locked out of heaven ~ Irish

[Cato Riley McKenna]

Humming softly to himself, and partly to keep Ally calm, Cato slid into his Anglo-Arab mare’s stall and began tacking her up. She had a habit of blowing everything hugely out of proportion when she got even slightly stressed, and she’d already chucked her saddle into the wall once before in a similar situation as a result, so her owner preferred to take his chances with the fact he was entirely tone deaf. Typically, his nutcase of a horse stood perfectly still with an expression that would convince anyone who didn’t know her that she was perfectly sane and a totally solid ride. Little did they know she was probably all about ready to explode under that butter-wouldn’t-melt exterior. His stallion, Nox, stood across the aisle, also looking perfectly unconcerned; but then when did that animal not? His thoughts wandered back to when they'd been back in England momentarily, before Inez had gotten herself into a complicated mess with one of the stablehands here and had ended up proving her elder cousin correct. Then again, Inez was the type whose life was bound to end up complicated because she was just that type of person who didn't see the idiocy in the things she did until she'd done them.

Leading her out of the stable, Cato clipped a lunge line onto her bridle, fingers nimbly working the tangles out of the rope as they headed for the outdoor arena. Normally, he wouldn’t bother with lunging his horses before he got on either of them, but the half-arab hadn’t been worked in nearly a week and the Irishman had no intention of dying just yet. Still though, it hadn’t been such a bad week so far (it was only Wednesday) and he’d managed to get off work early for once, so his mood was distinctly better than it had been for a while. They were almost in the arena – so close – when a bird flew up from the ground, and the twenty-three year old knew precisely where that was going to go just as soon as Ally skittered violently to the side. Rolling his eyes, Cato did little but let out the line and watch from a safe distance whilst the horse he was currently embarrassed to call his own went apeshit on the other end of the rope. When she was done, he reeled her back in and opened the gate with a slight shake of his head.

Really, Ally? he muttered, ”was that strictly necessary?”

[Olivia Cora Atkins]

Normally Liv would have driven to the barn, but considering her car was currently on loan to her father while his was in the shop, and he and her mother both had to work, the bus was her next mode of transport to get to the barn after school that day. It dropped her off near Crossfire’s front gate, thankfully, which meant less walking, and although she was not by any means a lazy person, she’d already had track practice today and she didn’t exactly feel like walking a huge distance to get to the barn, and the walk up the drive was long enough for today. Alighting from the bus after it had stopped, she adjusted her bag over her shoulder so it was resting more comfortably, humming along to the tune playing through her ear buds, before setting herself a path to the gate leading into the barn’s land.

She stuck her hands in her pockets as she walked, eyes scanning the fields as she passed them, looking at the various horses dotted throughout the pastures, breathing out a content sigh. Now, this was the place she really liked being the most… sure, she didn’t mind school, and she had no problem with being home, or being out on the track or the soccer field, but the barn was probably her favourite place in the world, right now anyway. Maybe that would change one day, but for now, it was.

Eventually she had walked far enough to come past the pastures and closer to the outdoor arenas, thanking the heavens that today wasn’t particularly cold, and that it hadn’t started raining, or else she would have been soaked by now. And really, having to be stuck in wet clothes until she got home just really didn’t seem all that appealing right now, nor did riding in them really. A sight further up caught her attention after a moment, of a chestnut mare causing a fuss at something, while the male leading her… whom she surprisingly recognised as the guy she’d spoken to in the coffee shop the other day after she had accidentally sent the papers he had been grading flying everywhere… looked a little embarrassed by the ordeal. Chuckling slightly to herself, she pulled the earphones from her ears, hitting the pause button on her iPod and sticking it in the side pocket of her bag as she got closer to the pair. “Good luck with her,” she said, once she was within hearing distance of Cato, giving him a quick smile, if he even saw it… and that was about it really, not exactly wanting to come across as a creepy stalker of some sort. The last thing she needed was to be known as that one weird girl from the coffee shop who had suddenly decided they were best friends after she’d had one conversation with a person.

[Cato Riley McKenna]

Cato knew he had a soft spot for nutjob horses. Horses that were stoic and steady, other than Nox, quickly got a little bit too predictable for him. Ally, on the other hand, for all her lunacy and embarrassing antics, never failed to keep her owner on his toes. He shook his head at her as the mare began to return to his side, feigning annoyance and despair. Really, her behaviour didn’t bother him too much, but most of the other stablers would probably have a different opinion on that and so he should probably at least try and reprimand her – not that there was much point when it was in her nature to be skittish. That was like punishing Nox for being too calm, in the Irishman’s opinion. Of course, sometimes Ally was just carrying on like an absolute knob just because she could, but those moments were getting less and less frequent as she finally began to mature.

Typically, the Anglo Arab decided to have one of those moments just as he said they were beginning to wane. Cato looked up at the sound of a familiar voice, taking a moment to place it, and got somewhat distracted by the clanging of metal shoes on concrete as his basket case, albeit beloved, skidded to a violent halt right behind her owner. Although always slightly suspicious even of Cato, Ally had clearly decided that he was a safer bet than the terrifying horse-eating teenager walking by that had dared to utter a syllable within earshot. He sighed, his expression somewhat despairing as he re-focused his attention on Olivia. ”You have no idea,” he replied, still slightly surprised at the fact he’d bumped into her once more. Clearly Addison was a small town with a lot of riders in it, but it usually wasn’t…this small. Not that it was a bad thing to be running into her, that wasn’t at all what he meant.

”That said, people always do tend to walk past at the worst possible moments.” It was true, but that was a remark that the lecturer had quite obviously not thought through, because the second he said it, the brunette realised just how unfriendly that sounded. If he’d had a free hand – which he didn’t because one was on Ally’s lunge line and the other stroking the tip of her nose gently – Cato literally would have facepalmed right now. In front of a class full of students only a couple of years his junior and he could wield complete control of the situation. Put him in front of a pretty girl unexpectedly, apparently, and he managed to make an utter fool of himself. Annoyingly, he wasn’t even usually that bad with women, but today apparently his ability to hold a conversation had mysteriously disappeared. ”And that,” he said just a tad awkwardly, ”sounded a lot less impolite in my head.”

[Olivia Cora Atkins]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, background-color: 101010; border: #262626 solid 10px; width: 515px; padding: 5 5 5 5px;] Watching Cato with his mare now made her glad that Donnie was how he was… sure, the gelding had his moments but it wasn’t as though it was out of the norm for most horses to have those occasional episodes. He was a high energy horse to begin with anyway, but he also didn’t think that everything and anything was out to eat him, which was helpful. He might be a little boring to some people, but he suited her just fine… she didn’t mind horses that were hard to handle but it was also nice to be able to ride without having to fight the horse she was riding almost every step of the way. Maybe someone else might have been offended by what he had said, but by the obviously flustered look on his face after he had spoken, she guessed that he really hadn’t meant to sound impolite, even more so when he said it wasn’t meant to be. Then again, even if it had been, she probably wouldn’t have been offended anyway. She wasn’t exactly the sort of person who was easy to offend to begin with, and from her conversation with him in the coffee shop he didn’t seem like the sort of person who went around trying to offend people either. “No, it’s fine. I understood what you meant,” she answered, giving him a smile to reassure him that she really wasn’t at all bothered by it. “I think that tends to be a general thing… I think they enjoy showing off in front of other people just to make you look like an incompetent fool. I know mine does at least, anyway,” she said. Well, she knew that Donnie certainly liked to choose to misbehave when there were witnesses around, and was a perfect angel when it was just the pair of them. And by the looks and sounds of it, Cato’s mare was almost the same. - - - - - - - - - - i'm laughing the clouds away, i hear what the flowers say, and drink every drop of rain, and i see places that i have been, in ways that i've never seen, my side of the grass is green, ooh i can't believe that it's so simple, it feels so natural to me, if this is love, then love is easy, it's the easiest thing to do

[/td][/tr][/table]

new | 324 | outfit | sorry it's sucky, wrote it in the car on the way to netball xD

[/center]