Once they were closer, and nothing was left to obstruct his view, he could see that it was a smallish station wagon turning up. And once it had pulled up and the doors were opened, he could see that it was Kelly Perth, the old “master’s” daughter. And she wasn’t the only one leaving the vehicle, even as she was exiting it, three others were joining her.
With his inherited memories, he quickly determined that they were three of the four close friends of Kelly, and that they were planning on having a party here for the other one that wasn’t with them while he and his “wife” would be out for a night of their own.
Obviously with her real father out in the barn (incidentally put in the very same stall that he himself had once occupied) there was already a major hole in her plans, and with little time to spare before they entered he made straight to where his mare-turned-wife rested.
“Kelly is here, and she‘s not alone.” He stated simply, that being enough to have her rise up and face him.
“Who else then?”
“Three of her friends. The fourth one will be here later.”
“And what are they doing here?” She didn’t have the memories that he’d obtained.
“They’re planning a small party here, the last one and youngest of the group, Melinda I think her name is, turned 18 three days back but the party they’re holding for her is this night.”
“So now what?” She realised that they were in quite the compromised position now, if they were spotted now…
“Well the plan was for Kelly to face the penalty for her actions, but with those others here now.” He wrestled with the situation at hand. On the one hand, he really felt the need for Kelly to pay for her lousy treatment of them sooner rather than later, however….
“Well I hope you don’t plan on striking them ALL down.” She stated forcefully. “I’m not going to budge on that.”
To say that was putting him in a tough spot would be quite the understatement, as he wrested with the twin desires currently in opposition to each other. Finally, he came up with an idea.
“And there’s still the matter of knowing if they do mistreat us or not.”
“Yes.” Was her single-word answer.
“So how about this, I’ll word it so the ones who are like Kelly take the full hit.”
“That means they’re still all being affected.” She worked out almost immediately.
“Not completely though, just so they don’t see what’s happening, and remember what was done to Daniel so he’d be able to get Eclipse back?”
“You still want to target them all.” It was not a question.
“Even if they didn’t mistreat us, they were still quite willing to sit back and not stop it.” He tried to reason with her. “You know this.”
That was true enough, she had seen her share of humans who despite not actually being abusive towards her, or the others, they still didn’t actively try to bring it to an end. Finally, seeing no other option, at least for now, until she could convince him otherwise, she relented.
“All, all right then, but no more than that.” She sighed. ‘I hope I don’t regret this.’ She added as a mental afterthought.
“Very well then.” He accepted as he worked out the wording for his next wish. “I wish that once we've left and the party here has started, Kelly and the four friends that she’s brought for it will slowly, over the course of an hour, turn into horses. However, those who actively mistreated us like Kelly did will become full horses, while those that didn't will stop changing once they've become anthropomorphic horses which will occur 30 minutes after they start transforming. Until it’s completed they will have no awareness as to what’s happening to them, continuing to party as they change.”
“I think that’s about alright for me.” She accepted his wish, if not with massive enthusiasm. “But they’ll be inside any minute now, so what do we do about that? If they see us, like this…”
“…it would be awkward.” He finished. “If you hide in there for the time being, and I’ll do what I can.” He pointed to the en-suite.
“You can keep them out of here?”
“I’ll try. Now hurry, I heard the door open.” He ushered her into the bathroom before closing that door and heading to the other one, only having the door open a little.
“Dad!?” He heard her call out to him.
“Give me a moment! I’ll be down shortly!” He called back before closing the door and searching out the wardrobes and drawers, finding things that he could wear.
Settling for a pair of jeans and black turtleneck sweater, he added a decent pair of shoes and socks to it and was soon down the stairs, finally clothed and ready to try and talk his way out of a potentially serious problem.
[+]
As he was heading down the stairs, the still naked “wife” had found a bench she could sit herself on and keep her bare feet off the cold tiles. Truth be told, his growing desire to punish all humans was something that concerned her to no end, but she seemed to have extracted a concession of sorts from him, and was willing enough to use this engineered situation with Kelly and her friends to get an idea as to what humanity was like in general.
Right now though, he’d have to find a way to get both himself and herself out of the house without any of them noticing, or she'd be stuck in this room for quite a while.