Intangible | Free Rein [Pin]

- Chapter 8 -

Junior Nationals was just a day away. Even though Harper was seasoned at the competition, her nerves still ate away at her during every breathing moment before the competition. It wasn't helped by the fact that the people at Holloway were also nervous, there was some pretty big opposition at Junior Nationals.

Zoe and Harper had asked Marcus for some early morning training before the competition, but they agreed not to push the horses too hard for fear of injuring them both the day before the event. The two girls walked from their houses to the stables, it was odd, the new distance between their houses and where their horses were kept. They were both used to hopping two fences and then being in the yard, but now it was a twenty-minute walk or a ten-minute drive. Maggie had driven them both to the yard that morning, Harper thanked her profusely before she got out of the car.

The sun rose over the buildings at Holloway as they went into the tack room, luckily Holloway had provided them with some tack until they could afford their own. Tack was really expensive, and Harper would have to save up for months before she could afford a new set of tack for Robin.

Harper took the tack off of the rack, at least they didn't have Holloway's saddle pads, and walked over to Robin's stable. She put the tack on some stands that were outside of the stables, she grabbed the brushes that were kept on a shelf along the hallway of the stables. The two worked in relative quiet as they got their horses ready, they heard more people arriving into the yard as it got later in the morning.

Eventually, Robin was fully tacked up and groomed rather well if Harper did say so herself. They grabbed their hats and led the horses over to the cross-country course that Holloway had, as it was something different to where the horses usually trained, they were really excited by the new environment.

Robin was feeling a little strong as Harper warmed him up while she waited for Marcus, she made sure to do some long canters around the outside and jumped a few small jumps with him. When they were fully warmed up, they noticed that some of the Holloway team had wanted instruction from James, so they were going to have to share. It wasn't that big of an issue, as long as James didn't make it one.

Marcus started training them while Holloway warmed up, once Holloway started properly training too, the difference between the two stables instructor's was clear. While Marcus was encouraging and gave constructive feedback, James shouted at his team and generally told them that they were doing a bad job.

Harper saw Alex pull a face after he got shouted at by James for something miniscule, she felt bad for the team; an angry James was a force to be reckoned with. On the other hand, Marcus was far nicer. Even though Zoe and Marcus had broken up, they seemed to still be good friends – it would have been awkward if they ended up not liking each other.

After around an hour of easy training, Harper led Robin back to his stable and decided to leave him there to rest for the rest of the day. With the stables burning down just a week before Junior Nationals, and the move to the new stables, it was best not to risk anything before the big competition. Hopefully he would still perform his best, they had a lot riding on Junior Nationals, including the chance to rebuild Brightfield's as Elliot couldn't pay to rebuild but the money would help.

She took all of his tack off and shut the stable door after herself, but not before she gave Robin a kiss on his nose. Once she placed the tack back onto its place and her hat onto one of the pegs that had been allocated to the team, she walked back into the main yard. As there were grooms to do all of the chores, there really wasn't very much to do around the yard as usually the chores were all done before you could even ask them if they needed any help.

It left a lot of time for them to talk strategies about the competition and a lot of time for Harper and Pin to talk everything out. They had gone on their date two days after Pin had asked, they went to the mainland on the ferry and went to a huge theme park. Both of them loved rollercoasters and tried to get on as many as they could in the time that they had, even if that caused them to nearly miss the last ferry back to the island. While on the ferry ride back, the two of them talked about what had happened between them.