Out On The Trails ((Myssi!)

[sepia]

Staring intently up at the sky as he came to a halt outside the barn, horse in hand, Julian squinted slightly and shaded his eyes against the sun. A moment later, a cloud slid across the surface of the life-giving star, providing some welcome shade, and allowing him to better assess the weather. It looked good for a trail ride he decided, quickly, and, decision made, led Daedalus to the mounting block and leapt aboard.

Not his usual mount, he was currently riding Daedalus, or Day, due to the fact that May was off for a week, having knocked her fetlock against something while in the pasture. The lameness wasn't serious, Julian had been very glad to been assured, but the vet had recommended some rest for the sprightly mare, and so Julian was temporarily riding the young gelding. He had to wonder whether Miss Carr had decided to let him try out Day due to the fact that she wanted him to work some more on his dressage - he tended to jump more with May, as both he and the mare enjoyed that more - but today he was going to try him out on the trails.

Adjusting the girth before he moved off, Julian was thankful that Day - despite being young - seemed to be laid-back about everything, and was thus unlikely to protest a trail ride. He'd have to be careful, though, that the gelding didn't manage to get into trouble: despite his laid-back, calm nature, he seemed to be good at doing that. Well, he'd just have to steer carefully, wouldn't he?

Opting for the shorter, easier Green Hill trail, Julian encouraged Day to walk out a little more, enjoying his smooth stride as they passed into a section of woodland. As he'd expected, Day didn't bat an eyelid at bushes or trees - he'd clearly decided to lapse into his calm beginner rider mode, due to the lack of Julian asking him for complex dressage maneuvers.

"We'll do some dressage tomorrow," Julian promised the horse. "Right now, I just need some time out in the open to relax." Without having to think complex things about position, and movements and such.

[lorilie]

Alina tossed her head to peer around at the other horses in the barn and give them a nasty glare. She snorted angrily and pawed the ground, as if asking Alyss to please hurry so that she could get away from the rest of these weirdo horses. She never had been one to be friendly.

The big dark bay mare had filled out nicely in the last few months, losing her gaunt from to a lean athletic build that suited her frame better and was more pleasing to the eye. Though it did give her tall body a more opressing presence when she was upset or angered, she was really quite beautiful when viewed from the distance where she couldn't try to kill you.

Alyss came from the tack room with a bridle on her arm and a close-contact English saddle in her hands. She had already placed the pad onto Alina's back, and was quick to swing the leather onto the mare, She then tightened the girth and fixed all the straps to the proper notches and was fast on drawing the bridle over the mare's head.

Alyss decided on the easier trail today. Alina wasn't ready for jumping yet, or hard riding, and trail work would be good for her muscle build.

The pair entered the trail at a walk, but soon they picked up a springy trot, Alina asking to run the entire time. Alyss waited until they were at a bit of wider trail, then allowed Alina to canter. She herself picked up the two-point position, and together they flew as though they'd been like this their whole lives, and nothing, absolutely nothing, had ever scarred them as it actually had in the past.

[sepia]

Meandering along at a pleasant walk, it wasn't long before Julian and Day picked up the sounds of a horse approaching from behind them, at a canter, it sounded like. As the trail was quite wide, here, Julian nudged Day over to one side so that the faster moving combination could go past, turning to see who it was. After a few moments of ever-nearing hoofbeats, the horse and rider finally turned the corner, bursting into view suddenly, and Julian instantly recognised them.

"Alyss!" he cried, happily, raising one hand to wave, and hoping that the girl would slow down, at least for a moment, so they could ride together. Ever after having met her in that field, when he'd been utterly taken in by her, he'd always been very, very happy to run into her again, and liked to think that the feeling was mutual. Somehow, though, they'd never actually ridden together, probably, Julian realised now, due to Alina's general attitude towards other horses, but maybe out here on a trail they'd be able to ride together?

"Hello!" He mentally crossed his fingers, happy grin aimed at the nearing Alyss and Alina, thinking as he watched them approach that they did look magnificent together. Ruefully contemplating the not-nearly-as-good picture he suspected he made on Daedalus - oh for the advantages of having your own horse! - he also noticed that the mare seemed to be looking quite a lot better from when he'd last encountered her. Clearly the good grass and hard feed at Blue Ridge was doing her some considerable good.

[lorilie]

Alyss rounded the corner and saw Julian and Day, her fingers already nudging the mare's maw to bring her down to a trot, and finally a walk. She had passed the two, though, so she circled back to them, Alina panting a bit, though her ears weren't as badly pinned as before and she seemed somewhat relaxed.

Alyss smiled at Julien and gave a nod, her helmet temperarily blocking her brown eyes. Alina gave him a huffy snort that was nearly a dimiss. Alyss rolled her eyes at the mare and waited for Julien to put up his talking stream.

She hadn't seen much of the boy around the Academy, which was odd, for she was often very good at finding people. She'd caught him a few times, not allowing him to see her. She had become very good at hiding her small body in the shadows.

[sepia]

Smiling wider as Alyss slowed and circled the mare, Julian didn't disappoint on the talking front, even as he encouraged Day forward, carefully keeping the gelding - who'd luckily responded to Alina's dismissive attitude with no more disgruntlement than he would have greeted a slightly late evening feed - a good distance away from the moody mare, the young horse falling in beside Alina on this wide part of the path.

"Am I glad I've run into you," Julian began, words happily tripping off his tongue with their usual ease. "It's weird - I've been trying to find you around the Academy but never really managed to. Not for long, anyway, so that we could properly spend some time together. I guess what people say about boarding school keeping you really occupied is true, isn't it?"

Ducking under a over-hanging branch - and giving Day a light tuck on the mouth so that the gelding didn't try to catch a bite of said branch - he continued talking, "How have you been, then? Alina looks much better than she did - looks like she's been eating well. If, you know, just as... grumpy as ever. I hope she doesn't mind Day - I think we'll be careful to stick right to the other side of the path. Nothing personal - well, actually, it is, I suppose, given that I don't think either of us want to die. I hear it's very demeaning for boys to get attacked by girls," a grin, and his light tone of voice showed how his words were teasing, "And given that I think both you and Alina could take me and Day anytime you wanted, we'll be very careful."

[lorilie]

Alyss kept a smile on her face at his chatter, withholding giggles. Not that she could manage them. Her voice cracked and snapped if she ever tried to talk nowadays, so much that it hurt to try and make use of her vocal cords at all.

He talked about how he'd tried to find her, and Alyss eyes widened a bit at the thought of someone wanting to actually find her. It stunned her, stunned her a lot. She had never had someone besides Alina and Demetri she could call a friend. Of course, she'd thought Julian had the potential to be a good friend to her, but she'd thought he wouldn't want to do so, with her being so weird and all.

She gave him a rather "scary" face at this, raising one hand in a fist. Truefully, Alyss could never, ever hurt someone, not without feeling such regret to the point of throwing herself of a cliff out of guilt. Alina, on the other hand... Well, she could kill anyone in a heartbeat.

A barking sounded, and Demetri, the very dog Alyss had been thinking of, bounded up from behind her, his wolf-like coat blending into the forest, and his long legs carrying him swiftly towards them.

[sepia]

Glad to see that Alyss was smiling, at least - apparently not talking yourself made you far more receptive to the babbling of others, as frequently Julian in his enthusiasm found himself shut down by people saying that he should really pipe down and let others do the whole words thing - and mock-ducked at Alyss' mock scary expression. Heh. Who said both participants in a conversation actually had to talk?

Attention drawn by the barks from ahead of them, Julian brightened further - somehow, given his already sunny manner - when he saw the large, wolf-like dog bounding towards them. "Yours, I assume?" He asked, as Day gave the animal a slightly goggle-eyed look, but no further reaction. Apparently being scared of giant dogs just wasn't in him. "He's huge! Where on earth did you find him? The Canadian Rockies?"

Okay, so he couldn't exactly imagine Alyss going out and hunting down a wolf hybrid - though, really, that is what this dog looked like - but it caught at Julian's imagination, allowing his brain to skip off into (rather odd) imaginings of Alyss, riding Alina, tracking down the wolf-dog-thing, and pouncing on him out of a tree. He decided not to mention this particular little mental image.

[lorilie]

Alyss grinned at his reaction to Demetri, giving a sort of half-shrug. Not the Canadian Rockies, but, the animal shelter.

Demetri's past wasn't complicated like Alyss' or Alina's. His father had been a male lone wolf, and his mother was a dog used for sledding. They'd met, mated, and two months later the pups were born at her owner's house. Then, the mother had wandered off one night, and had been killed by what was suspected to be a rouge grizzly. The pups found their way into the shelter, and Demetri into Alyss' life.

So, she simply nodded to say that he was hers as Alina gave him a snort of comtempt, pinning her ears half-heartably. Demetri pricked his own audits at her then shook his thick coat as though to shake off her feelings of hate and rid himself of her bad mood.

[sepia]

"Not quite as exciting as that, huh," Julian thought out loud, tone almost rueful. Some might have said that Alyss was hard to get a grip on and, yes, it was true that the fact that she didn't talk meant that carrying a conversation was hard when you didn't have a pad of paper, but Julian was finding that she had a very expressive face, seeming to manage to convey a great deal of what she was thinking through the slant of her eyebrows, the quirks of her mouth, and the general essence of her expressions.

Grinning at Demetri's seeming unconcern for Alina's customary foul mood, and nudging Day into a slightly longer stride as it began to look like the mare's naturally long one was beginning to overtake, slightly, Julian fell easily into talking, keeping a close eye on Alyss to gauge her reactions, and therefore her thoughts. "Gosh, it's warm today - not that that's much of a surprise given the weather lately, but at least there's a bit of a breeze. It'd be really unpleasant, otherwise. Admittedly, that blue sky," a gesture with one hand swirled upwards, "Is probably worth any kind of heat - it just goes on forever!" He was probably one of the few people on the planet that could make the general conversational topic of 'weather' actually sound heartfelt coming out of his mouth.

"I've been wondering about something," he continued, after a few moments of admiring a cloud drift across the sky, transforming from something like a dinosaur to something more closely resembling a wrecked car as it did so, "Is Alina usually in the pastures, or does she actually manage in the stables? I would've thought that she'd hate it, being with everyone else so close, and all."

[lorilie]

Alyss looked up at the blue sky, watching the clouds drift by in the lazy fashion the seemed to love to adopt. Blue skies were meant to signal good luck or something, right? She wasn't sure of this, but it was true that the warm weather had lightened her mood. Alina grew tired easily in the hot weather, with her dark coat, which meant she was more apt to pay attention to her training and not act up.

The girl's mind wandered slightly as Julian rambled. Not talking meant that she didn't have to think up words to say, and since merely listening was easy for her, she could have a converstation with her friend and think of something else entirely at the same time.

But, her mind didn't stray all that much at this moment. Her main topic of thought was Julian. He was a curious being, in the fact that he could talk so much, but his best friend - at least, that's what she hoped he considered her - was a mute who couldn't offer any verbal input to a talk or discussion. And even though this fact was plainly obvious when she was around him, he still treated her like a normal human, something others rarely did.

Over the years, people Alyss had met had treated her like she was just an abused kid who couldn't think right or was so scarred that she was in a constant state of shock that made her intelligence level drop.

But Julian knew what she was like. He read her so easily, it was uncanny. He knew when she was being sarcastic, joking, or was simply being a little passive about something - and he knew all this after a single meeting! He had to be extremely observant and genuinely interested in her as a friend if he'd taken the time to figure all of that out.

She whipped her mind back as his question drifted to her. The answer was simple - Alina was housed in the barn in the morning, and was let out to pasture during the afternoon and at night. The mare was beginning to accept the fact that other horses were going to be around her at BRRA, and was starting to accept them. She no longer kicked at her stall when a horse walked by, and she could stand being groomed in the barn when another horse was around. But Alyss was careful not to push her luck, and put her out when more horses started trooping back to the barn. Her secluded pasture was Alina's only escape from the world she hated, and Alyss was happy to allow the mare to retreat from the chaos for a good amount of time every day. She bit her lip, unsure of how to explain that to Julian without writing it out.

[sepia]

Keeping a close eye on Alyss as he talked, it took Julian only a few moments to come to a similar conclusion to his friend: that whatever she had to say was probably going to be far too complicated a concept to express through glances, at least until Julian got significantly better at interpreting her. "Yeeeah," he huffed, thoughtfully after a few moments of silence. "That's probably a really complicated thing to express without writing it down, and now probably isn't the time to be playing around with pads of paper and pens." He'd taken, actually, to carrying such implements around with him... just not when he was riding.

He shrugged, and grinned, not particularly put out by not getting the answer to his question instantly. "I guess I'll have to restrain my curiousity until he get back to the barns!" Restraining his inquisitive nature he might have been, but what he probably should have been doing was steering somewhat more carefully, as, as Julian finished speaking, Daedalus promptly chose to live up to his reputation of being a clumsy idiot, able to get himself into trouble anywhere, and walked off the path.

Straight into a large bush.

"Ack!" Julian managed through a mouthful of leaves as a bushy branch whacked him around the head. To his credit, Daedalus took this sudden change in surface beneath his feet into his stride, and halted, a rather puzzled air hanging around him. One minute he'd been on nice, smooth beaten earth, and now he was halfway into a bush, the ground fouled with branches. He snorted, contemplatively, then took a delicate mouthful of greenery, and chewed thoughtfully as Julian struggled to untangle himself.

Managing that feat with some difficulty, and unlooping a caught branch from around his right arm, Julian fixed Alyss with a ruefully cheerful grin. "Apparently, I also need to look where I'm going, more," he reported, then tried to figure out how he was going to get back onto the path. Backing up seemed like the best idea so, carefully, he applied those aids. Day took another mouthful of bush before consenting to reverse, and after two steps backward, they had enough space to turn themselves around, and arrive back on the actual trail, having managed to forge a surprisingly long track into a thick clump of bushes.