Silence enveloped the young child as she lost sight of the pony a few minutes after leaving her house in the woods. It didn't help that it was getting dark and really cold out either. Deciding to give up her search for the night, the girl sighed and began walking back towards her home when she heard scuffling to her right. She paused and trained her eyes toward the noise. There! A spot of white! The young girl took off in a shot towards the pony who, for a split second, seemed to smile before it galloped away from the girl. The young girl wasn't giving up though and set to quickly gain ground on the pony.

A few minutes later the young girl broke into a narrow clearing, thinking she finally had the pony cornered since she figured it wouldn't cross the stream at this time of year, but there wasn't a pony in sight. There was, however, a young lady who looked to be injured. She was lying unconscious, her upper half on a large rock that was sticking up out of the water. The young girl could see a red stain on the rock and quickly rushed into the water to help the unconscious lady.

As the young girl carefully drew closer, she could see that the young lady was about to be swept away by the current, and, making a quick decision, the young girl lunged towards the unconscious lady and managed to grab ahold of her arm. As soon as the young girl touched the lady, the young girl was being pulled under the water; too quickly to get a breath of air, too quickly to call for help, too quickly to defend herself like her uncle Peter had taught her to. The young girl who was just trying to help didn't have time to help herself.

That young girl was the first of the Hale family to die by unnatural causes in over 100 years, and she would not be the last.


Prologue to Cailpeach. I took a liberty with the whole death by unnatural causes thing. It seems logical that the Hale family would try to stay under the radar as much as they possibly could but I didn't want to make it any longer lest it sound unrealistic.