Whatever it takes

3

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"Tori, are you here?" We both look up to the sound of a girls voice. Victoria turns to me again. "That's Lola." she tells me. She walks out the kitchen where we were just standing, leaving me to follow behind her towards the counter. "Lola! You're here." She says. "This is Elodie, Arthur told us about her remember." She says, introducing me to Lola.

"I'm Lola." She introduces herself to me.  I do the same. "Nice to meet you."
She looks like a nice girl, from the way she's talking I would say she's calm, a bit introverted.

"Well, I'm gonna go and find Amelia, she asked me to help her with the cross jumps." Tori and I both say our goodbyes to her before she walks away towards the stables.

"So, you want to go ride a horse now?" Tori asks me, turning around. "Thought you'd never ask." I say laughing.

We walk out the smaller building towards the stable block in the front. It was a lot busier today, as it was noon now. There were a few kids here and there, some older people and some parents. The place was very much alive. We walk into the stables, being greeted by multiple horse faces.

I follow Tori till the end of the hallway where we stop in front of a horse box. The horse was a bay, with a white streak down his forehead and big brown puppy like eyes. He reminded me of my own horse back home.

"This is Napoli. He's five, Donna was riding him before but someone needs to start competitions with him and Donna isn't much of a fan of dressage competitions." She tells me. "I wasn't a fan of them either when I started." I chuckle, knowing exactly what she was referring to. The snobby mean girls. Not all of them are, but there's always a few wherever you go.

The horse stuck his slightly pink nose out for me to pet. He looked sweet, with his thick, dark forelock and sweet puppy eyes.
"If you take him out of his stable I'll show you where everything is." She says.
I take the brown leather halter which was hanging off a hook outside his stable.
The stable door opens easily and Napoli stays perfectly still with his head.
I lead him towards one of the wash stalls where Tori is already standing, waiting for me. I tie his leadrope up and follow after Tori into the tack room.

"Okay, we have stickers on all of the saddle racks, so if you're going to ride a horse just search for his name and you'll have the right saddle." Tori explains. "We have a lot of different girths, so you'll have to try, or ask, if you don't know which one to get, but usually you can guess depending on the horse." she says, pointing to a box full of all different kinds of girths. "And for the bridles, it's the same as with the saddles. For most of the young horses we don't have saddles and bridles especially for them, because they're gonna grow and build muscle, but we have some saddles that fit quite right on most horses, so we try a few to see which one fits best." she tells me. "Here we have Napoli's stuff." she says, picking up a black dressage saddle and a bridle. We walk back to the washing stall and Tori places the saddle over the wall and hangs the bridle on a bridle bracket.

"He's ridden with a simple double jointed snaffle. I wouldn't use any spurs, he's quite responsive. Other than that I think you can handle it right? I'll come help you during riding since it's your first time on him but I have to go do something real quick. I'll be back in a few!" She says, walking away rather quickly.

"Okay, then. Guess I'll brush you first then, huh." I say to Napoli. I brush the dried up dirt off of his dark bay coat and clean his legs like I always would before riding. I grab my helmet from the tack room and put it on. The saddle has a small knee roll, to keep my upper legs in place properly. I lay the saddle pad on his back carefully before putting the saddle on. Napoli moves to the side a bit, but he stays calm.

"Well aren't you a well behaved horse." I say to him with a soft voice. He turns his head slightly looking at me, making me laugh slightly. I tacked him up as I would anytime, tightening the girth, lengthening my stirrups and putting his bridle on closing all of the straps. I then grabbed my helmet and gloves, and put them on.

"Oh, you're done! perfect. Follow me, I'll show you to the outside arena, since it's such good weather." Tori says, walking up to me. I grab the reins in my right hand and follow Tori out the big stable doors. We walk on a sand path, at the end I can see a big outside arena. The arena is probably 20X60, is what I can assume from the letters. The fences lining the arena are the same colour as those of the paddocks, a light brown. Tori opens the gate for me and I walk inside.

"Do you need me to help you get on?" She asks. "I think I'll be fine." I tell her. I tighten the girth before I put my foot in the stirrup to get on. Napoli stays perfectly still trhough all of it. I take a deep breath. I give some light pressure with my legs and Napoli walks on. He feels light in the mouth, and takes big steps. I move to the rythm of his gaits. "Does he feel okay?" Tori asks me. "He's great so far!" I give her a small smile. "You can try out some things if you want." I trot on, he's bouncy, but it feels great. "He's quite the mover." Tori says.

"Okay, grab your reins a bit shorter and we'll start working now." She tells me from the side of the arena. I do as she says, and he moves into the right frame quite easily. "Good, just watch out that he doesn't become too short, he does that himself sometimes and goes a bit behind the vertical" She says. I put my hands a bit more forward giving him more length so he can put his nose out more. Napoli is quite forward, and I don't have to give him much leg for him to keep moving. Tori stood on the side of the arena, watching carefully. I wasn't one to get nervous easily, but I didn't like being watched all the time, unfortunately that's a part of this sport.

After about twenty minutes of riding and a cool down we walked back to the stables, to go tack him off. We were stood at the washing stalls, me tacking Napoli off and Tori rambling on about something she saw yesterday.

When I laid down in my bed that night I had a good feeling about this. About all of it.

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Third chapter!

Hope you like it so far.

I want to go more in dept on Elodie's ambitions in the sport in the next few chapters instead of focusing on what she does.

Bye!