A Sunny Afternoon

[Serpent]

It was late in the afternoon when a silver pickup truck pulling a white horse trailer pulled into the yard. Both the pick up truck and the trailer had the logo and information about the Blue Creek Ranch displayed on the side in a deep blue color. Once the car engine was switched off a teenage boy opened the driver's side door and stepped out. His icy blue eyes quickly scanned the familiar horse yard before a smile appeared on his face. He had been away for a week, competing in a rodeo in America, but now he was back. He took a cowboy hat of his dark blond hair and stuck it back on the driver's seat behind him. He closed the door, locked the car and walked around to the horse trailer.

Nick Steel unlatched the ramp to the trailer and lowered it slowly. Inside where two horses. The first one Nick brought out was a quarter horse with a beautiful chestnut coloring. Outlawed Rooster, or Rusty for short, was a gelding that had been in Nick's care for almost 9 years. The pair were quite close and worked well together. Rusty's main use is a trail riding and working long days on the ranch, as he is such a calm horse. Nick led him out and then tied him to the side of the trailer.

He then ducked back inside the trailer and led out the younger, feistier of the two horses Nick had. The quarter horse mustang cross had long been used as a bucking bronco, and was sometimes still wild. The stallion was a dun color, and was named Speeding Jet, or Jet for short. Once Jet was tied up outside the trailer as well. Nick went to the ramp and lifted it back up and locked up the trailer

[/justie]

Olivia had just arrived yesterday, so she was still sort of getting aquainted with the grounds. She still found herself at the stables all the time, when she should probably be looking around for buildings and food places and tack stores and such. She wore a worn out pair of brown pointed toe cowboy boots, complete with spurs, a pair of torn up jeans that she deemed as her favourite pair, a t-shirt that read "I get down and dirty" with a picture of a barrel racer. Olivia had her hair twisted up at the back of her head into some type of ratty looking ponytail, which didn't bother her how it looked. She was making her way to the stall of Never Ending Sorrow when she saw a new horse trailer pull in and a boy unload two horses. One was rather docile looking, the other had a wild and robust look to him.

Olivia sort of meandered over to the boy, looking at the text written on the trailer. She looked back to him and gave him a small smile. Hi. I'm Olivia Wood. You go to rodeos? she asked quickly. He seemed rather nice from the looks of it, but Olivia knew that first impressions were almost entirely wrong. She just wanted to meet another western-riding person. The only people she'd kind of met around the yard were english riders. True, she liked and competed both styles, but she liked western a lot more since it felt more relaxed to her.

[Serpent]

Nick noticed that someone had come up to the trailer and was looking at the name. He was busy locking the back of the trailer to say anything until she introduced herself and asked him a question. "Nice to meet you Olivia. I'm Nick Steel" He said after wiping a hand on his jeans, to "clean" it, before extending it towards her for a handshake. "And yes, I do go to rodeos." he said before adding "In fact I was competing with Rusty and Jet just last week. Well Jet was being used in the rodeo. I was using Rusty." When he first said the horses names he pointed out which one was which.

He looked the girl over before asking "I'm guessing you ride western as well?" Nick had seemed to avoid the apparent Steel family temper, but he had kept the kindness and outgoing nature of his uncle and father as well. His hair was unusually light for the family as well, seeming as most of the men in his family had hair that was few shades darker than his own. He did have the icy blue eyes of both his father and uncle though. At times he loved having a big family, but with such a well known family on the rodeo circuit, it was not uncommon to have people be wary of what Nick might do, even though he barely loses his temper.

[/justie]

Olivia looked at each horse in turn as he pointed them out to her. One was very docile looking, and the other had a wild and crazy look to him, but those were always the ones that she liked. They were always the funnest. She listened to him with interest and crossed her arms across her chest for something to do so that they weren't fiddling with the keys in her pocket. She tilted her head to the side when Nick said that his horse was in the rodeo. She looked at the one he'd pointed to before and tried to think of it's name and then it came to her. ..Jet was in the rodeo? A sort of 'hm' sound came out of her mouth while she ran through the different uses he could have for being in the actual rodeo.

Yeah. I barrel race. But I also do show jumping. Barrel racing is so much better, though. She ended with a smile. Olivia thought she would be going to an all-english riding school and that she would have no western buddies and not be able to practise barrels because she would be shunned from everyone. She felt herself brighten inside. She took a step closer toward the horse named Rusty to get a better look at him. She really hoped that her and Nick would keep this possibly forming friendship, because she would die without a western buddy. It was like her home turf, it was what she was best at.