only looked at her father in amazement with her almost black eyes, he put his hand to his forehead and squeezed his eyes tight several times in order to come to his senses again.
"I'm sorry if I scared you now, Sammy," said Hao and looked up at the horizon again with a sigh, not noticing anything of the questioning look of this. His daughter looked at him more questioningly with her head tilted and stretched her arms up, causing Hao to lift them back onto his arms. Knowing that something was wrong, she snuggled comfortingly to her father and felt her eyes start to burn before they got wet.
"Don't have to be sad, Papi ... I won't leave you alone", she said with a smile and hummed a song softly to herself, which always seemed familiar to her from somewhere. The four-year-old had no idea that Hao knew this song only too well and therefore had to feel a renewed pain at the words of his daughter in order to control herself. But Madeleine, who now also stepped next to Hao and knowing how he was feeling, wanted to take Samantha out of her arms.She knew what was going on in him, where the song came from, her sister and Jason's and Samantha's mother Melissa, his twin brother Yo and that it was better at such moments to just leave him alone with his thoughts and memories until he could could calm down on his own.
But his daughter didn't know that and literally clung to his sweater so that no one could take it away from her papa. Madeleine was about to grab her to scold her when Hao took her hand shakily with his still free one and shook his head resolutely.
"Let's ... just ... just go home ... ok. I think a whole day at the river is still a bit too long," Hao said with a strange hoarse undertone and walked past Madeleine before she could ask why she seemed to have heard the swallowing of tears in addition to his trembling hand. Sighing, she watched Hao silently afterwards as he went to Jason and stroked his hair, asking that they would ride home now, wondering how much longer he would need to understand that even he could not change the past. It was not allowed to break because it could not bring the dead back, nor could it restore peace to the relatives. The nine-year-old quickly packed up his things and followed Hao to the three horses Kalira, Babett and Kessidy, with whom they had ridden here from the village.

Kalira pricked up her ears attentively to the movement of her master when she saw Hao approaching her with Samantha. The medium-sized gray mare also noticed that something seemed to be wrong with her owner. But instead of nudging him inquiringly or doing anything else, she only ran to him willingly and obediently stood still when Hao sat Samantha on her back and moved away from the two of them to pack blankets and provisions.Now Madeleine went back to the three of them with the hope of some peace of mind for her fiancé and her tall, black Kessidy ran to meet her too.
However, as the youngest, it was a bit stormier.



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So I hope you enjoyed the chapter, because please consider one thing at this point. Even if only one chapter took me at least 8-11 hours to get it right, finished and corrected, but not only for me but also for my co-author and my beta reader, each chapter costs an additional 3-5 hours Time until I can finally unlock it.
In other words, please, please, please ... who also reads something to write about, a picking takes less than 2 minutes, but this chapter takes several hours of writing time ^