Ash Wood Riding Academy

Chapter 1: The paper.

100 Contestants, 50 Qualifiers, 25 Elite Qualifiers, 5 Finalists and 1 Scholarship.

            The white paper that was mailed to my house clearly stated the amount of people who would make the cut to have a chance at the scholarship. Here I am fiddling with my black Heritage pro flow summer show gloves from green hawk, and constantly re adjusting my IRH Olympian Velveteen DFS Helmet which for some reason felt too loose today no matter how tight it was.

Hours earlier...

            Either way a really quick summary of my life would be, my name is Bela, I live to ride horses but do not own any, I'm not poor but I'm not really rich either. Guess you could call it the middle class, but it suites me just fine. I somehow managed to afford a flight to Ireland (because of years of saving and working as a cashier and life guard for pools), to "audition" for the Ash Wood Academy. Somehow my application for the scholarship managed to be considered because of my competition scorings all through my 4 years of riding. Yes only 4 years and in some way I have managed to reach international level. My coach Shanna calls me the riding prodigy, and to some extent it's true.

            After flying 7 or 8 sleepless and restless hours in a plane, picked up from the airport by a chauffeur and driven to the riding academy and dropped off at the long drive way's gate with a pink duffel bag, and 1 small sized red and black suite case. The paved drive way took about 5 minutes to walk down, so you can imagine how long it was. The academy looked like a fairy tale dream come true, the walls were a beautiful Sahara color with jade flower vines covering parts of the walls. In front of the school was a beautiful horse statue of an Arabian. After all it was said that the Arabian horse was the first breed of the world.

            The first place I went to was the barn, it smelt like fresh hay and leather tack. The horses were treated like Olympians, with large stalls, with back doors that were open so they were free to roam into their paddocks. Each horse had their own spotless large paddock full of grass. Next thing I know I'm snapped out of my trance when I hear a loud whinny. Down the hall a stable hand is trying to bring out one of the horses, but is getting some trouble from them. This horse is an Arabian with a dappled grey coat, I felt like I was standing in the presence of royalty. The stable hand was wrestling with the stallion, trying to get him calm once again, as two snobby girls stop next to me snickering and laughing.

            I couldn't stand it anymore, I let out a large sound of annoyance to let those two brats know I was displeased and walk up to the stable hand. I took the red lead rope out of his hand and walked up to the rearing stallion. Muttering words of comfort to the dappled horse, after a few seconds he calmed down, and I returned the lead rope to the stable hand. I walked back to the two girls, who were still there standing and staring at me with awestruck faces.

            "Next time you see someone having trouble with a horse, you might want to help them instead of standing there snickering at them," I said standing casually next to them leaning against the stall door.

            Quickly looking away ashamed they huddled together and quickly walked away without a sound. Next thing I knew I was walking back to the stallions stable to see how he was doing, but to my surprise he wasn't there. There was a light poke on the back of my shoulder, which to my surprise was enough to make me jump a mile high and squeal. Behind me was the stable hand still holding the stallion on the lead rope.

            "Looking for him," the stable hand asked, with the cutest smile on his face, "thank you for helping me with him, he like to be troublesome sometimes."

            "No problem," I answered. Quickly remembering I haven't introduced myself yet, I stuck out my hand saying, "Hi, I'm Bela."

            He quickly shook my hand replying, "I'm Blaize and this is Icy, his show name is Iced Lake."