That morning she split the herd, as she always did. Five goats going into the corral at the back of the field, and fourteen going into the pen at the front, ready for a day of fuss and food.
Except, and she counted twice, whilst she still had the fourteen destined for the petting area, she only had four troublemakers.
A frown and a quick headcount showed that, yes, it was exactly as she had suspected. Dot, Spot, Leaf and Twig were all still there, but Brown was missing. Again.
With a long-suffering sigh, Dreamspears nudged her good girls into their pen, and went to look for her lost goat.
-
Brown wasn’t in the field with the horses. She wasn’t hiding in the area where the food was stored, gorging herself into immobility. She wasn’t on the back of the Lumpox, which was where she’d been the last time she’d gone missing. She wasn’t under any of the caravans or trying to eat the bowling pins, again.
Dreamspears searched the hedges around the edge of the field, but there were no new holes there, and after almost half an hour of searching, she enlisted the help of two other kids. Washesblack, who was free that morning, and a new kid in camp, ‘Lampfire’.
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Lampfire had turned up a week or so back, and had shown an instant talent with the animals. He was only twelve, but she was already impressed by him.
The fancier horses they used in the parades and shows were owned by the circus or the acrobats who rode them in the ring, but there were any number of other horses and ponies that were more or less owned by the collective, and they seemed to have fallen in love at first sight with Lampfire. He had only been here a week, and it was funny to see them already running up to him as he approached their field, nuzzling his hands for apples and fuss.
She was glad to see somebody taking care of them, she thought, as she peered under another wagon. The poor things always looked ragged and grubby in comparison to the show-horses. She hoped he would stick around.
-
The three of them spent almost an hour searching before they finally found their missing goat. Washesblack had been on the verge of heading into the city and checking the butchers, Lampfire muttering about seeing if she'd hidden with the horses.
They ended up finding her in the back of Snowblossom’s caravan, being fed small handfuls of grass and sips of tea from a tiny cup. Her mother had tracked them down first, insisting that they "get that bloody thing out of my house!"
It wasn’t the strangest situation they’d found Brown in, but it was up there. She bleated a heartfelt goodbye as the three of them dragged her away.
Dreamspears was just surprised she hadn’t eaten the tablecloth. If this carried on, maybe they could get her a job with the clowns!