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!.
Naomi nodded as she listened, as she had been one of those children too, in the saddle before she could walk, wanting to follow in her mother's footsteps... then things had gone a bit skewiff and she had tried to erase horses from her life, until fate intervened with her plans, and here she was, though there was little she would change about her past, as even the horrific parts of it had happened to make her into the person she was today.
She studied the young man, and wondered what it was about her barn that seemed to pull in all the strays who didn't seem to fit inside the world that others were trying to build for them. She knew enough of the equestrian world to know who his parents were, and that his life growing up can't have been the easiest - with his parents being a lot like Angél's mother, and seeing their career being more important than raising a child. However, she kept away from the gossip, so she didn't keep up with everything going on.
The woman smiled at his answer, as this was what told her a lot about the young man, and who he really was. “The outside of a horse is good for the inside of a man.” She mused with a warm smile. "Do you have any questions for me?" She was keen to throw him up on a horse to see what he could do, but she needed to get the question and answer part of this over and done with first.
Naomi smiled as she wrangled the three preschoolers; her own two and Cara's daughter, as they left the horse truck and wandered through the stalls. "What's wrong, Ky?" She couldn't help but laugh as the tiny girl pouted and crossed her arms in annoyance.
"Why can't I be riding, like mama?" Kyoto sulked as she stomped her foot.
The woman shook her head in amusement. "Because your mother is giving a demonstration, and you don't do mounted archery?" She offered with a shrug, offering the girl her hand and smiling as she took it. "Why don't we go and find some sweeties?"
"Can we watch Uncle Mik when it's his turn to ride?" Sebastian asked with a hopeful grin, his eyes moving around as he tried to take in everything at once, and then sighing when his mum and the girls headed in the opposite direction to where the horses were. "Can we? Can we? Can we?"
Naomi sighed and shrugged again, she still needed to work out how Mik had gained the uncle status - not that she had an issue with it, as the man had been part of the children's life since day one. "Let's go and get something to eat first, and then we can head over to watch the horses, sine that seems to be the only thing that's worth seeing here." She rolled her eyes in amusement as she guided the three preschoolers over toward the food stalls. If nothing else, she needed a coffee, and she hoped that Cara would be alright getting ready by herself, and hopefully Mik would keep her mind off her stress.
Naomi gave an amused smile as it seemed to take Sage a bit before he stepped into her office. A single eyebrow arched at his reply and she rolled her eyes, as it was an answer she expected from teenagers who wanted to ride, but hadn't ridden very much before. However, the young man's resume told her everything she wanted to know, but she wanted to hear all that info from him. "Okay, so you have a bum made of glue. Well done." She gave a soft smile. "Give me some more information about what got you into riding, what kind of riding you've done and where you want to see your riding taking you, and, most importantly, what is it about horses that you enjoy the most?" The answer to her last question really meant the most to her, as it was the why that people spent so much time around horses.
Naomi groaned as she stretched out her back, she was getting too old for these early mornings with the horses, but she was pleased with the horses she had chosen for her riders and with a coffee mug in her hand she walked back into the arena, pleased to see that all three riders were in there when she returned. "Good morning" She greeted with a smile. "We're not going to play any silly get to know you games, as you're all old enough to know how to introduce yourselves, so lets get down to it." She consulted the clipboard in her hand, even though she knew who was going to whom. "Sage, your three horses are: the grey tobiano mare, Madame Butterfly, in the barn Bug. The dun gelding, Sorcerer's Apprentice, or Orb. And the bay Gelding, Black Hawk Down, Hawk" She smiled her thanks as Cara had walked down the line of horses and held the heads of each horse as she had named them.
"Maeve, you have the three remaining. The grey gelding, Broken Arrow, Nuc. The bay mare, Sundown, Dusk. And the flaxen chestnut, mare. Homespun Honey, Sugar" She smiled again. "They are all between the ages of four and six, they have all had basic training done, they all know how how to wear tack and accept a rider, the direction their training will take is up to you. If you want more information on them, their files are in my office. Right, you have your assignments, I will now leave you in peace to work out who you are going to work this morning, the other two will need to be taken out to their pasture. Cara can answer any questions about their training up until now." With a smile and a wave, she left them to themselves.
Naomi read through the email from the owner of a stallion she had asked to cover a couple of her mares, her brows dipped as she tried to work out what the person was trying to say, or rather why the person was trying to charge her double the agreed price for the use to the stud. She closed her eyes as she drew in a deep breath through her nose and exhaled just as slowly through pursed lips. Clicking on the reply button, she began to type out a response, telling the person that she now was no longer interested in his, or his stud's, services, and she hoped he had a lovely day, each press of the key gave away her frustration, making her pleased that Sofia at said she was going to be away from her desk.
Her brow furrowed at the sound of a knock on the door, though the voice that followed the know brought a smile to her face before the door finished opening, and she clicked send. "Welcome, Sage." She said, her voice warm and welcoming, as she turned her attention away from the email. "Please, call me Naomi, everyone else does around here." Well, almost everyone, but she wasn't going to get into semantics. "Have a seat." She motioned to the two guest chairs opposite her desk. "And tell me a bit about yourself." She knew about the young man, but she liked to hear what people thought of themselves, allowing them to preen their own feathers so to speak.
Naomi chuckled at Ethan's choice of words. "Maybe we need to give her a kennel and put her on a line." She hated to see dogs chained up, but if they ran a line from one end of the backyard to the other and attached a long lead to that the dog would still be able to explore the yard, but just not leave the yard, and the kennel would allow her to get out of the weather.
She pulled her phone from it's holder as it buzzed and she quickly read the text, more of the tension leaving her body. "Lily's going to bring a truck around to collect him." She said with a hint of a smile as she continued checking the gelding over, also working out what size traveling gear they would need for the horse. "Wonder if I should see if Dem can drop by? At least then we could send him home with a clean bill of health." She knew it was stupid as soon as she said it, as they could both see there was nothing obviously wrong with the horse, and any vet would tell them to wait until the morning.
She gave Ethan an amused smile. "You do know that you could board your horses here, right?" She teased.
Naomi inspected the scratch by the gelding's eye, narrowing her eyes at it, and deciding that it would be fine now that it was clean and didn't need instant veterinarian attention.
She laughed and shook her head, and it felt good to laugh, a lot of the tension left her body. "Not quite, the door was opened to let her out, and she got away." Well, at least that's what she'd got out of what had been said in the house, and the more she thought about it, the more she was thinking that Kyoto had been the one to have opened the door. She frowned in thought, as surely people would be willing to forgive the actions of a toddler, but Cara was willing to take the blame to protect her daughter? She shook her head as she rubbed Rocky's forehead. "Let's just hope you don't come up lame in the morning." She knew well enough that horses could seem fine after an event than then for the horse to come up lame the next morning.
Naomi's forehead was creased in a frown as she walked back into the barn, thinking through what had happened in the house. Kyoto had been so upset, yet Cara had said that it was her who had lost the dog.
She blinked as she looked at Ethan and smiled. "Thank you." She trusted her staff explicitly, but that didn't stop her from entering the stall and giving the horse a thorough check over, just so that she could honestly tell Lily that the horse was fine. "I may have found out how Cleo got out." She said with a half smile, her hands moving down the gelding's legs, pleased that she didn't find any heated or wet spots.
She exited the stall and took her phone out, sending a text through to Lily to let her know that they had Rocky at the barn, and that the horse wasn't injured as far as they could tell at the moment. She also offered to drive the gelding home. "I'm sure we won't get in any more trouble if we give you a small feed and a haynet while you're waiting for your humans." She frowned as she glanced in the direction of the house. "Have you ever known Cara to lie?" Why on earth would Kyoto be so upset for something her mother had done?
Naomi watched as Ethan led the other horse, at least all four legs were attached and in the correct place. "i'll get him settled, i'll even bed him down in a stall just in case they can't come and get him tonight." She nodded and grinned. "Good idea, just make sure that there are a couple of empty stalls between him and the other horses. The last thing we need is for them to get in a snit with each other and do more damage." She could feel a headache building. "don't be too hard on her." She gave the dog a withering look, she guessed she needed to get to the bottom of how the pup got out too.
"i'll even let the vet know just in case we need them to come out to check him." She nodded. "Brilliant idea, thank you." She looked down at Cleo again before she tipped her head in the direction of the house and laughed as the pup jumped to her feet and headed off in that direction, though coming to a stop when she reached the end of the rope. Shaking her head, Naomi headed toward the house.
She unclipped the rope as they reached the house and she opened the door, stepping back as Cleo raced into the building. She followed the sound crying into the kitchen and frowned when she saw Cara standing there with Kyoto crying her heart out into the young woman's shoulder, while Cara was trying to get Viola and Sebastian to eat. "What's going on?" She soothed as she swept her granddaughter out of Cara's arms. "Sorry, baba." Kyoto cried as she buried her face into Naomi's neck, and Naomi arched her brows toward the girl's mother.
Cara swallowed hard as she handed the twins the savoury muffins she had made earlier. "I lost Cleo." She said. Technically, she had been putting the twins down for their nap, and Kyoto had opened the door for the pup so she could go potty.
Naomi smiled as she kissed the top of Kyoto's head. "Cleo is back now." She said. "Ethan found her down by the back pastures." She studied Cara. "There was also a horse on the other side of our property fence, so there is a chance that Cleo harassed the horse and his rider." She watched the little colour drain from the teen's face, Cara nodded. "I'll let you know when the owners arrive." She gave Kyoto a kiss on the forehead and placed her back on the ground, she was still sniffling, but she had stopped crying. With a smile, Naomi headed out of the house and back down to the barns to see how the horse was.
"i think he's from seven oaks. she came from that direction." Naomi nodded, she recognised the dun from when they had been on the other yard while Blue Acres was put back together. "he looks like he's calmed down a little.""He's probably exhausted now the adrenaline is gone."
"hey mate. been on an adventure have you? there's a good lad. good boy." Naomi gave the horse and instructor half her attention, keeping more of an eye on Ethan in case the horse spooked and lashed out - as was known to happen, though it seemed there was nothing for her to worry about. "he's got some scratches on his legs, nothing deep. one just under his eye too." She nodded as she relayed the information into the text she was sending. "let her know he's saddled too, they might have a rider out there." She smiled as she held her phone up. "Say cheese!" She called as she zoomed in on the horse and took a photo.
"Bring him through the gate and we'll take him back to the barn." She walked down to where the gate was and unlocked it. "I'll take this one back to the house and then come and help. Get his gear off and give him a good hose down. That way we can give him a complete check over." If nothing more, the hose down would cool off any heat in the horse's legs.
Naomi was busy in the office, yet her mind was in a million places as she worked her way through the emails that needed her attention, and tried to push away the thoughts of what she would rather be doing. She knew that Rex was getting sick of being ignored by her, and even spending nearly all of his time out in the pasture, it wasn't helping his attitude - was saving the stall though, so win-win in her opinion.
She looked over as her phone pinged, and she brought it closer, opening the text "can you come down to the bottom of the pastures, we have a problem." She frowned at the words, hoping that it wasn't her stallion causing even more trouble. It would be just her luck that he'd kicked out his gate. "Be right there." She sent back as she rose from her desk and headed to the door, pushing her feet into her field boots before leaving the office.
She saw Cleo on the end of a rope as she got approached the back pastures and frowned, the pup should be in the house with Cara and triple trouble, however, Ethan wouldn't have sent her the text he sent just because of the pup, so she followed the direction of the instructor's eye and frowned when she spotted the horse. "Bollocks!" She muttered. "He's not one of ours." She looked at the pup, her brows pulled down. "For someone who should be in the house, you look very pleased with yourself." He held her hand out for the rope. "See if you can get close to the horse, and I'll let Lily know we have one of her horses." She quirked an eyebrow at Cleo and nodded as the pup lowered herself onto the ground, chin resting on paws.
Naomi did the vest she could, lifting the bits of timber that she could manage and putting them into a barrow, which was then taken over to the pile that would be a bonfire later, if she had an ounce of humour left in her, she might even suggest roasting marshmallows later, treat it as a ceremonial burning. As she worked, she did her best not to think about who's stall this would have been. Her memory wasn't anywhere as close to their eldest's, but she knew the layout by heart.
Her eyes glanced in the direction of their house, thanking the gods that they lived a good distance away from the barn. She pressed her lips together as the image of the house also catching fire gripped her. As bad as the fire had been, it could have been a lot worse.
"What is it?" The sound of Lily's voice pulled her out of her dark thoughts, and pulling her gloves off, she scrubbed the tears from her eyes as she made her way over to where the others were gathering.
"I'll try and help search through and see what can be salvaged - a woman's eye is normally much better at that," Naomi couldn't help but laugh at that, as it had been proven that women tended to not look through things like a lot of males did - not that she would say this in front of the men though.
She felt her emotions threatening to take over again, at the number of people who had come to help. She only knew a handful of them, which told her that a large number had to have been riders from the other barn. She was pleased when the young girl was pushed toward the tack room tent. Even though she was sure there was nothing left that she wouldn't mind Emma seeing, she was happier for children to be where she knew they weren't going to find anything that might give them nightmares.
She ran her hands over the pictures on the table again before she gave a small smile, pulled her work gloves on, and went to help with removing the burned wood. Many hands really did make light work, music probably would have been a good idea, but she hadn't thought of that earlier.
Naomi finished setting up a table with bottles of water and a few boxes of food. Her baking would never measure up to that of Cara's, but it was the best she could do. She then moved onto another table where that was ready for anything pulled out of the devastation could be left and then gone through later. In fact, she was doing her best to not look at the remains of what was her life, she may as well have been staring at it. The only problem, was that when she did look at the mess, all she wanted to do was burst into tears, and that wouldn't do when she had so many people coming to help her today.
She walked to stand by what she had deemed as the check-in table. There was a box of stickers with Hi, I'm and a place to write a name, if people so felt the need, but everyone that would be here today should know each other, and if not, she was sure a quick introduction would solve that. The stickers were just because she thought it would be amusing to offer them. Spread across the table were also the blueprints of what the new barn would look like, along with detailed drawings of the new building. When she'd asked their eldest to design a new barn for them, she should have known the child would go above ad beyond.
"We're here, where would you like us?" She glanced up at the voice and smiled toward Lily, wanting to give the woman a hug. "Thank you so much for coming to help." After all, the other woman had her own barn to run. She gestured vaguely around her. "Pretty much damage control, clean up." She pointed toward an area with a tent over it. "That's where the tack room was, and we're still trying to see what can be salvaged from it, there are buckets in there, and a table over there for what it found."
HEY THERE! my name is yourname and i'm number years old. i'm a wiminz/dood and i've been roleplaying for number years. but enough about me, here's my character. =]
[/font]:[/b] Galdor Leoth
barn name: Inka
age: may 4th 2015
gender: mare
colour: smokey black (dilute)
markings: tiny star
height: 16hh
breed: Fresian sporthorse
sire and dam: Blue Moon (sire-fresian), Water Lily (Dam-Warmblood)
siblings: none
owned by: Naomi
brief history: Inka is Naomi's pride and joy. She may not have bred the filly herself, but she picked the sire- a dressage champ and dam- a hunter jumper, and she was very pleased with the foal that was produced by the two - super happy that the foal came out dark and not cremello like her dam. While she left the filly-foal to be a foal for the first few months, she was super excited to hear about how the filly's handling was going and as soon as she was weaned, Naomi was excited to go and collect the weanling, bringing one of her school mistresses with her so that the filly wouldn't be in the back of the truck by herself.
[/font][/ul]
[/font]:[/b] People, learning, other animals, baths, attention, apple slices - not quite sure how to eat a whole apple yet
dislikes: rain, being rugged, peppermint
strengths: intelligent, quick learner, stubborn
weaknesses: stubborn
fears: Anything that moves too quickly, sudden loud noises, storms
habits: farts when excited
overall personality: Inka is inquisitive and full of life - as one would expect from a young horse. She never stays still for long, but it still known to suddenly just stop what she's doing, fold her legs and drop to the ground asleep, and then she's up and running again.
She's not slow to show people when she's unhappy about something that is happening too her or around her and will let herself be known with squealing and kicking - and nipping if her antics aren't enough to get the message through.
While young, she picks things up quickly, so whoever is handling her needs to remember this and not teach her any bad habits, as some things are easier to learn than they are to unlearn. She is sweet though and can be handled by nearly anyone who has enough horse-sense to be able to handle a youngster and keep them on track.[/ul][/size][/ul]
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credits! template by MOLLIVER ! @ Caution 2.0. lyrics are from "one more time" by the epically awesome daft punk.
