart. Poor girl is so convinced the sisterhood is broken.
Lisa said even through all the ups and downs, their bonds with their horses, Aideen’s Gift, has never wavered. If we all trust in our bonds with our horses, we can do anything.
As for the Keepers of Aideen, they do still need a leader, and I think the choice is pretty obvious. Elizabeth herself said she hoped Alex would take her place.
Alex said she’ll need to think about it. That’s fair, it’s a lot of responsibility to just accept.
All that’s left is to figure out where I factor into all of this. Lisa was just about to ask me if Aideen shed any light on the subject while I was in Aideen’s Whisper, when we all heard a scream.
Of course, being the heroes we all are, we went running to see what the problem was
Ah, it appears one of the Bulldogz has fallen off her horse. Sounds like he was spooked and she fell when he bolted. She looks pretty injured and her horse is long gone.
Alex offered to ride with Lily down the trail while Lisa performs some “first aid” and by that I mean straight up magic.
It worked, Petunia will be just fine. She still needs her horse back, though. I was sent to go and find him.
I followed his tracks down to Jasper’s farm
Ah, there he is, trampling poor Jasper’s pumpkins. I chased him down and calmed him just in time for Petunia and the soul riders to arrive.
Petunia took her horse back, Anne took Concorde back to Jorvik Stables with her, Lisa offered Alex to stay with her and her dad, but Alex said she wanted to be alone to think things through.
That left just me and Linda.
Linda asked if I’d like to get started on finding Cathrine. Of course I said yes, what else am I gonna do?
She said when she was looking in to the Moorland family to find their connection to Mr Sands, she learned that Justin’s mother was named Catherine Holbrook. Maybe this Cathrine and the Cathrine that was mixed up with Elizabeth and Evergray is the same woman?
If anyone would know, it would be Jasper. It’s his daughter, after all. He must know something.
When we asked Jasper about Cathrine, he got sort of defensive, asking us why we want to know. This seems like a sore subject for him. He got especially mad when we mentioned the Keepers of Aideen, and even told us to leave.
Of course we’re not gonna give up that easy. We said we know Cathrine had special gifts and something terrible happened to her. We think I have those same gifts and we just want to make sure it doesn’t happen again. That softened him up.
He told us Cathrine was a special girl, always more comfortable around horses than people, especially one horse of hers, Chancehunter. That’s my starter horse’s name. Interesting.
Cathrine joined the Keepers of Aideen when she was around our age. Jasper didn’t like them much, but he could see how much she blossomed with them. She was happier than he ever saw her….until she wasn’t.
He doesn’t know what happened, but he knows it broke her. She settled down with Thomas and never spoke of the druids or what happened again. But she did keep a diary.
The diary is in his old barn in Moorland. If her story is anywhere, it’s in there.
We left Jasper alone, this obviously brought up a lot of painful memories, and headed to Moorland to get the diary.
We ran into Justin on the way, but I carefully avoided mentioning anything about Cathrine. He’s already been through a lot, he can learn about his mother later, when we have more to tell him.
We headed inside the barn to look for the dairy.
Well, the good news is we found it. The bad news is it’s mildewed and rotted away from being kept in a leaky barn all these years. It’s completely unreadable.
It sounds like Linda has an idea, but she’ll need some time. She needs to sleep on it, given her best ideas come to her in her dreams.
This leads into the Cathrine’s memories quests, which aren’t technically story quests, so this is actually where the story stops! At least until SSO adds more next Wednesday
I might post Cahtrine’s memories in the future, but for now that’s all the story I have for ya.