Intangible | Free Rein [Pin]

- Chapter 10 -

The very, very annoying alarm that Harper set on her phone rang out in the room. It caused both of the hardly awake girls to groan and roll away from the sound, it felt like they had hardly slept from the nerves of what was ahead of them. The alarm was set extra early so that they could get ready calmly for what was ahead of them. From the noise in the corridors, many people had the same idea as them and some were already awake.

After turning the alarm off, Zoe ran into the bathroom to grab the first shower, so Harper set out her clothes on her bed from where they were already out of her bag from the day before that. Luckily, the room had a steamer so that they could get the creases out of their clothes and Harper took it upon herself to steam Zoe's shirt for her as it was a little crinkled.

By the time that she had finished steaming them all, she set them out on their beds and Zoe came out of the shower. Harper showered quickly and washed her hair, she was still amazed that she dyed her hair platinum blonde, she just couldn't get over it. She used the hair drier to get her hair just damp enough to braid properly.

She kept her pyjamas on and let Zoe braid her hair down into a bun and let her tie it with a blue ribbon. Zoe didn't want to do too much with her hair, and she chose just to put it into a bun.

The time caught up to them quickly and Harper had to put on her uniform. She slipped the shirt, tie and jodhpurs on but left the jacket folded in her backpack which she was taking with her to the grounds. Instead of her jacket, she just put on Pin's green hoodie to keep her shirt clean (there were several things inside that could clean muck off of her white jodhpurs quickly if needed.) Luckily, the hickeys that had darkened across her chest were mostly covered by her shirt and the collar covered all but one of the top ones, which was then covered by concealer.

At breakfast, none of them really felt that they could stomach anything, but they took some food with them to the grounds as it was not good to go ride on an empty stomach. Most teams seemed to be the same, it was a lot quieter in the room than the night before and there was an air of nervousness.

"Right," Marcus stated as he stood up once he saw that they couldn't eat anything, "we better get going, grab your bags and meet out front in five minutes."

They all retrieved their bags for the day in silence and started the walk to the grounds in silence, they could have taken the bus, but they chose to walk instead to attempt to calm their nerves. The air was crisp, and they could hear the sounds of the horses waking up and it encouraged them to walk just that little bit faster to see them.

The grooming kits were already set outside of the stables that their horses were in, the staff had taken care of the horses that night, but they had to get them ready and remove any mud that had gotten onto them.

Harper took Robin outside of his stable and used his head collar to tie him up just next to it. She slipped his rug off and put it away inside of the stable, so she started to groom Robin, he had gotten some mud on him from God knows what, so she needed to get that out. Grooming Robin always calmed Harper down and she let herself get lost in picking out his hooves, brushing his mane and tail, oiling his hooves, getting all the dirt and stains off of his legs, brushing his body and brushing his face gently.

Her train of thought was interrupted when an event organiser came over to her and handed her the number that she needed to wear; it was number fifty-eight. She also slipped the small number card into the see through pocket in Robin's saddle pad.

Once he was fully clean, she started to braid his mane and tail. She did a simple braid on his tale and did a running braid on his mane. For extra safety, she put the black tendon boots onto Robin that her dad had gotten her for Christmas last year. Luckily, they didn't go up in flames with the stables.