Whatever it takes

2

-

I fell right asleep that night, probably because I had spend a full day traveling, which is quite tiring.

When I woke up I felt excitement wash over me. My first day, finally. I've been looking forward to this for months. I was happy until that nervous feeling crept in again. I'm here on my own, what if they don't like me?

I've never been the most social person, sure I had friends in school and outside of that, but I was never one to strike up a conversation with a stranger.

But that doesn't matter right now, I'm here and I have to do my job, which I'll hopefully like.

I did the usual stuff, got out of bed, got myself ready and went downstairs.

I sat down at the kitchen table, picking up my phone. I wanted to call my mom, but ofcourse, different time zones. I put the phone back down when I heard someone come down the stairs.

"Good morning Elle." It was Arthur. It was 6:30 AM, quite early, but I'll have to get used to that, from now on the real work begins. "Good morning!" I reply back to him.

He walks over to the kettle, filling it up with water and heating it up.

"I can take you down to the stables after breakfast, that way I can introduce you to the others." He says with his normal calm voice.
"That'd be great." I tell him as he pours the boiling hot water into his cup.

After some more talking and eating breakfast we both stand up and walk outside. We walk along the sand path to the first stable block.
All the buildings were white with dark wooden accents. It was stunning.
The lights were already on and as we walked inside I saw two girls already there.
"Oh, hello Arthur!" A girl says enthousiastically. "Ah, good morning Tori, how are you?" he asks the girl.

The girl, Tori, had long dark brown hair which she had tied up in a ponytail. She wore, probably very expensive, black riding boots with a few small diamonds lining the top. She had kind looking, dark blue eyes, atleast that's all I could see from a distance  away. Her clothes were clean and had barely any wrinkles in them.

Whilst they were striking up a small conversation I looked over to the girl opposite from her. She had dark blonde hair put into a messy bun in the back of her neck. Her boots were covered in sand and mud and she has some dust on her breeches. Quite different from the 'Tori'. She looked like she was completely in her own world, busy with the horse.

"You must be Elodie?" Victoria asked. "Oh yes!" I quickly answered when I realized she was talking to me. "I'm Tori, I can show you around if u want?" She asked me. "That'd be really nice of you." I answered back.

"Well, I'll see you later then." Arthur said to me. "She can start with riding Napoli today, I'll have to take a look at the schedule and other horses before I make any decisions." He said looking at both me and Tori. "That's fine! See you later." she said giving him a small wave.

She turned around and pointed at the girl, now mucking out a stable. "That's Amelia by the way." Tori said. "Oh hi! You are Elodie right?" She said, clearly not listening to what Tori had been saying. "Yes, just arrived yesterday." I answer. "Well we're off, I'm going to show her around. See you later!" Tori said to Amelia.

I walked behind her as we passed a few rows of stables and rounded a corner.
"So, this stable block is for Arthur's horses, the ones that can be ridden. The block on the left is for boarders and on the right is for the young and green horses, we have really cute foals there." She explained.
"Here we have the tack room and in the room opposite we have the kitchen and the horses feed, and on this wall we have the schedule board." Tori said.
"Currently we have you, me and Amelia riding Arthur's horses, and obviously we help around."
"Great!" I said, still amazed by the size of everything.
"Can you maybe help me feed the horses, there's a lot to be done." She says.
"Ofcourse!"
And so my first day actually begins.

It wasn't much different as what I'd do at home. I mucked out stables, fed horses, took them in and out of the field and cleaned some things up. But here it was much quicker, as we were with three people instead of me usually doing it on my own. Altough that makes sense, because these stables are three times bigger than the yard at home.

Thinking about home makes me miss everyone a bit. I don't know when I'll see my friends and family again, but I can always call them.

I was taken from my thoughts by Tori's voice. "Its 12 PM, you want to grab some lunch?" She asked me. "Yes please, I was getting hungry." I say with a chuckle. She laughs and walks out of the stables to another building, the canteen, well, as far as you could call it a canteen. It was a nice building with a few tables here and there, big windows looking out on the whole terrain and a bar with a dark wooden counter. The walls were decorated with pictures of horses, medals and other prizes. Tori walked behind the counter and opened the door into the kitchen. "We really only have sandwiches." she says softly. "That's alright." I say. We stand in a comfortable silence for a minute before she speaks up again.

"So, you're from England right?" She asks me. "Yes, and you're American I suppose?" I ask her. "Yup, born and raised." She smiles.

"How did you get here?" She asks curiously. "I've met Arthur and Mathilda a few times before in England and around other international competitions, that's how I got to know them. My trainer also knows them so we got talking for a bit and they aksed me if I would like to come to America for a while, so that's how I landed here. How about you?"

"Well, I've ridden my entire life, showjumping mainly, and I started jumping one of Arthur's horses a few years ago after he asked me, and I never left." She explains to me. "How many people work here?" I ask. Arthur has mentioned a few people in our conversations before, but I'm still wondering about it. "Well theres you, me, Amelia, then we have Donna who gives lessons to some kids here, and she jumps her own horses. There's also Lola, she's from Germany, but she moved here four years ago to ride for a breeder. When she quit there Arthur asked her if she wanted to ride his ponies for him, since she's small she can make them safe for kids you know. She's really nice, I think you'll like her." Tori says.

"How about Amelia? What does she do?" I ask, wanting to know more about the girl I saw this morning.

"Oh, she's from France, she's an eventer. She has her own horses here and she breaks in some horses here and at other stables, she's a really good rider."
"Thanks for showing me everything today Tori." I tell her, I'm just happy she's nice, i was anxious about today, but everything is fine.
"No problem! I think we're gonna get along well." She smirks at me.

-

Second chapter!
I hope you like it so far :)
I've been doing a lot of research on several terms used in the questrian world and how to translate them into English, turns out it's not so easy to find those ;) But I've found some things, but I don't know if these are regularly used or if they're really old fashioned so let me know!

Also, I think I'm going to update once or twice a week, depends if I have time and something to publish.

Thanks for reading again and have a nice day/night!