Freedom (Andie/Open)

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Lee was beginning to wonder if Blue Ridge was a place that attracted those with checkered or unfortunate pasts. Andie's wasn't the first life-story he'd heard here that was touched by tragedy, after all. Or perhaps it was horses, rather than this Academy in particular. Did people, slightly broken, seek them out because they were far nicer than many humans, far simpler to understand and live with? Or was it horses that created such sad occurrences? A bit of both, he suspected, musing that horses were inextricably tied to both tragedy and triumph. Andie said she'd turned her back on riding when her mother died: for him it had been the opposite, and apparently she was riding horses now, whatever he past decisions. The inescapable lure of the equine, it seemed.

"Very impressive," he remarked, watching Harmony, Jack and Andie's clearly well-practices maneuver, feeling - oddly - somewhat more comfortable now that he knew Andie, too, knew what it was like to lose a parent. It meant, he felt, that they didn't need to wast time on meaningless words: they knew live happened, and not always for the better, and so could move on.

"There are certainly certain advantages to no longer being formally educated," Lee acknowledged, as Blue moved forward automatically, half-trying to snatch a bite of grass, but easily restrained with a gentle touch on the reins. He felt rather warmed, if he had to admit it to himself, that she didn't think any less of him. Not that it really would have mattered to him if she had, but it was nice to know that this whole conversation wasn't for nothing, and this his initial assessment of Andie as a decent person wasn't turning out to be wrong. "And disadvantages." Personally, he'd always rather liked being educated, or at least liked gaining new knowledge, so it had been rather a blow for him. Still, what's past was past, and horses, at least, didn't care that he lacked the education that most of the people here had.

"Your step-father sounds like a charming person," he remarked, carefully, wondering precisely what it was about overbearing parental figures and this place (alright, so he'd heard of two, so far, but given the number of people he'd talked to, deeply, that was a statistically significant figure, to say the least). "I have to hope that he doesn't live anywhere nearby." Thailand sounded about the right distance away, given Andie's tone of voice.

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

Andie twisted in the saddle to look at Lee. "You could always do correspondence papers." She offered. "I have a cousin who bombed in school, but after quitting the bounds of the school walls, he flourished with the correspondence course work and was able to hold down a full time job at the same time so he could learn and work together - even though his work had nothing to do with his courses." She flashed a bright smile. "Thanks for telling me about your dad. Mine died in a car accident before I was born." She turned back around so she was facing the direction they were traveling in. "My mom taught me everything I know about horses, they were her life. Her and her horse were doing a jump-off. Bunty misjudged one of the jumps and lost everything when she tried to correct herself in mid-air. They landed on the jump and mom... Mom got spared by one of the br-broken poles." She drew in a deep breath. "I never wanted to come here. I hate Derik for sending me here. Now? I don't want to be anywhere else. I feel close to mom again." She used the back of her hand to wipe away the tears that were spilling down her cheeks.

she hiccuped and laughed. "Sorry. As for Derik? He lives about a day's drive away. But that's okay, he never wanted me anyway." She turned Jack down the left fork in the trail, one a path that widened out. "The mega advanced cross country course cuts through the trails up there." She nodded a head of them. "It's the only time it crossed the advanced trail."

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"I might just stick to horses, for now, but it's a possibility," he agreed, not mentioning that a correspondence course had been something that he's already been considering quite seriously. It would be the best of both worlds, really, the problem would be fitting it in around his busy workload at Blue Ridge: he was fairly sure he could manage it - no-one, after all, had ever said that he didn't know how to push himself - yet was of the opinion that it was an option that needed more consideration. Something like that, he felt, had to be considered very carefully.

"Your mum sounds like my dad," Lee said, tone quiet, feeling he should reciprocate the trust Andie was putting in him by telling him something that was obviously difficult for her to do so. Why she'd decided to do so was beyond him - he was of the school of thought that repressed things, rather than sharing them - yet he was aware that it would be the right thing to do to share something similar. "She was a show-jumper, I take it? My dad trained horses ever since he was eighteen, and when I was born, I was happily indoctrinated with a love of horses. He died when a horse threw him against a fence, and after that my mum and I... stopped seeing eye to eye about horses." He paused, there, looked like he was about to say something more than came to a complete verbal halt. He really, really wasn't very good at this whole sharing thing, and judged that perhaps it might be easier to let Andie talk, and for him to listen, as he usually did.

He shook his head in an indication that she didn't need to apologise, at all, saying, quietly, "I'm glad you've regained your love of horses," a statement that seemed to indicate that he was also glad that she seemed to be coping reasonably well with the death of her clearly beloved mother. Despite having an apparently awful stepfather whom, admittedly, she seemed able to dismiss.

Note to self: Hope that mum never decides to remarry. It seems that being involved in the riding world gives you a reasonably high chance of ending up with an unpleasant stepfather. Still, at least he was almost independent of his family and could probably avoid the worst of such a person if, indeed, his mother did decide to remarry. Not like I'm talking to her anyway, right now, he thought.

And then, suddenly, she'd changed the conversation to the here-and-now and Lee found himself rather taken aback by how quickly people could do that. "Shall we take a look?" he asked, hoping that he was interpreting her words right, and that she hadn't mentioned it merely as an interesting feature of the local landscape, but as an invitation to actually go and use it.

[Ω-Admin-Cara-Ω]

"Mom was an eventing rider, like I am." She rubbed her gelding's neck. "After the accident, Derik demanded that Bunty be destroyed on the spot - and nothing I said would change anyone's mind. So I can understand what it's like not to see eye to eye with someone about horses. I think that things would have been different if Derik had been as passionate about horses as he was women."

She looked at Lee with a beaming smile when he asked/suggested that they go and check out the fences. Okay, so subtly wasn't her strong point but she was happy that he'd been able to translate her causal tome about the fences. As Jack was still young, she hadn't wanted to take him over the advanced fences and hadn't even wanted to take him too close without someone else with her in case the large fences spooked the gelding. "As long as you don't mind?" She sat deep as the Percheron cross caught her excitement and danced on the spot as he threw his head up and down.

[sepia]

Ah, eventing. Well, he'd been close. He was taken aback, too, at the revelation that this Derik had demanded that the unfortunate horse involved be put down - grief-stricken was one thing, but destroying a horse when there was no medical cause for it was quite another. This only served to consolidate Lee's negative impression about Andie's stepfather, and to reinforce the thought that he really hoped he never met him.

However, the fact that both of them could now turn their attention to something more practical sounded like a very good idea, and he leaped at the chance to try Blue out over a few jumps. Perhaps something slightly different to do might liven up the usually stoic horse, and it had been a while since he'd done anything beyond exercising the Academy horses on the flat. A little something vertical sounded very good. And, apparently, he'd guessed right at what she was hinting.

"Definitely not - a little jumping sounds like a very good plan," he said, as Blue flicked a bland ear at Jack's excitement, refusing to get worked up about such a thing. " 'Lead on, Macduff' " Lee quoted, with a slight grin, deciding it would be polite to let Andie lead the way, given she'd mentioned the idea.