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 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.
Roisin Malloy couldn't believe the warm spell that had taken over the day, and it just happened to be a day that she had class at University. But now that class was over, and the sun was shinning on the quad, the young woman had a lack of desire to return home. She wanted to hang out, she wanted to do something, or maybe just sit and enjoy the sun. Who knows. All what Roisin knew was that she would figure something out. Glancing at the time, the young woman knew she had at least an hour to kill before Talullah Caufield, her best friend, got out of her class. Soaking up the sun it was, and she knew the best place to go.
Packing up her bag, she slung it over her shoulder and escaped what felt like the stuffy cage that was the business building. Bright sunshine and crisp air greeted her, already bringing a smile to her face as she hiked across the quad. There was one tree in particular that had the perfect foliage, that gave a good mix of sunshine and shade, not to mention, it was great for photos. As Roisin approached it now, it would appear that she was not the only young woman who wanted to spend some time under the shade of the trees to enjoy the day. Blue eyes spotted a familiar face now, and she offered a smile, "Hey!" Roisin called out now, and once the distance between them was closed, she continued on, "Maeve O'Doyle, right? Roisin Malloy - We shared intro to creative writing together last semester. Mind if I join you? I'm killing time til my friend gets out of her class."
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."
As Roisin approached the other girl now, it became clear that she had been working on something under the shade of the tree. The glint of a needle became clear, followed by the wince on Maeve's face. That action alone made Roisin cringe inwardly herself, she knew that face well, given how many times she had stabbed herself attempting to fix up second hand luxury, "Ah! Sorry. Had I known you were working with needles, I wouldn't have been so...exuberant in my yelling." Thankfully though, none of that had deterred Maeve from giving her permission to join her.
She dropped her bag with an unceremoinious thump, before she sat down now, stretching out her legs as she leaned back on her hands. If it weren't the fact that this was the campus grounds, one might have thought Roisin Malloy was camping out on a beach, "I don't know. I feel like that course taught me that while I am creative, I am not creative with words." She said with a grin now, her blue eyes glancing over the embroidery craft in Maeve's hands now, "Is that a fun project or a school project?" Roisin inquired now, figuring it could be either. It looked like the sort of thing her sister would like to do if she wasn't so clumsy with dangerous or fragile things.
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?"
Roisin couldn't help but to smile when Maeve said she had gotten lost in her work, after all, the young woman knew a thing or two about that. Or perhaps just imagination, she was always annoying her siblings or the other farm hands when she wasn't entirely paying attention to what she was doing. None of that mattered though, as Roisin sat down and allowed herself to enjoy the filtered sunbeams through the trees. Truth be told, she wasn't entirely sure if Maeve would continue to talk to her - but she found herself pleasantly surprised when she did.
"If it's for fun, no wonder it is so beautiful then," Roisin replied with a smile. Truthfully, sometimes she felt like school projects took the fun out of being creative. Like, who wants to draw a boring old still art of fruits and shapes when you could draw flying pigs? The idea that Maeve's project was for distractions wasn't a new one to her though, and Roisin merely nodded, "I don't blame you doing something for yourself. We're halfway through the term, I think distractions are certainly needed." The young woman stated it as pure fact, given that, if you were to ask her opinion, it was.
The question over whether or not she sewed made her sheepishly grin, "I do! Sometimes I'm good and sometimes...well, I need a bit more practice. I like to believe I have the vision down but not always the means to get to it." Not with creating something out of scratch. A selfie? Yes. The perfect IG pose? Also yes. An attempt at a high couture dress? Not so much, but the effort was certainly there, "I love fashion," Roisin confessed, "And creating brands. Like, I want to do that, be in charge of someone's brand. I'm hoping my parents consider me a lost cause for partaking in the family business of...apples. It just so...boring to me." Damn, she really unloaded there - to a stranger, how awkward, "Sorry, I guess a digressed there."
Maeve shrugged off the compliment as she removed her last stitch and redid it before she kept going. She gave a small laugh. "I'm doing this to get away from writing, but as I start my day riding horses, and I'll be turning to the barn when classes are over, I guess doing a cross-stitch of a horse isn't exactly moving away from what's already in my head." Not that the image she was filling was of any of the horses she rode. There again though, while she was working she was concentrating on where the needle was going and what colour she was using at any time, and every now and then going back to her sketch to change things up if they needed tweaking.
She listened as Roisin spoke, stretching her legs out as she began to feel the familiar tingle in her ankle, knowing that at times it was just better to sit and listen, and she got to learn more about people this way, as they often said more about themselves when they were unloading, than they would if the other person was always adding things in as well. She smiled and shook her head at the apology. "There are times when we need to move away from the life that others have decided for us." She offered. "If fashion is where you see yourself, you should pursue that, and your family will hopefully support that." Not that she was an expert on having a supportive family, but she knew that Aurora and Andrew had always supported her riding, when they were her foster parents. "Can I ask what kind of fashion you're interested in?" She'd hate to make an assumption that it was adult clothes when the other girl wanted to create canine fashion.
