“GERONIMOOOOOOOOOO!!!” Brayden dropped an oyster cracker from his spoon into his soup as though it was a paratrooper jumping out of a plane.

“Brayden, just eat your food,” Mama said.

Brayden frowned and went back to pretending his spoon was a boat that was sinking into a soupy sea.

Gigi poked at her own bowl of bisque, but her mind was far, far away. She had not eaten a bite all dinner.

“Gigi, your soup is getting cold,” Mama said just as Papa walked through the door.

“Sorry I'm late,” he said as he hung up his coat and came into the dining room. He smiled at his frazzled wife who was currently trying to stop Brayden from smashing all of the oyster crackers into little crumbs. “S.H.A.D.O.W. insisted on faxing me the menu for their dinner next week, and I had to dig the old fax machine out of storage. You’d think a tech company would be able to email their menu to me, but I guess their Wi-Fi was down or something. I hurried home as soon as S.H.A.D.O.W. faxed it to me.”

Papa ruffled Brayden’s hair and then turned to Gigi. “How was the Dartmoors’?” he asked.

Gigi had finally decided to take a bite of her soup just before her father had asked her this question. Her soup ended up all over the table in front of her.

“Gigi, the hibiscus!” Mama said. She removed the bouquet of flowers from the center of the table that Gigi had nearly decorated with her soup.

“Oh, those are nice,” Papa said.

“They’re from Mrs. Dartmoor,” Mama said. “They arrived this afternoon. There was a note as well.”

“Oh! What did it say?”

“It was strange,” Mama said. She stood and walked over to the cabinet which held all of their unopened mail, late library notices, and random school papers from several years back. “Here is it,” she said. “It says, apologies about the terrible fright yesterday morning. Our deepest appreciation for the additional hours you have been putting in. Our Sincerest Gratitude, Mrs. Antheia Dartmoor.”

Gigi gasped as the note was read, for she knew the note was referencing her impromptu sleepover at the Dartmoors’ stables. This gasp might have been a completely harmless thing to do had Gigi not been drinking water at the time. The water went down the wrong pipe, and Gigi started coughing.

“Drink some water, Gigi,” Mama said.

Gigi didn’t think that would be a good idea, so she went on coughing as her Mama continued.

“I’m not sure what it meant, but they are beautiful flowers,” Mama said.

Papa agreed and then sat down at the table next to Gigi. Thankfully, the Dartmoors were not brought up again for the rest of the dinner. Instead, Papa launched into a detailed description of every food item he was going to make for the S.H.A.D.O.W. dinner. This was incredibly boring, but at least it was a conversation that Gigi could eat through.

Finally, after a painfully long meal, Gigi excused herself from the table to go take a walk. She made for the woods. Specifically, she made for the spot where she had seen the majestic horse. There might be a chance she would see the creature again tonight, and if not, at least it was a good night for a walk.

As it turned out, there were many mossy rocks in the woods, and it took a while for Gigi to find the same one she had sat on the night before, as much of their 173 ½ acres apparently consisted of trees and mossy stones. She finally found it, or at least she thought she did, and she sat down to wait. There was no sign of the horse at the moment, but Gigi still had hope that it might appear, if just for a moment. As Gigi waited, the evening grew darker and darker as Gigi’s eyes grew heavier and heavier.

The next thing Gigi knew, she was being nuzzled awake by the soft muzzle of a majestic horse. She blinked awake to see two large brown eyes looking down at her through thickly lashed lids. “Arlo,” she breathed.

Gigi sat up. She found she was very much awake now. She stroked Arlo’s soft face.

“I have much to tell you,” Gigi said. “Quite a bit has happened since last night.”

The horse snorted softly, almost as if he agreed. He was almost human in the way he seemed to understand when Gigi spoke to him.

“It was such a terrible day,” Gigi began. “It all started when I woke up in the Dartmoors’ stables…”

Gigi then went on to tell Arlo all about her day, from her embarrassingly wet run-in with Colton to her father’s boring dinner conversation. When she ran out of things to talk about, she started to tell Arlo all about some of her very favorite things. She told him about her favorite color, which was a silver-blue, like the color of the sky first thing in the morning. And about her favorite movie Singing in the Reins. And her favorite flower, which was a hollyhock. She told Arlo many things and would have told him many more, but Gigi fell asleep right when she was about to start in on her favorite music group, as it had grown rather late by this point.

When Gigi awoke an hour and twenty-seven minutes later, she found herself no longer in the woods but lying on her own front porch. A blanket had been draped over her, probably to keep away the chill. Gigi sat up and found that she was damp with sweat. It was summer so it was not very chilly out and the blanket had made her too hot. Also, there were mosquitoes... lots and lots of mosquitoes.

Finding that the porch was not the most comfortable place to sleep for a variety of reasons, Gigi tossed the now sweaty blanket onto the rocking chair where it was usually kept, and went inside to hit the hay, but in her own bed this time where it was much more comfortable and there was air conditioning.