Welcome to Hickstead, home to both Seven Oak Stables, and Blue Acre - two rival stables. Both offer opportunities for their clients to reach the highest level of excellence. Each stable differs from the other, so choose wisely and never forget, loyalty is everything... Meanwhile as the stables battle it out, there's trouble brewing at the university. Be careful, if you don't pick a side you may get caught in the cross-fire...
This is an chilled out rpg with a super friendly and relaxed atmosphere! Remember to sign up with your characters full name in all caps and don't forget to do your claims! Thank you and Welcome, we've been established since 10th March 2009 but unfortunately have had to close guest view of our boards due to multiple sites ripping off our hard work, such a shame! Come chat to us in Discord before joining if you like!.
Maeve smiled and shook her head at the apology. "It's not a problem." She said with a laugh. "It's what I get get for immersing myself in my work." She shrugged, knowing it was the truth, she should know not to get lost when she was in a public place. At least here though, she wasn't at rise of getting a soccer ball kicked in her direction and making her uniform dirty - it had happened a few times when she was at secondary school and she had been in so much trouble for getting her only uniform dirty.
She nodded with a laugh. "The pen really is mightier than the sword!" While Maeve wasn't the greatest with verbal words, but that course had taught her to be better with the written, ot typed, word. When she wrote about things, she learned to write about them; the colours, the sounds, the weather, the time, the emotions. Rather than just writing: The girl went for a walk in the park. She changed it into: Even though the sun shone brightly and the birds sang merrily, a cool wind blew, matching the sullen mood of the young girl as she walked through the park.
She smiled as the other girl noticed her cross-stitch. "This one is a fun project." She replied with a shrug. "I've done some in the past for other people, but this one is for taking my mind off everything else."Plus, alongside equine studies and creative writing, she didn't think she had time to take any more courses, when she was also training and showing horses for Naomi. "From your earlier comment, I'm guessing you sew?"
Maeve turned when she heard someone else enter the arena, slightly disappointed that it wasn't Naomi. She smiled as the young man spoke. "Naomi's not here, so you can't be late." She gave a bright smile after Cara had spoken. "And I'm Maeve." Anything else she wanted to say was stopped as their mentor entered the arena and got straight to work.
Her mouth formed into an o as she was given her horses, and once Naomi left, she hurried forward and went to meet her horses. Sugar was a typical flaxen chestnut; beautiful chestnut coat with honey blonde mane and tail, though her tail got darker closer to the bottom. Nuc was a dark grey, almost a smokey black, but she had a feeling as the gelding got older, he would grey out. And the bay mare was a dark bay with a triangular blaze and a snip on the side of her nose. "Hi." She greeted them all. Her mind boggled as she tried to decide which one she was going to ride and she shook her head to quieten her inner voice and then frowned. Where were Cara's horses? None of her business! She looked at her horses again, finally settling on Sugar, as she had been the first horse she had noticed. "I'm guessing your horses are out in the pasture?" She asked Cara before looking at Sage. "I've worked out who's staying in. Shall we head outside with the rejects?"
Maeve laughed, feeling her cheeks burn with embarrassment, wishing she hadn't said anything about anything in her closet. "Maybe we'll save that conversation for another day?" She shrugged, this really wasn't the time or place to go into what she had hidden away for years. She laughed again, and it felt good to laugh, as it removed some of the tension that was making her feel wired, when Molly mentioned her blog. "Note to self, head cam for next time we think we're going to track down the ghost horse."
Maeve watched, wide eyed, as Molly began to talk into her phone and then record what was approaching them, when all Maeve wanted to do was run in the opposite direction, if only her feet didn't feel like they were glued to the floor, her body not wanting to obey the brain that was screaming for her to run. She heard Molly and then a scream, until she realised that the scream came from her as the horse appeared from the darkness and reared up. She clamped a hand over her mouth to stop the noise and whimpered as she could hear the sound of running feet. She had the sudden thought that she was having an out of body experience and that she was actually running away, that it was her feet she could hear. Maybe that's why she couldn't move?
Maeve knew it was coming, she knew that sooner or later Naomi would replace her. She'd had lots of fun bringing Inka along, and the mare was doing really well in competitions - which had nothing to do with her and all about how talented the mare was. What she hadn't expected however, was for her to get a call the night before, telling her she was being assigned two new horses to bring along.
It was early morning when she got out of her car in the parking area of Blue Acres and after a quick stop of at the tack room to collect her helmet and back protector, she headed out to the arena, where she was told her new horses would be waiting for her.
A million thoughts ran through her head as she approached the arena, where she could see a string of horses patiently, and not so patiently, waiting. She tipped her head to the side as she looked at the Sporthorses, in a range of colours, at her best guess, ranged in heights from fifteen to seventeen hands, none of them really jumped out at her. She smiled toward Cara, who was sitting on the top rail of the arena, quietly talking to the chestnut closest to her. "Good morning." She greeted. "I was expecting to find Naomi. Nice looking horses." They all looked young, about the age Inka was when she first started campaigning the mare. Her brows dipped as she looked at the horses, guessing that the new rider was going to be turning up as well. Knowing that it was inevitable they would be training together, she shrugged into her back protector, placed the helmet on her head and brushed down her navy blue riding tights.
Maeve had been doing her craft for long enough that she worked more on autopilot than she paid attention to what she did, and because of this, she wasn't as lost in her work as she she would have been when she had taken up cross stitch to escape the world around her.
Her thoughts jumbled as she tried to sort through everything, compartmentalizing things into their own folders, sorting through things and sending the thoughts of the past way into the back folder, something that could be covered in dust and cobwebs in her mind, folders that would hopefully never see the light of day again... though memories of her parents might be in folders like that too, if an infant could remember the people who left them on a doorstep as though their child was an unwanted kitten or puppy.
At the sound of a voice, she looked up from her work, wincing as the hand with the needle kept working and she jabbed herself on the back of her other hand - pleased that it was an embroidery needle, and blunt. "That would be me." She replied with a smile. She nodded as she recognised the other girl from the intro class. "That was an enjoyable course." She gestured to the ground around her. "Please do. There's plenty of room."
It probably wasn't the time to mention it, but the barn at night was Maeve's favourite place to be. The fact that she wasn't the only night owl around, meant that she knew how to get in without causing a fuss.
She quirked a brow as it seemed that she had thought of something her friend hadn't and she grinned and response with a shrug. "I don't know what to use against ghosts! I have a closet full of skeletons, not ghosts!" This whole thing was something that she would read about in books, or write about, not something she expected in reality. She'd been paying so much attention to what was in front of them that she hadn't expected a sound to the side of them and she too jumped, laughed to cover it up as Molly told off her mare. "You know how I said about what happens in the barn stays in the barn? This would make a really cool story! With names changed of course!"
Everything suddenly seemed to happen at once, again reminding her of what would happen in a book and she stood shock still for a moment as she tried to analyse everything that was happening, though it was like a sensory overload. "Is it time to call the Ghostbusters?" She asked with a weak laugh. "M...Molly?" She gasped as she heard the sound of shod hooves approaching them in the darkened barn.
Maeve grinned and bowed at being called a genius. "I do my best to please." She offered. "Even if I do mention it later than I probably should have." She shrugged as she clipped the flashlight to the belt loop on her pants.
She guessed there was logic in being prepared, even if Maeve thought that this was nothing more than a wild goose chase - not that she'd ever say that to Molly - and when she was on the ground level her eyes surveyed the barn aisle, making sure that all the stall doors were closed. She flinched when the horse sneezed, though her brows shot up in amusement at her friend's reaction and she mimed zipping her lips. "What happens in the barn, stays in the barn?" She asked with a giggle, clamping her hand over her mouth to stifle the noise, as she fell into step behind her friend, heading down the barn, being watched by each horse or pony as they crept past. "Did you ever think of putting together a ghost hunting kit?" She asked quietly. "You could have all kinds of handy things in it, salt bombs, holy water, a crucifix or two." Okay, she was not talking rubbish, but being in the empty barn was slightly creeping her out.
Maeve pressed her lips together and nodded. She had arrived in Hickstead as a timid fourteen year old who thought she was nothing, that she only rode horses because her social worker had talked Naomi into talking her useless-self on. It was only recently that she had actually believed she was actually as good as everyone was saying she was, and that had been because one of her idols had approached her at a show to commend her riding, that she began to believe. "Thanks." Hurting Inca was at the top of the list of things that freaked her out the most with the job she had been given, and as strong as her bond with the mare was, she knew that things could go wrong at the drop of a hat.
She grinned and clapped her hands, a gentle hack on Venus sounded like a wonderful time. "Yay!" You could learn so much about a person and what they were like with horses when you were outside the arena. Some people were great, while others fell apart without the constant correction from an instructor, and Maeve felt that they were the kind of people who played at being a rider, but would never be a true equestrian.
Maeve looked over at the kitchenette. "There's probably some salt in the cupboards over there?" She suggested. "However, we may not need it." She followed Molly to the exit, not wanting to bring in the logic that there might actually be people still working downstairs, as she followed the other girl down ground floor. "Possibly down where the stallions are, so the tackroom will be between us and them... him... it?" She shrugged, as the place was eerily quiet now and she looked around.
Maeve grinned and shook her head, getting a feeling that her friend had never been between Mik and baked goods before. Tonight was going to be fun, if he came up here before he left.
She sat up as the thought of competing all summer began to close on her with the chilled fingers of fear. "It's terrifying." She said quietly, thinking of the few shows she had done with the mare when she campaigned her the previous summer. "What if I do something wrong? What if I make a mistake and hurt her horse?" Naomi wanted Inca to make a name for herself, so that any foals the young mare had would sell well and go on to being champions themselves, and that created a heavy weight to sit on the young equestrian's shoulders, even if she wouldn't admit these worries to Naomi. She shook the dark thoughts away and grinned. "Ignore me! Tonight is about having the best sleepover ever!" Admittedly, her first sleepover ever, but she wasn't going to bring that up.
She pulled a face at the horses mentioned. "As much as I like riding Major, Venus is my girl when it come to the school horses." She said with a shrug. The sudden noise caused her to leap into the air, and she looked around with wide eyes. "Oh man...Ghost Horse might be onto us." Her brows flew up as she looked at Molly. "Maeve. He's here! Ghost Horse is here. Come on! We should investigate!" Her mouth dropped open as she tried to find words, a small laugh escaping her as she watched the younger girl looking for her boots. It was one thing to be talking about Ghost Horse, but to go and see if he was actually downstairs? She quickly jumped to her feet, pushing her feet into her own boots. "Did you bring a bag of salt?" She was only half joking, as she picked up a flashlight to defend herself with, should she need it.
"You don't say, I mean...if he says we're barn sleep over saints, I don't see the harm in letting him have some." Maeve couldn't help the giggle that escaped and clapped a hand over her mouth to stop it from getting worse. "Wait, I don't know what I am saying. Since we're pulling off the perfect barn sleep over, we don't need any help. Or sharing!" She laughed again. "I'm guessing you've never tried to say no to Mik before." She tsked and shook her head sympathetically. "He has the most tear-jerking Puss in Boots look ever!" There had been one chocolate muffin left, and she had reached for as Mik had arrived in the loft, the look of defeat on his face and made her offer the muffin to him, and the smile she had received, which was enough to power the entire barn, had made it worth it. She smiled at the memory, she wasn't even sure if the man knew he was even doing it when he pulled those faces.
She flopped onto her back, looking up at the beams above them, liking the way that they criss-crossed their way along the underside of the roof, helping support it. She blew out a breath as she thought of checking out the place along the ley-lines. "I don't think I'd be able to get that kind of time off." She said with a shrug. "When summer hits, I'll be on the show circuit for Naomi."
She turned to Molly, listening as her friend shared her own information, her brows rising. "Get this, supposedly a mysterious horse. What if it's Ghost Horse." She sat up again and grinned. "I wouldn't be able to take Inca, but I'm sure I could borrow a lesson horse that I can take on the trails, or ask one of the boarders if I can borrow one of theirs!" One eyebrow lifted. "How does one go about catching a Ghost Horse?"
Maeve's brows rose when one of the students actually went there, and asked about addressing the dog, though the teacher's response almost got an eyeroll. Police dogs, while given the same respects at a funeral, they were the officer's partner, but they were still a dog, an incredibly well trained one.
She opened her folder, removed the paper and flipped it open to the last tab and wrote glossary down the tab, she'd make a fancy header on the page later, flipping that over, she put the paper into the folder and began to write down everything Mr Gentry was saying.
She couldn't hold back the snort though at the mention of trauma being a drive for someone becoming a criminal. She hated that excuse, as it was the biggest cop-out that a lawyer could use: "Oh, so and so only robbed the bank and killed those people (in cold blood, as they had been planning it for the last six months as shown by the surveillance photos and blueprints in their basement), because they were beaten as a child." It was almost as bad as judges who gave sports stars a free-pass from assaulting an underage girl because it would "ruin their sporting career, or chances of getting a scholarship", ignoring the fact that said boy just destroyed the life of a girl.
Maeve grinned as she looked around. "Well, it looks like like the pictures I've seen online and in movies, so you've done really well." It made her feel better, and less like she'd missed out, when the other girl had admitted to not having been camping either. Though she guessed camping-out was probably more of an American coming of age thing.
"Let me guess. Mik, Nat, and Shecanna might be making surprise cameos all night?" She laughed and shrugged. "Well, I know the gate gets locked at night, and not too many people have keys to get in, so we'll probably have Mik watching us till he clocks out for the night and then Cara." She knew that the latter didn't sleep, and she knew that if she'd been through half of what the older woman had been through, she would be the same. There were some nights that her memories were enough to wake her from nightmares. "Mik eats like a horse though, so we'd better hide the sweet stuff from him."
She set her things to the side of the loft, keeping them out of the way until they were needed. "I hope you brought yourself the biggest sweet tooth in the world - because I, Molly Mac'Intosh, declare that this barn sleepover has officially started." She ducked her head a little, her cheeks heating up. "Truth be told, I don't have much of a sweet tooth." She confessed with a shrug. "I grew up being told to watch what I eat, and kind of always have." She rolled her eyes at herself as she crossed her ankles and sat down on the floor. "Okay, my... well, research, led me to looking at ley lines. While there aren't any that are anywhere near us. In fact Sussex is a tad on the boring side when it comes to things like stone circles or other ancient sites, though there are a number of haunted places. Sorry, I digress, back to ley lines. British Latitudinal Ley Line is the closest one to us, and is the longest line that ends in the middle of the Isle of May. While running through the ancient sites that a ley line has to run through to be called a ley line, it also runs through a number of buildings that people claim to be haunted. Are they haunted, or is it just the energy of the lines? Our next closest line St Micheal's is really cool too! It goes from Ireland to Israel, and along it are seven places with the name Micheal in them."
"Do you think it's too much?" Maeve grinned as she looked around and shook her head quicky. "No way!" She declared. "I've never done the whole camping thing before, so this is going to be awesome!"
She laughed and shook her head at Molly's enthusiasm, though it was beginning to rub off on her. "I still can't get over how we managed to convince Naomi to let us have this sleepover." She laughed again. "Because we're going to have babysitters all night?" She offered with a shrug. Naomi had never said as much, but Maeve had been at BA for long enough to know how things worked here, and she knew that the place always had people in it, especially since the fire.
"Do you need me to help you grab stuff from your car?" She shook her head. "I left my bags in the tack room, so I could have both hands to bring the box up." She was worried that she had under-packed now, wondering if she should have just brought everything she had decided not to bring. "Oh! I've been doing some research, and found quite a few goodies. Nothing really, local, but still creepy." She wiggled her eyebrows. "I'll be right back!" With a grin, she headed back down the stairs to grab the bags she'd dumped when she found the box.
Maeve was enjoying the spring sunshine, and was spending some time sitting under the trees on the university campus during the lunchbreak. She had the book she was reading for her creative writing class; The Coming of the Fairies by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle resting on her bag beside her, on her lap was the spiralbound notebook that she used for the class. She tapped the pen against her lips as she read through the last of what she had written.
She frowned in thought as she glanced at the book, just from reading that, made her think that photography would be an interesting topic. And she was thinking old-school photography, with darkroom printed photos from a reel, not digital ones. She shook her head, banishing the thought. She had enough things to do right now, between the courses she was taking here and competing Naomi's mare as much as the woman wanted her to. She often thought that she really needed to look at picking up a part-time job too.
Shaking her head, she put the notebook and book into her bag and pulled out the hoop that held her latest project, this one an image of the profile of a black horse with a wide blaze that would taper off to a pink snip, and her sketchbook. She smiled as she looked at what she had done so far, comparing it to the image she had in the sketchbook, and she threaded the needle with black thread so that she could continue.
If she was going to be truly honest with herself, Maeve didn't think Naomi would actually give them the go-ahead to have a sleepover. Before the fire, the woman would have been easy to talk into some teenaged fun. Now though? This place was protected like Fort Knox, and Naomi's sense of humour had been locked up with it - not that she would ever blame the woman for it, she almost lost everything when the barn had gone up in flames. However, with two persistent teenagers asking her the same thing, and having Cara offer to check in on them while she was working the horses, the owner had finally consented, though Maeve had a notebook full of rules that they had to abide by, the top of the list no matches, which was totally understandable!
Standing in her dorm, Maeve checked her bag for what felt like the millionth time (I've told you a million times, do not exaggerate!). She had a change of clothes for the morning, a t-shirt and yoga pants to sleep in, her creative writing folder and text book, so she could finish her homework, as well as a handful of books she'd found in the library. Zipping up the bag, she lifted it over her shoulder, reminded the RA that she was going out for the night, headed out to her blue breeze Kia Picanto and drove toward Blue Acres, stopping off in town on the way to grab some snacky things.
Arriving at the barn, she headed inside, said hello to Inka as she made her way to the tack room. Cara had left her a message, saying that she had left a box of things that they might find useful in there. Looking into the box, she grinned when she saw half a dozen LED hurricane lanterns in a variety of colours, as well as a container of S'more Brownies. She laughed as she picked the box up and headed up the stairs to the hayloft, a place that had been a second home to her when she had first started riding here. "Wow!" She gasped with a laugh. "Looks like someone's been busy up here. Um... Cara left us some... things."