An escape (Sepia)

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"You'll just have to show them that you've still got what it takes," Lee said, easily, as Cara let forth a veritable torrent of self-depreciation. Something about the way she said the last words made Lee suspect that she was in fact quoting someone else, and he chalked it up onto the ever-growing list of the evils of Mr Andrews. He debated, briefly, whether to continue that into a debate over Cara's self-worth and the fact that everyone but Mr. Andrews and his ilk thought that her virtues outweighed her faults by a significant degree, and concluded that it probably wouldn't be worth it to do it now. She had enough on her plate without him attempting to change her view of herself - and he might be more successful trying to do so after she'd shone (because he had no doubt that she would) at the gymnastics demo.

He contented himself with merely saying, "I doubt you'll manage to disappoint them, even if they do remember a skinny ten-year-old. Like wine - and a few sorts of cheese - some things only get better with age." Leave it to Lee to speak in metaphors, but at least this one wasn't particularly abstruse, and it was clear what he was implying. He'd just attempt to gently shore up her self-confidence, tiny bit by tiny bit, and hope that he at least partially succeeded.

"He hasn't really specialised yet - he's thirteen, and his coach is always at him and the rest of the team to keep their options open for the moment - but he's a particular fan of the vault and pommel horse." Lee grinned as he recalled the hours he'd spent down in school gymnasiums watching - and shortly helping out his brother, though he'd betrayed no interest in the sport himself, firmly sticking to horses - his brother learn, as he'd grown from a thin little nine-year-old to a still small thirteen-year-old, his enthusiasm not waning despite being one of the few boys around to be serious about the sport. "Floor exercises, though, are not his forte - he'll happily flip himself around on the ground in warm-up or for fun, but he doesn't particularly like competing that way, and grumbles about it bitterly."

Recalling with amusement the time his always impulsive brother had decided to try and prove why he didn't need to do floor exercises to be an ace gymnast - the coach had not been impressed - Lee's voice was light as he turned the question back on Cara. "And you? I somehow can't see you being quite as fussy as my brother, but what's your passion?"

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Cara nodded as she listened to Lee talk about his brother. People always had a different tone when they spoke about their family, and she wondered if she used that same tone but quickly brushed it aside, as she never knew her parents well enough to be able to reminisce about the past.

Her eyebrows shot up as the question was turned back on to her. "I compete as I am instructed." She told him. "I am trained as an all-around gymnast. I excel in each apparatus. I never had the option to be fussy, it wasn't part of my programing without a better way to describe it." She pressed her lips together as she closed her eyes, trusting her mount to steadily follow Bear, images of her past flashed through her mind. A tiny girl flipping across the floor, over the vault and crashing. One coach after another pushing her to breaking point and then beyond, each had as few nice things to say about their champion than the one before. She competed for them, she won the gold and earned them the money and the success that they wanted.

She opened her eyes again and shook her head, scattering the images and returning to the here and now. "I love the uneven bars." She confessed in little more than a whisper. "The ability to fly through the air with nothing more than thin fiberglass bars to keep me from crashing to the ground and cracking my head open." She shrugged at the morbid statement. Sure, she'd voiced the idea but that wasn't her idea of how to knock herself off. "Which probably explains why I also enjoy show jumping so much. And the gymnastics helps with figure skating, and ballet helps with everything."

Se looked down at herself and pulled the shirt she was wearing down so that it sat close to her skin. She curled her nose up as she looked at herself, deciding that she really needed to lose more weight before the demo. Her head was already working through ways to cut even more calories out of her almost non-existent food plan.

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"Iestyn could probably do to learn that attempting to get out of a particular aspect of gymnastics isn't very beneficial, but he's always been stubborn," Lee said, noting the turn in Cara's tone and shooting a look back over his shoulder at her, instantly concerned when she saw she'd closed her eyes. Way to go to bring up bad memories, Lee, he scolded himself. Very clever.

But Cara, customarily, pulled himself together, and Lee turned to look to the front again, figuring that someone - at least - should be looking where they were going, even though Bear seemed to have that part of the ride pretty much covered, picking his way down the slope with surety. Listening as Cara's voice drifted forwards, not much more than a thready whisper, Lee found himself intrigued by the way she described her fascination with the uneven bars. It didn't sound particularly morbid to him - indeed, it sounded rather similar to the same reason that he adored cross country. There was just something about that thrill of adrenaline, the knowledge that things could go wrong, that made achieving it so much more euphoric.

"I know what you mean," he replied, equally thoughtfully. "Knowing full well the danger of what you're doing, the lengths you're pushing yourself to... it makes succeeding all the sweeter." He paused for a moment, turning it over in his mind. "And the adrenaline surge probably has something to do with it too," he admitted, "Oh, how we are but slaves to our hormones..." Ah, fatalistic viewpoints, how he loved them.

"Riding, gymnastics, figure skating, ballet... and I've seen some of your school grades - you're quite the polymath, aren't you?" His voice was both impressed and considering, even as he reflected upon the sober implications of the forces put upon Cara to make her so - though some of it had to be sheer natural mental agility, for one couldn't just create a polymath, though Cara's upbringing had to have had a great deal to do with her wide variety of skills. "What do you plan on doing with your life? In three years you'll be out from under Mr. Andrews, I assume... do you plan on university?" And perhaps it was a rather inquisitive, and surprisingly personal question coming from him, but he felt that he was friends enough - or he hoped so, anyway - with Cara to ask it.

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Cara shrugged. "I don't always want to succeed though." She confessed. "There are times when I just want to slip off the apparatus. But it really didn't matter what I want, it was all about what I was told to do." She left his comment about hormones alone though, she didn't want to get into that topic, would lead to too many questions that she didn't have the answer to. Who had heard of a fifteen year old who had yet to have her first menstrual cycle?

"A polymath? Now that one's new." She commented with a laugh. "At least it's a compliment, I think." She bit her lip when he mentioned university. "I've already done a course and am currently doing a couple of others." She confessed. "As for my life, I guess I will travel to Japan and really see who Father's sire was and what his death means for me." She had said the words before she thought of the questions it could open up. "Just between us? I would like to become a social worker, or a child psychologist, and help children - like me - so that I can save some children from living my life. I considered law, but decided that it didn't really seem like me. I would only ever be able to defend the innocent as I can't lie. And regardless of what they say, lawyers will lie till the cows come home if it'll help their case. The truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? Yeah, there's a reason they don't make lawyers take that oath at the beginning of a trial." She shrugged as the earlier excitement no vanished from her face. "It's not like I'm ever going to be worried about being tied down with kids." She pressed her lips together, wishing she hadn't just said that but it was too late now.

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"Definitely a compliment," he confirmed, obscurely pleased that he'd managed to come up with a different way of describing Cara to herself - because she really needed more ways of considering herself positively, rather than allowing the vitriol oozing from Mr. Andrews to worm its way inside her any deeper than it already had. Somehow not surprised when Cara had mentioned she'd already tried out a few university courses - like he wouldn't have looked into the matter when he was younger if his family had had the monetary resources, but currently even completing standard secondary education wasn't an option, for the very same financial problems, which was something that rather rankled at Lee, but was equally something that he could do nothing about. Life was what it was, and if he was the primary breadwinner for the family, then that was what he was.

"Your grandfather?" Lee questioned. This was someone he hadn't heard mentioned before - but then if he was dead it would explain why Cara hadn't ended up with him after her parents had died. He had no living grandparents himself, and the only one he remembered was his mother's mother, who had died when he was seven. His main memories of her were her cats, and the stories she could tell, crafting them entirely out of thin air for her wide-eyed grandson.

"I can see you working with children," Lee agreed, pensively. "You'd really be able to empathise and actually understand what they're going through if you do go into psychology or social care. And you wouldn't be patronising, either - you'd actually treat them like the sensible beings that they are, which so many people don't." That was one thing that had always annoyed him about so many people: talking down to children and treating them as though their opinions were irrelevant. Yes, they're mental faculties weren't as well-developed as most adults, and one could hardly run the world the way children wanted it, but he'd always felt that they deserved more respect that they got, a view born out of his own irritation at being patronised.

Lee frowned, and steered Bear around a particularly nasty little outcrop of rocks before formulating an answer to Cara's last, somewhat out-of-the-blue, statement. "That's very definite," he said, tone neutral. "Admittedly, it's not as if I've got any particular plans for a brood, but you sound very certain about never having kids." He knew that sometimes abused kids feared having their own children in case they 'messed up', but he couldn't help but think that anyone who had been abused as a child - as long as they hadn't turned violent as a defense - would probably make brilliant parents.

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Cara gave a very undignified snort as Lee used the term grandfather. "I got news a couple of months ago, about his death. As his only child is dead, they wanted me - his only heir - to handle the funeral rites." She shrugged. "I didn't want anything to do with Kizoku Kitchi's funeral arrangements. Sure, it would have given me a chance to actually meet people that share my blood, but they didn't want me 13 years ago. Now he's dead, I'm supposed to care?" She gave another shrug, sure, he was a nobleman, which possibly meant she could be the equivalent of a Princess, but she didn't want to be part of a world that would only see the part of her that so evidently wasn't Japanese.

She smiled when he commented that she would be good working with children and listed the reasons why she would do well with the job.

She gave a strained smile as he commented about her statement about never being tied down. "It's not that I don't want them, I just don't think I can." She chewed on her lower lip as she thought her words through. "I've been raped for longer than I would like to think about it." she slightly tripped over the words as this was the first time she had ever actually spoken about it. "I have never fallen pregnant. I'm broken or something, which is why no one wants me. That and the fact that I'm a crossbred human. Human mixbreeds are looked over faster than people look over a mixbred animal. at least animals still have their uses." She shook her head and pressed her lips together. "Pity-party for one? Sorry, I'll stop now."

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So he had been around when Cara had needed the support and care that a family member would have offered - and had done nothing, staying cozily out of the way in Japan. In which case Lee needed to add him to his list of 'People Who Were Clearly Both Idiots And Cruel, And Would Therefore Probably Be Better Off Dead' (currently not holding Mr. Andrews, who belonged on the 'Sadistic Bastard, Definitely Deserves To Die' mental list that he kept) except for the fact that he was already dead. He didn't, however, get much chance to comment on that before Cara kept talking, and managed to ignite every protective instinct that Lee possessed, as well as cementing her place amongst the 'Most Amazing People I Know' list of people that he also kept, unfortunately shorter than the previous two.

Lee suddenly found tension shooting through his body, every muscle tightening as a surge of shock, hate and rage danced through his body, as Cara acknowledged - far too casually even despite her tone - that she'd been raped multiple times. Bear threw his head up, jangling the bit as the pressure on the reins suddenly increased, Lee's hands curling themselves around the leather hard, anger and fierce protectiveness flooding him. He forced himself to relax with some difficulty, Bear remaining tense beneath him as he felt the tension swirling through his rider. Rape. They - and whoever 'they' were, Lee hoped they'd burn in the very deepest depths of whatever Hell existed - hadn't just stopped with beatings and mental abuse, they'd gone that one extra step.

Just when he'd thought that his opinion of Mr. Andrews and his ilk couldn't get any worse, Cara dropped another bombshell in her self-effacing manner. And he was quite sure that this was something she hadn't shared with anyone else. Quite sure. Which, though incredibly humbling, in a way, that he'd actually managed to work his way through to Cara enough that she was telling him this, meant that he had to have the maturity and respect of her - which he had in bucketloads - to respond maturely... and not by doing anything unhelpfully violent.

"Cara," he said, when he felt that he could manage to speak without anger flooding through his words - because he didn't want Cara to think that it was her he was angry at, when really what he wanted to do was track down anyone who had ever hurt her, and either ensure that they would be put away for life, or be sufficiently physically disabled that they wouldn't be able to hurt anyone ever again - though his voice was still rather clipped, traces of his customary Welsh accent almost entirely gone in his surge of negative emotions, the lilt of the Welsh too soft to be retained. "You are one of those people who would be fully justified in holding a pity party, and yet - somehow, amazingly - manage to soldier on through life with nary a word of complaint." He paused, wondering just how to go on, trying to meld assurance with tenderness, sympathy without pity, trying to provide someone Cara could lean on whatever else tried to destroy her.

"I'm assuming that you haven't brought this up to anyone else - and for that, I thank you for trusting me that much," he continued, tone still rather tight even as he and Bear reached the bottom of the slope, and Lee was free to actually turn his body and look at the girl. "And I'm also assuming that me deciding to go off and commit several murders wouldn't be particularly helpful. I will have to settle for assuring you - from the very, very depths of my soul - that you are in no way 'unwanted' or 'broken'."

"You are a very pretty, highly intelligent, skilled young lady, who has managed to not let the fact that several people have attempted to destroy you through means that would cripple most others stop her from developing into a kind, humane person, who will - and does - over help to almost anybody, be they horse or human." Lee took a breath, sorting through his own personal emotions and trying to be as useful as he could be for Cara, coming to an abrupt halt as he did so, and hoping against hope that Cara wasn't going to decide to ride off at this point.

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Cara jumped when bear threw his head up, and this unbalanced her mare who scrambled with her back feet on the slope they were transcending. "Sorry." She whispered as she regained her position and allowed the mare to get back to her own job. Her eyes watched Lee's back, a little alarmed at the tension she saw there, wondering in she had said too much. She bit her lip, her eyebrows moving back as she cursed herself, looking for an escape route, though there wasn't one as they were traveling downhill. "I'm... I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything." Her voice trembled a little. Tension always meant anger, and she didn't like being around males when they were angry.

She jumped again when he said her name, but remained silent as he spoke and she allowed the mare to continue down the slow after Bear. She didn't dare breathe another word to try and explain herself as she still wasn't sure about being here anymore.

She reined the mare in, and asked her to take a couple of steps to the side as Lee turned around to face her. "No, Sir." She squeaked, confessing that he was the first person she had spoken to about this. She rested a hand on the mare's neck as Titania bobbed her head up and down at the tension she was getting from her rider who was so relaxed moments earlier. The girl watched Lee's face, her own still had a look of terror on it which she quickly shook off as she listened to his words. "During my life, I have watched many foster children... break... I vowed that I would never be one of them. I taught myself how to draw and began to use that as an output." She closed her eyes as she let out a shaky breath. "Rather than drawing what I saw, I drew what other people would want to see. I created a mirror that others like me could look in and give them hope. I help others because..." I can't help myself. The last words she added silently. "Because I like to see happiness in other people." Yeah, it was kind of lame, but it was all she could come up with right there and then. "Animals and children have a innocence that I never had, an innocence that I want to protect. Which, I think, is why I connected so well with Phoenix." She knew all the things that were wrong with her life, that she could fix if she put her mind to it. She knew that she should eat more, but every time she looked at food all she could see was herself standing on a scale and someone telling how fat she was. Yes, she helped others because she couldn't help herself. She knew that she was running her body on empty due to the fact that she didn't sleep and the lack of food didn't help either. She could see it, she just didn't know how to stop. "And I'm not pretty." She added.

Notes: Oh, I forgot to add at the end of my last post Kizoku Kitchi is translated to Nobleman Kitchi.

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Seeing - and hearing - the fear he was managing to create in Cara through his own tension, his own anger, Lee closed his eyes for a moment, and forcibly centred himself, shoving down that desire to go take some revenge for Cara. Not helpful, Lee, he told himself firmly. Put away that protective alpha male instinct, now, and attempt to actually be helpful. Pulling around himself his usual emotional control, he managed to rebalance himself mentally, feeling the tension drain out of his body until it remained in a hard little kernel that was perfectly controllable, and that he could deal with when Cara wasn't around.

And to think that Iestyn said he was irreversibly repressed; he wasn't repressed, merely being sensible in attempting to rein in most of his emotions, and even more sensible in not allowing almost all of those emotions to show unless he wished them to - except, apparently, that this instance was testing that control he so prided himself on. Cara had managed to worm her way under his barriers, even as he'd done his best to chip away hers, and it was a probably a fair bet that Lee had managed to allow himself to be most compromised, not having had the hard teachers that Cara had done. Still, his normal good self-control did at least mean that when he'd gotten over his initial reactions to Cara's words, he was able to rebuild that facade of cool calm,

"No, I should be sorry - to you and Bear - forgive me my tension," Lee said, shaking away her apology. "You do a remarkable job of creating that mirror," he continued, tone far calmer, managing to edge more into the realm of caring - much as one might approach a wounded horse, though Lee hadn't made that conscious comparison - rather than that of repressed rage, though he was still managing to avoid shifting into pity or overwhelming sympathy, neither of which would give Cara the respect she deserved.

Pressing his legs against Bear to keep him moving as the gelding wavered about stepping over a log fallen across the path, he was silent for a brief - very brief - moment as he considered what to say next. "I'm not sure if you see it in yourself," he said, voice somewhere in the realms between contemplative, concerned and respectful, "But you do a very good job of giving happiness to others, though I can't help but wish that you would take a little more even as you give. You deserve far more out of life than you've been given, after all, yet you've managed to make the very best with what you have." He paused, deliberately. "You're quite the inspiring figure, actually - though I doubt you see yourself as such." He hoped he wasn't pushing it; hoped equally that he was taking the right approach, even as he hoped that he was, somehow, managing to get through to Cara - and that Cara after this wasn't going to resolve to never tell him anything again.

"Not conventionally pretty, perhaps," he half-agreed, then continued on to utterly disagree with her self-assessment. "But you manage to marry both delicacy and strength, and you have nice eyes." Somehow he managed to dance the line between poetic and blunt as he considered Cara with a slight tilt of his head. "Though I don't think it would be a bad thing if you ate a little more."

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Cara shook off his apology and pulled a slight face at his agreement to her being able to create the mirror for others. She squeezed the mare forward again as they continued to follow the other pair.

Watching the large gelding step over a fallen log, she held Titania back and pushed her into a trot, knowing that the smaller mare would need more of a speed to get over the log. It wasn't big, but it was enough that there was too much of a chance of the skewbald knocking it as they stepped over. Approaching the log, she lifted her bottom out of the saddle and gave the pretty mare her head and they flew over the obstacle as one and the girl slapped the mare's neck as they landed and she sat back into the saddle, once more asking the mare for a walk.

She shook her head at Lee's next words. "I deserve no more than I get." She retorted, and then bit her lip. That was another string of words that had been feed to her since God only knows when. "Inspiring? As what, a robot?" She closed her eyes as she drew in a deep breath, her temples continuing their ever present thud but at least her stomach had settled down. "Sorry."

She curled her nose at his compliment about her eyes. "I hate my eye colour. They are uncommon and make me an outside to both ethnic bloodlines I carry, and even more of an outsider to everyone else." She drew in a sharp breath as he mentioned food, and shook her head emphatically. "I can't!" She said quickly. "I have a strict nutritional plan, and I can't chance gaining weight!" Back when she was training for the invitationals, she had a plan made up for her by a nutritionist. She still followed it, kind of, it's just now she more followed her own plan. She made sure that she consumed enough calories to keep her functioning, but not too much that she would gain weight - Mr Andrews weighed her religiously and she couldn't do anything to tip the scales in the wrong direction.

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"Neat little jump she has," Lee observed, Bear flicking his tail in a rather smug fashion as the skewbald mare had to exhibit far more energy than he to make it over the fallen tree. "It's not nice to gloat," his rider informed him in an undertone as Titania and Cara drew up beside them, falling back into a walk.

"Hardly," Lee responded, feeling that he was clearly beginning to strike at nerves, here, and not entirely sure whether he wanted to - indeed, whether he should if he had any concerns about Cara's mental health and their friendship, though perhaps the two weren't always in agreement with each other - continue doing so or not. "Though if we are going for robotic companions, I see you more as a David or a Daneel than the type of robot I think you're referring to."

He wondered if she'd actually find those comparisons flattering in the slightest - or whether she'd even know about the books he was referencing. He wasn't sure if she was the type to read science fiction, or, for that matter, whether she'd been allowed to read for pleasure rather than self-betterment, though he was of the opinion that science fiction could be just as profound as any other genre. But he was mentally digressing. "I more meant inspiring as a lesson in how not to let life grind you down into the ground," he continued, tone carefully neutral.

Her comment about her eyes rather took him aback - he hadn't expected such a vehement response from what had almost been on offhand observation on his part. "Well," he shrugged. "Perhaps if you want to fit in they're not the best eyes to have. But I think you can agree that you've probably moved beyond fitting in if you're studying university courses at fifteen. Why not give up on wanting to be part of the crowd, and forge your own, utterly different path? I can understand wanting to remain below the radar - especially in your circumstances - but maybe at some point you'll be able to... embrace that uniqueness and hold your head high as you do so." He stopped, wondering if he really had pushed it too far this time.

"I wasn't going to force-feed you," he hastened to assure Cara. "But falling unconscious off a balance beam - or a horse - due to low blood sugar and fatigue won't do you any favours." He shook his head, and in any other circumstances might have smiled ruefully. "Not that it's up to be to dictate anything about your life, but please do be careful. I'd hate for all your training to go to waste in a month because you starved yourself and can't keep to the rigours of the demonstration."

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Cara smiled at the compliment as she rubbed the mare's neck. "Thank you. She's a really good show mount and would take the right person far if she can have one rider for long enough." She knew that that person would never her her, as she didn't like showing paint horses. No matter how you groomed them up, they never looked as tidy as a single coloured mount.

She couldn't help but give Lee a blank look as he mentioned names that she couldn't place. "Sorry." She apologized. Anything to do with books that weren't part of her academic studies and movies she knew nothing about, her schedule didn't leave time for things like pleasure reading or sitting around watching movies.

She bit her lip as she sat back in the saddle and dropped her stirrups. She realized that she had begun to take on the defensive with everything he said as she needed to stop before she got herself into trouble. She crossed the stirrups in front of the pommel and allowed her legs to hang naturally down by the mare's sides.

"Fitting in has never been my main objective in any place. I'm here to work hard, ride whatever horse I'm pointed at and complete all of my course work, and to stay as far out of the public eye as I can get. And aside from all of that, I train. Fitting in, doesn't fit into my schedule." She closed her eyes as the talk went back to food again, he started to sound like one of the nutritional speakers they had to listen to back when she'd started gymnastics, or the speeches that school coaches give before they do a stint with gymnastics. "I'm careful about what I eat, where's the harm in that?"

She looked past Bear along the trail they were following. "So, where are these jumps that you were talking about?" Hoping that he would take the bait for a change in subject. And to mainly get the topic away from the one subject she didn't want to talk about - her.

[sepia]

"Sorry," Lee said, "It's not really my business to pry into your dietary habits - or anything else, really." Or, well, it kind of was given that he was concerned about her, but he could recognise when things weren't going to get anywhere further. Cara was just getting defensive, and he didn't want her to have to feel like that around him. Watch it, he reminded himself, you've just gained her trust, you don't want to destroy whatever foundations you've managed to construct so far by being a pushy idiot.

With that thought in mind, he immediately dropped the subjects that were getting Cara distinctly uncomfortable - though he made a note to dig out his copy of The Caves of Steel to lend to her. Everyone needed some fiction every so often, and he could see what she thought about Daneel, the robot who'd been one of Lee's childhood heroes - feeling that perhaps he'd gone a bit far anyway. He'd have to be more careful, next time, but he supposed that he just wanted Cara to accept that she was a worthwhile human being... but that would take time. And would need care, and he'd have to attend to those aspects. Pressuring Cara wasn't going to do her any good.

"As far as I remember, just around this little wiggle through the trees." He accepted her change in topic, figuring that she needed a break from everything being emotionally weighty, and acknowledging that he could probably do with the break too, before he really managed to damage something irreversibly.

And, indeed, as they completed the little wiggle of the path through the trees, they suddenly found themselves on a long, very gentle grassy slope, dotted with cross country fences of varying shapes, styles and sizes. Lee threw Cara a look. "I know you said you didn't do cross-country, but there's a few small logs down that end," he gestured, "If you want to give it a go and start somewhere. I can't think that it will be bad for Titania."

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Cara ducked her head. "No, I'm sorry." She whispered, the gentle breeze carrying her voice ahead of her. "My diet is the one part of my life that I have some control over, while also following the nutritional guidelines of gymnastic nutritionists."

As they came through the trees, Cara looked at the jumps that were stretched out ahead of them and felt the knot taking hold of her stomach again. She swallowed back the feeling as she uncrossed the stirrups and gently put her feet back into them. Moving her left leg forward, she lifted up the left saddle flap and tightened the girth - an old habit drilled into her from riding instructors before she started jumping.

She gave a half smile as she dropped her leg back into place as she circled the mare and asked her for a trot. "Easy." She whispered as the mare threw her head up, excitement rippling through her as she caught sight of the jumps. She nodded at the suggestion of the smaller jumps, but knew that the mare would be highly offended if she was only asked to go over baby jumps. She placed a hand against her stomach as the knot seemed to get pulled tight and she swallowed hard, trying to push past the feeling. She couldn't understand the feeling after they had popped over that log earlier, but now that she was planning on doing some proper jumping she felt ill again.

She brought the mare back down to a walk and tried to breathe her way past the knot in her stomach but just seemed to be making it worse. She gave a small whimper, trying not to let the feeling get the better of her. She turned the mare around so that they were facing away from Lee and Bear. She made sure that her hands didn't clench the reins as she didn't want to hurt her mount's tender mouth. "Just give me a minute." She whispered to the mare who pranced on the spot impatiently.

[sepia]

Having come out on the trails with the sole purpose of having a pop over a few cross country jumps - everything with Cara having been an unexpected aside, not that he was complaining - meant that Lee didn't have to pause to put his stirrups up or tighten his girth, instead shortening his reins up to a working length and pressing Bear onwards into a trot almost instantly. The experienced gelding had seen the jumps, and knew what was going on, slipping forward easily into a smooth, energetic canter as Lee asked for it.

As they circled, both for Lee to choose a course over his chosen jumps, and to ensure that they actually had a canter Bear could maintain, it would have taken a blind man to not notice the difficulties Cara had suddenly run into. Noting her clenched posture at a glance, he wavered over whether to return to a walk and go over - though, really, he knew what was wrong, and wasn't sure whether Cara would appreciate the concern, given how he'd already pushed her a significant distance - and was decided as the girl turned Titania away. That seemed like a definite 'please leave me alone!' and Lee would go along with it, for a bit, anyway.

Decision made, Bear and Lee completed their circle before striding off towards Lee's chosen first jump: a simple log, that Bear leaped over easily, ears pricked ahead as Lee folded into a two-point position. Remaining there as they landed, he turned the gelding for the next fence, a brush hedge, decorated with two flanking wagon wheels, keeping Bear well-contained between leg and hand, and smiling at his horse's suddenly renewed enthusiasm for this whole riding business.

Brush hedge cleared, even if Bear was lazy enough to allow his legs to trail through the top of it instead of picking them up properly, they next steered for a ditch, a simple enough jump with a single rail atop of it to give it some height. Rider-scarers, Lee made sure to not let his gaze be dragged down into the bottom of the ditch, and Bear jumped without a second glance, tail swishing through the air as he landed and cantered onwards, responsive to Lee's cues in a way that he hadn't been on the trail.

The next two jumps were again logs, Bear taking them in his stride easily even as Lee took the chance to shoot a very quick glance to check on Cara, not allowing himself to be distracted for long, but sparing enough time so that if she was curling up in pain and falling off her horse, he'd be able to respond.