Amanda couldn’t take it anymore, she just had to get away, but she knew she couldn’t, she was the leader of this team now turned mostly into centaurs and she wasn’t going to abandon her friends. However, she knew that if she kept this up she would snap at the wrong moment and say something hurtful to someone.
So she decided to get ahead of it.
She crossed the river which ran alongside the village using a rather beautiful stone bridge which was one of the few all stone structures in the village. She moved past the fields which while untended for a long time were still fields of crops and pasted what seemed to be an apple orchard located on the edge of town.
She walked to the top of a hill her shoes pressing deep into the soil before moving to the other side where it was pure nature. On this side there was no sign of the village, no sign of anything made by human or rather centaur hands. It was tall trees, grass and the like.
“FUCK…. MOTHER FUCKING…BULL SHIT….” cursed Amanda at the top of her lungs as she let out all the rage and anger that had built up since she arrived. She had been walking out of the door when the damn painting had chosen her and the others to come to this world and now it wasn’t going to let them go.
She cursed, she screamed, she threw the largest rock into the ground to let her frustration go.
Finally with tears in her eyes she slammed her back against the tallest tree and went onto her ass and pulled her knees to her chest.
She let her emotions out then, tears flowing like rivers as she tried not to think about what the future was before her.
She was going to be a centaur, that was not something she could avoid, she knew she was doomed to that. She had accepted that, the issue was the people she was leaving behind. The others seemed to have forgotten about their other friends, their families, and others. They seemed so happy now that they were mated with a fellow centaur.
Was that going to be her fate?
She pulled out her cell phone, the battery was all but dead, but she began to look at photos. Her family, a family that according to Dave had already forgotten about her, history, had removed them from books. Still she could see all the good times they had, her birthday and family vacations.
Finally, she stopped on a couple an image.
What none of her friends knew was that she wasn’t single, she had a lover, a partner.
It was a long-distance relationship; they couldn’t see each other much and they had to keep it secret.
It would look bad if the captain of one University Equestrian team was dating the Captain of the Equestrian team from their biggest rival.
The two of them had bonded over their shared love of horses, their shared love of the same stupid movies and others things.
Amanda smiled as she looked at the photo, it was the only true photo she had of them together.
They had stolen some time at a meet to share some private time in the barn.
That was one of the best memories Amanda had, the two of them in the hay making love. She would never forget that time. No matter what, she wouldn’t forget that time and it didn’t matter how good-looking Lightning would become as a Centaur, she would never fall for him. Her heart belonged to another, it belong too.
Then the screen on the phone turned black as the final little bit of power died turning it off forever.
“No…no…NO!” yelled Amanda at the top of her lungs as she tried to turn the phone back on but she knew the screen would be dark forever. She threw the phone down between her feet and cried like she had never cried before.
She heard hooves coming toward her.
“I want to be left alone.” said Amanda without looking up.
“Amanda?” said a voice she never thought she would hear again, she looked up to with tears in her eyes only to see that it wasn’t any of her friends, or even the horses now turned Centaurs. It was another group of people with their horses, it was the equestrian team from the other university. Including her secret lover.