two different worlds || niall horan [completed]

~Chapter 29~

Chapter 29

“Praise the Lord baby Jesus, we’re done!” Kristen yelled beside me, while throwing her hands in the air. Everyone on campus turned to face us as we walked back from our final exam of the semester. After spending three hours writing one, anyone could act like Kristen just did. We were all exhausted, but we still had another lesson tonight.

Dragging our feet across the snow covered ground; we made our way up to our dorms to get ready for the lesson. For some reason, I had an uneasy feeling in my stomach. Pushing away the feeling, I pulled open the door and was greeted by happy chatter and shouts of joy from the other students at the university. I smiled and waved to the other students as I shook the snow from my head and rubbed my hands together to create warmth.

Kristen was already rounding the corner to the hallway to our dorm room so I quickly ran to catch up. Ducking into the room before her, I turned around and stuck out my tongue, “Ha, I beat you!” She rolled her eyes in response and we walked over to our closet to grab what we were going to wear today.

I chose my old barn sweater and north face jacket along with a pair of wrangler jeans and lulu leggings to go underneath. I also put on some thick wool socks that I had bought from Roots back in Canada, and I grabbed my Vancouver 2010 mittens to go along.

Quickly changing into my clothing, I pulled out my phone to make a quick tweet.

@ashley_carter:

Exams are finally oveeeer! Lesson with the gang in a few, cant wait, its been over a week! Ugh too long</3 #imissmypony

Clicking my phone off, I grabbed my cowboy boots, pulling them over my boots. They fit a little too snuggly for my liking but I didn’t mind too much. Kristen had just finished at the same time so we grabbed our stuff, walking out the doors to the barn.

~~

“Bend your horses, ladies! You’re getting lazy; I don’t want to see that!” Debby called to us as we trotted around the arena for our warm up.  I pulled my inside rein a bit closer to my horn as I pressed my inside leg onto her chest. She immediately responded and I looked around seeing that the other girls’ horses were doing the same. Debby had a smile on her face as she called, “Lope!”

Making a kissing noise, I urged Talia to go into a light lope, and after making one full lap of the arena, I pulled her into tighter circles in the middle, loosening her up a bit.

“Okay, now everyone get into the corner. We’re going to do some dash for the warm up, and then we will work on barrels, got it?” Debby called as Trey moved to the end of the arena to put the barrel up. We all directed our horses to the corner, chatting amongst ourselves.

“Hey, Christina! I like your GoPro!” I gestured to the camera on the top of her helmet. Rolling her eyes, she muttered a thanks before clicking a button on the top and gathering her horse up to go first.

She shot down to the end of the arena, effortlessly pulled on her rein and sat down, slid around the barrel, and shot back towards us. We all continued to do a couple more dash’s before Debby told us that we were going to start barrels.

I was going last so I patted Talia’s neck, watching everyone else go. Our horses were already breathing heavily, and you could see their breath in the air from the cold.

“Alright, Ashley you can go now.” Debby told me and I gave her a quick nod, gathering my reins in my hands. She did her usual hop up to the wall until I clucked and we turned around, kicking the dirt into the wooden walls.

As we shot towards first, I gripped my left hand on the horn while directing her with my right. She easily slid around the barrel and did a flying lead change as I switched hands again, placing my right on the horn, left on the rein. I pulled her around once again and she did it perfectly. Kicking as hard as I could, we moved around the barrel, flying to third. I crouched down on her, and then sat back into my seat as we skidded around third easily. I ducked again and thrust my legs into her sides as we ran as fast as we could back home. I stopped her by turning in a circle and smiled proudly.