An Ocean of Secrets

[Deleted]

"A woman's heart is a deep ocean of secrets."

Alana let out a deep breath she didn't know she was holding as she took the last few strokes of the brush through Domi's black and white coat. The gelding often switched his weight between each leg as he stood, getting impatient. She knew the horse didn't have a very long attention span, and she knew that he knew they will be doing something riding related today. Domi never liked to stay in his stall the whole day, and today happened to be a decently weathered day to go on a trail ride as Lana has planned. So far Blue Ridge has been a magnificent place. She just needed a break from everything as she has started being settled with her new life here. Sometimes it's quite overwhelming trying new things, and Lana has experienced that before. She let out a soft giggle as the horse let out a whinny and bobbed his head, shaking the cross ties that tied him in place in the process. She rubbed the gelding's neck as she put the brush back in its grooming kit and started tacking him up.

As soon as she finished, she made sure to grab hold of the reins before untying Domi from his cross ties, so he wouldn't get any ideas. She lead him out of the White Oak barn, mounting him up as soon as they passed the entrance of the large building and pressed Domi's sides to go into a walk towards the direction of the trails. She decided on taking the gelding to the Rocky Ridge trail, as she knew despite the gelding's frisky intentions, she knew at times like this he will behave and she can control him through the canyon of the great Blue Waters River.

It wasn't too bad of a trail to ride, despite the few branches, but the Dutch Warmblood understood Lana quite greatly and seemed to be in a more settled mood than usual. Maybe it was the bright sun shining today with practically little to no clouds, or the warm temperatures and that slight breeze to make everything feel just right. She lead the gelding towards the thin path that leads towards a small bay off of the river. The tides were as ferocious as ever, pounding near the shore. The crashing of the waves were almost like the hard beating of her heart. It showed such force as she could practically hear her pulse in her ear, though they were walking at a good distance nearby some trees that it just felt like background noise. It was almost like being at the beach. She halted Domi for a moment to just close her eyes to listen to the tides, some reason the ferocity in them she found soothing. She felt lost in the greatness of nature as she almost didn't hear something that didn't happen to be the rhythm of the waters, it was the presence of another.

[Elizabeth Toman]

Libby was having quite the disagreement with Ember as she got the mare ready to go riding. It was still early in the morning and part of her knew that she should be getting the mare ready to work in the arena, but after a morning session with the obnoxious gymnastics coach, she had decided that the idea of running away into the trails was a much better idea than riding around the stupid arena.

Once the mare was ready, Libby mounted and then spent the next ten minutes convincing the mare to walk forward. Although she was still very much a novice rider, she was sick of the bunny trails and wanted to tackle something more worth her while so she reined the mare sharply off the path they were following and headed toward the trails that lead up to the Rocky Ridge.

Even when they were riding amongst the beauty that was the trails, Libby's temper was still riled - possibly because she was stuck with a moody mare - and she just couldn't get herself to just release her bad mood and wasn't exactly gentle on how she asked the mare to turn corners, especially when Ember wanted to go the opposite direction to her rider. And after a few turns, the girl worked out that she was just taking the turns she was taking because it seemed that the mare wanted to go the other way.

She decided that she was quite lost when the pounding sound of waves hitting the shore reached her ears. Turning the mare toward the sound, the left the trail they had been following and headed in the direction of the water. It seemed that either this trail hadn't been used in years, wasn't kept as groomed as the others, or she was creating her own as branches cracked under the mare's hooves - not that Libby cared about the green live the mare was crushing.

One rather large branch that Ember stepped on gave a rather loud crack and the mare threw her head up, dancing backward as she snorted. "Of all the stupid things!" Libby yelled as she flung herself forward, to remain in the saddle, and wrapped her hands around the mare's mane. "Settle down, you worthless, walking can of dogmeat!" It didn't take Ember long to settle down and stand snorting toward the offending branch.