The Fire Horse

Chapter 1 - Kate

I heard the announcer on the airplane say we were descending and the seatbelt sign turned on. Finally I thought. I just wanted to see my horse. Ever since my mom told me he had been sent ahead of us I had been anxious to see him. I has distracted myself most of the flight by looking at pictures of him from when he was a foal. My horse, Foxstar, was actually from this island, I had noticed on his papers while sorting them out to fly him that he was registered as a Jorvik Warmblood. I glanced out the window and watched as the plane touched down at the Jorvik airport. When we finally could get off my mom said "Come on Kate!" and stood up. I followed quickly eager to be off the plane after sitting there for three hours. The airport wasn't that crowded and we got our things fairly quickly. My mom's car was one of the few in the lot and soon we were driving down the road. There were so many horses, we saw only one other car on our hour long drive to Silverglade Equestrian Center. I entertained myself by watching all the horses going down the road as we drove. I couldn't wait to explore with Fox. When we got there I leapt out of the car before it even completely stopped and raced into the stables. Foxstar neighed when he saw me come in and immediately nudged me for the carrots I always had. "Sorry Fox, we still haven't bought any food yet" I said to the horse. I stroked my horse happy to see him, I hadn't seen him for three days! As I pet him I glanced around at the other horses in the stable, most were fancy Andalusians, but there were a couple other horses as well. The one next to Fox caught my attention as its blonde mane stood out brightly against its black fur. It looked like the same breed as Fox which explained the color, there were a couple strange looking color combinations you could see in Jorvik Warmbloods. Fox suddenly nudged my pocket again. I laughed and said "Alright I'll see if my mom has any carrots!" I walked out to my mom who was taking all the horse equipment out of the car. I was in luck, she had a small bag of mini carrots from the plane. I took them as well as my tack and grooming tools back into the stable with me. I fed Fox a carrot and started to groom him. He needed it after three days of not being cleaned. I then tacked him up. As I checked on the girth before mounting I said to the horse "Wanna work on our dressage test? I heard there's a big arena just down the road from here" Fox always liked doing dressage. He'd never been a fan of jumping, I could tell he was happier just doing flat work. I got on and we walked outside into the cool October air. I was glad there were no Halloween decorations yet, Fox isn't a fan of jack-o-lanterns. We had time though, it was only a week into October. I told my mom where we were going and headed down to the riding hall. There were two arenas, a dressage arena and a stadium jumping arena inside. There were three people jumping but the dressage arena was empty. We went in and went through our test. "Good boy" I said afterward "that was great!" Then the unexpected happened "I dunno, I think my flying change was a little sloppy" Fox replied. "What?" I exclaimed shocked. "Wait you heard that?" Fox said sounding equally shocked. I didn't understand this at all. I must be going insane I thought. I was completely speechless. Fox broke the silence saying "Well, while you can understand what I say, do you have anymore carrots?" "Those are at the stable" I replied still debating over if this was real or not. We turned and decided to head back, I was to confused to keep working on dressage. So we trotted back to the stables both of us pondering what had just happened.