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!.
Dylan laughed at herself. "I've been told that I tend to hyper focus." She said with a shrug. "There's a chance you could have been one of those Hollywood cowboys, walking with the jingle of spurs, and I still probably wouldn't have heard you."
Her brows rose in question and she shrugged self consciously. "I discovered that most horses have a sweet spot right near the top of their face, almost where the forelock meets the poll, and if I rub that with my knuckles while braiding, horses will be happy enough for almost anything." At least it worked well as long as she didn't do anything to betray the horse's trust. "Where I learned to ride, the owner had a really headshy mare, she was fine with people touching from muzzle down, but if you went anywhere near her ears, she became a giraffe. One of the other riders was rough when removing the bridle one day and Wish headbutted her. Sorry, I digress, that's the horse I learned about the sweet spot with."
She brightened at the offer of being shown around, though her eyebrows rose at the question. "Heavy lifting? Isn't that what men are for?" She laughed and shook her head. "Sorry. Yes, I'm aware that there's more to horses than just riding. I helped out at our old barn." She pressed her lips together, cursing herself and praying that John wasn't going to ask for the number of the place for a reference, but she had to let him know that she wasn't just some horse-crazy girl, she did have some experience with the groundwork. She gave a self-assured shrugged. "I find that it's easy to walk into anywhere as long as you walk in with the confidence of someone who belongs there."
Dylan walked out onto the quad at lunchtime and settled herself at one of the picnic tables under the shade of a large oak tree, marvelling at the changing colours of the leaves. She'd often wondered how things like that happened, as the laws of nature had never been part of their lessons when growing up, things just were, no explanation needed.
Opening the bag of pita crisps she'd brought for lunch, she pulled her books from her bag and plonked them on the table. While they had come all this way so that she could study business, she had looked through the course list and had also picked up a professional cookery course. She had no intention of becoming a chef, but she already knew how to cook, so the course would add to not only her skills, but the number of things she could make. Popping a crisp in her mouth, she thought about the flavour as she opened her cookery book and began to look through that night's task was to look through the list of foods she had been given and to create a meal from it, and the main instruction was to think outside the box - something Dylan had had to google - and not to make common dishes; macaroni and cheese, pizza, so on and so forth. "Would garlic bread be seen as common?" She question aloud as she pulled her water bottle from her bag and took a drink. Her lunch would definitely pass as 'common', but she was okay with that.
Dylan pressed her lips together and looked away, go figure that her mouth would get her in trouble, even when she was out riding a horse! "Nat and I have been brought up with the hope that we wouldn't become our mother." She finally said with a shrug and then gave a small smile. "Decisions were made for us, rather than letting us decide. And then we made our own decision and came here." Her smile brightened, as following her university acceptance was the best thing she had ever done - if not terrifying at the same time.
She widened her eyes in angelic innocence, hoping that she hadn't offended him with anything she had said. "If you came off, would Fiver really have run off?" She began to second-guess her idea of taking Sandman out on the trails, as she'd never been ditched by a horse before, not one that could run for kilometres before stopping, if he decided not to head for home.
She beamed at the news of the zoo and shook her head. "I go to uni, spend a bit of time at the barn, and I keep house. My exploration as gone as far as finding the location of all the stores I need." She hadn't even been to the barn where her brother worked. Just because she had grown up in a bubble, maybe it was time for her to expand her bubble and go exploring? Wasn't that why she was on the trails?
She looked at him and blinked, nodded. "I think Sandman would be happier if we were moving again." And she was keen to see more of the trail. "Thank you for being here. I get the feeling I would have been without a horse if we had been alone." She wasn't too proud to admit that she might be way out of her depth here.
Dylan chatted with the black horse, her eyes moving over his athletic form and she wondered what he was used for. All of the horses that she could see looked shiny and healthy, telling her that they were well looked after and as she chatted, she plaited the horse's mane.
She jumped as she heard a man's voice, quickly stepping away from the horse with her hands up. Though she quickly shook her head as she lowered her hands and turned toward the man with a bright smile. Now, with the information that he hadn't done the interviews gave her the perfect opening, but she silenced herself before she even opened her mouth. If she lied her way into a job, she'd likely lose the job just as quickly, and then find it hard to find a job around horses. "Pleasure to meet you, John, I'm Dylan. And, truth be told, I'm just looking around." She said with a small shrug. "However, if there's an opening for a stable hand, I'd love to apply! I'm not shy of hard work, and I can ride anything." Her brows dipped, lips pursed, as she thought about the fact that last line tended to get laughs from people at the uni, though she had yet to work out why. "I attend classes at the uni, so I'd only be able to work around my classes and exams." Even above her need to get a job, hopefully with horses, she wanted the degree that their grandmother had tried to stop her from getting.
Dylan knew what it was like to not live up to someone's expectations, or, in her and Nat's case, it was that they weren't allowed to grow up to become their mother. "It seems that our elders have our lives already planned for us, and are surprisingly disappointed when we don't live up to their expectations."
She clamped her hand over her mouth, with an impish grin, realising how insensitive it was to have laughed. "I only laughed because you nearly came off." She offered. "I would be helping you put yourself back together if you had eaten dirt." She rubbed Sandman's shoulder as she could feel the horse's tension, and she was hoping it wasn't coming from her.
"There's a zoo?" She knew that she sounded like an excited toddler, but she'd never been to a zoo before, and if there was one around here, she'd need to go check it out. Her thoughts of wild animals vanished as she caught a movement and she nodded to Jameson, closing her hands on the reins to remind the gelding that she was still there, and in charge. "Wow." She breathed, her eyes widening as she looked at the stag. "Easy boy." She soothed as Sandman shifted underneath her and she blew out a long breath, rubbing the gelding's neck when he echoed her and she could feel the tension leave him. "I thought he was going to leave me behind for a moment there." She said with a laugh.
Since they had arrived in Hickstead, Dylan had pretty much kept to the same pattern; she attended uni, she went to the barn, she did the shopping, she looked after the flat. She was a good girl, just the way her grandmother had brought her up, she kept to herself, didn't go out of her way to make friends - or enemies.
Today however, she decided to break the pattern and after dropping her brother at work, she decided to have a drive around and really check out their new home. She pulled up the driveway of an equestrian establishment, curious and pulled into one of the parking spaces before stepping out of the vehicle and closing the door as she looked around.
The place looked very smart, and she wondered if she should get back into her car and head home, but curiosity got the better of her and she made her way into the flashy barn, just wanting to see how much different it looked from Seven Oaks, or even Blue Acres - as she was amazed how different those two places were, even though the two places pretty much did the same thing. There again though, she didn't have anything to compare them to, as the place where they learned to ride was full of outdoor yards and a huge American-style barn that was used to store the tack, feed and hay, with not actual stalls, all the horses lived outside.
"Hey gorgeous." She whispered as she saw a black horse looking out over his door. "You got a pretty nice home, huh?" She smiled as she stepped forward, offered the horse her hand to sniff and then slid her hand under his forelock, rubbing his forehead.
Dylan laughed and shrugged, she had lucked into riding, and tended to be more stubborn to stay on a horse, than the horse was to remove her, so she had good stickability, and she loved running barrels, so knew how to stay on at speed when a horse seemed to vanish from under her. And, there was no way to explain that she had thrown herself into horse riding so thoroughly because it kept her away from the house, and allowed her to spend time with people her own age, that weren't part of their flock.
She grinned. "From what I've read, horse riding is more of a 'girl thing'." Finger quotes and all. "Maybe your mother thought that you were trying to impress a girl at first?" Hmm, maybe she'd done a little too much reading since they are arrived here?
She looked through the trees as she once again felt the burn in her cheeks at the next compliment and she shrugged her shoulders, though a laugh escaped her as Sandman came to a sudden halt and she watched as her fellow rider was almost jettisoned over his horse's shoulder. "Lions, tigers or bears? Oh my!" She might have been watching a few movies too, though her humour was to hide the fear that had removed the blush from her cheeks as her eyes moved around. Now that she had put the thought in her head, she suddenly wondered if there were wild animals out here.
Dylan's brows dipped as she tried to work out how she was supposed to reply to Jameson, his tone told her it was said in humour, so she just answered it with a shrug. Learning about social cues when you were an adult was hard work, but she felt that she was picking things up quite quickly... well quickly-ish.
She smiled, ducking her head at the compliment as she felt her cheeks heat up. "Thanks." She knew that riding Sandman was going to be fun, but she had no dreams of actually being able to compete on him, as she couldn't chance their grandmother finding where they were, and since horses were really all the siblings knew, she wouldn't put it past the woman to be keeping a close eye on what was happening in the equestrian world - at least through the owners of the centre they had ridden at. She smiled and shook her head at the suggestion of working on a sheep farm. "I've put my name down at the bakery and even with the owner at the flats." Plus she had also offered to exercise a few horses.
She smiled as she watched the interaction between Jameson and his horse. The silent communication between a horse and person always intrigued her, as it was different from one person to the next, yet it was also the same. She nodded as she listened. "For some people, it's isn't just a phase." She said with a nod, a meme she saw quite a bit while perusing equine sites. She played with the horse's black mane as she was asked the question she should have anticipated. "Um... I started riding when I was around ten. I had read about them during our studies... we were homeschooled, and I wanted to know more. Grandmother had a good friend who had a riding stable." She could hear that her answer was evasive, but she really hadn't thought about how to explain how she got into riding without other people thinking she was a freak.
Dylan was impressed with the other horse's calm nature, and was pleased that he seemed to ignore the stupidity of her own mount. She could understand why Sandman's small owner was happy to have other riders for the horse, as Angel wouldn't have the leg length to really wrap around the gelding when he was doing what he was doing now.
She grinned as it seemed that the young man didn't recognise her from the uni, and she shook her head to being a vet student. "No, I'm just good with faces." She assured him. She guessed that it was from being hidden from the world for so long that she spent so much time just people-watching now, and she'd ben riding long enough to be able to spot horse people from regular people.
She released a long breath as the buckskin she was riding had finally seemed to chill out and was just enjoying the ride, or the fact that he'd worked out that she was as stupidly stubborn as him and they worked better together than against each other. She laughed at the question and shook her head. "I'm not ready for the responsibility of owning a horse just yet, not with uni classes and trying to find a job, or two, so I told Angel that I'd Mr Sandman here for as long as she needed me to." Okay, that was kind of a lie, as she was more than ready for the responsibility of her own horse, she just needed to be able to up and leave if the need arose, and she couldn't do that if she had a horse that depended on her.
She leaned forward and gave the Selle Francais a good pat when the gelding released a sigh and gave a big yawn, and sat up with a bright smile, bridging the reins so that she was holding them with one hand now, the other hand resting on her thigh. "Atta good boy!" She turned to Jameson. "How long have you had Fiver?" At least with a relaxed horse, she could now hold a proper conversation.
Dylan was getting tired of fighting with the stubborn gelding, and if she hadn't have been just as stubborn, she would turn around and head back to the arena - though that wasn't going to change anything, and she put the horse's antics down to the fact that he didn't get out of the arena enough.
She sighed as she heard a voice behind them, and she plastered a smile on her face before she circled the horse around so that she could see the owner of the voice and get the gelding's attention on her, and not the idea of racing off. "It's a lovely day." She replied, placing her right leg against the horse's side as soon as he made a move to break gait, threatening to circle him again and relaxed her leg when the horse listened. Her smile deepened and she nodded. "I am she. We're both at the university too." She'd seen him around the barn more than she had at the uni, but she was good with faces.
She had Sandman take a step to the side as he began to fuss about having another horse beside him, and she chuckled when the horse seemed to shrug and decided to behave himself, and she took the chance to look at the amazing horse beside them. "Wow, your horse is amazing!"
Dylan whistled as she groomed the buckskin Selle Français. She'd hacked out on a couple of the lesson horses here at the barn, and managed to get a ride on a couple of the horses that boarded here by offering to clean stalls and tack. It was while she was cleaning tack one day that she saw a girl putting a brightly coloured paper on the noticeboard, looking for a rider for her big horse.
The gelding as tacked up and ready to go in no time, and after clipping her helmet under her chin, she led Sandman outside, asked him to halt by a mounting block, and swung into the saddle. "Easy, buster." She soothed as the gelding shot forward, and she got him to stand again before she tightened the girth and made sure that her stirrups were the correct length for a trail ride and then, when she was ready, she touched her heels against the horse's sides, letting go of the tension in the reins as he walked forward.
To keep out of the sun, as she had forgotten to put sunscreen on, she turned the horse onto the trail that led into the forest and she sank into the saddle as they plodded down the path, hoping for an easy ride. "You're not lulling me into a false sense of security, right?" She asked the buckskin with a laugh, as he was rather relaxed. "Maybe you're just happy to be out of the arena?"
When the path opened a little, she took up the reins a little and asked for a trot. "Steady." She cautioned as the gelding's head shot up and he jogged forward before settling into something between a trot and a jog. "I asked for a trot." She said as she brought him back to a walk and asked for a trot again. "You are going to pull something if you race off before you are warmed up." The gelding wasn't interested in her opinion though, and either wanted to walk or race, nothing in between.
full name • delilah williams nicknames • dylan, dyl (call her delilah and face death) age • eighteen birthday • june 21st occupation • student - business gender • female sexuality • straight
the appearance
face claim• elle fanning
identifying features• Blonde and green eyed, she couldn't look any more different from her twin if they had different skin colours, and her height of just over five feet doesn't help - especially when nat is always referring to her as his "little" sister (when she's 5 minutes older).
the personality
likes • riding fast, loud music, fire (not setting them, but she likes watching the shapes and colours in the flames), painting dislikes • flowers, girlie-girlie stuff, the church, rules, silence strengths • stubborn, quick on her feet weaknesses • stubborn, opens mouth to exchange feet dreams • lives a day at a time so really hasn't thought about the future fears • being forced to return to the church to be married off, their mother finding them overall personality • the complete opposite of her brother, dylan is quick to anger and her temper is one to be rivalled. she's quick on her feet, and with her mouth, though does have her soft side, once you get past the prickly exterior. she uses her height to her advantage when she wants to pretend to be younger than her eighteen years, though will quickly correct people if they assume she's young just because she's short.
the history
father • unknown mother • jasmine williams, 33, unknown siblings • NAT WILLIAMS important people • mary williams - grandmother hometown • penzance overall history • dylan, well... delilah (insert eyeroll, please), and nat were raised by their grandmother, who was very involved with her church, and because of this, so were the children. they don't know the full story of their mother's past, other than what they have been told by their gram; jasmine strayed from the righteous path she had been set on and had decided to drink and party her way through life, which led to her arriving home as a terrified sixteen year old who was pregnant. her parents took her back in, though she returned to her partying life once the babies were born.
they were six when the only loving person they had, their grandfather, died, and they were completely under the rule of their spare the rod, spoil the child, grandmother.
their only escape from their grandmother was when dylan had decided she wanted riding lessons, so they were both enrolled at a local trusted riding school, run by someone from the church, after trying everything, and finding that dressage was the most boring thing on the face of the earth, dylan discovered barrel racing and took to it like a duck on water.
it was when she turned thirteen that dylan began to question everything, the way they were being raised, the rules that the church said they had to follow, the rules that their grandmother set. she wondered if other families lived like hers. out of everything that set her off, the thing she hated the most was her name. who in their right mind named a child after some woman that betrayed her lover? nat had called her del since they could talk, and then at the stables one day she was talking to the other girls (being church run, they kept the girls and boys separate as much as possible) about finding her own name, and sarah suggest dylan, as dyl wasn't too far from del, yet dylan was as far from delilah as she could get. Loving the fact that it was a boy's name, she renamed herself. Young pure delilah became rebellious dylan.
on the eve of their eighteenth birthday, dylan received the mail she was waiting for, the acceptance to a non church university, and far away from here. in the middle of the night woke her brother, telling them that they had to go. they were both adults now, and they needed to find their own way in the world, but they had to leave while the dragon was sleeping. getting into their old pick-up, the twins headed away from penzance to start a new life. away from the fear of fire and brimstone that had ruled their lives until now.
the role player
alias • cara age • that would be telling other characters • alphabetically or order of annoyance?
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