"Oh, dear, Melissa. You weren't kidding! I'm so sorry." Annilyn said, and hesitated. "I had a brother once. He was handicapped. I really loved him a lot. He died when I was four though."
"I will get some egg rolls and chicken and broccoli then." She said. Then she chuckled. "It's really not funny, but on the day of my brother's funeral I came in covered in pond scum. I had fallen into the pond with my funeral clothes. I had to go barefooted to the funeral." She looked at Melissa. "I understand some of your pain."

Melissa, who is now just listening to what she had to say, said, "I don't remember anything about my mother's funeral when I was so little, and my father wasn't like that, you know. What I noticed during the years that I lived with my father before I had a foster mother was that he wasn't very kind and an alcoholic and quite violent towards me." She said, not wanting to show all the bruises she had.

"Oh, I'm sorry!" Annilyn said. "My brother, he couldn't control his brain, so he always just smacked people. It's not the same as your father though, I know." She said. "Let's go get food; I'll drive. I have my liscense, I am almost 17." She said.

Melissa said nothing about it but then said "yes we do" she said while still looking around the room she was in. She had most of the bruises on her back and some of them were on her legs they were hidden under her clothes so.

Annilyn skimmed down the steps and walked to the parking lot. She climbed into her sky blue chevorlet, and waited for Melissa to get into the passenger side.

It takes a little while for Melissa to arrive, she sees the car and jumps in.

Annilyn started the car and drove out of the parking lot and stopped at the stop sign. She turned left and headed for the chinese food place. She had ordered food for pickup. Soon they got there. "Do you want to run in with me?" She asked Melissa. "We can eat in the car if you want and then go do something fun since there's no shows or practices for us for the rest of the day"

Austin jogged over to Barn B after dropping his stuff off in his dorm, blonde hair messy. Mav had his head over his stalls door, nostrils fluttering in a nicker too quiet for the human ear. Austin rubbed the stallions nose before grabbing some brushes to make sure that the stallion didn't have any shavings or dirt on him beofre throwing his wool saddle pad onto his back. Austin didn't need to tie him up, since the stallion was used to doing this many a time in even smaller stalls then he's currently in. Austin put a saddle blanket on the pad to protect it from the saddle, then grabbed his saddle and tossed it up. Of course, he hadn't brought his show saddle- the western pleasure saddle was covered in silver, polished carefully, and never used unless they were showing high levels.

-

He let down the cinch and latigo, threading the latigo through the cinch loop before tightening it, hooking it, and putting the end of it in the cinch keeper. Finally, he grabbed the blue roans bridle, slipped the Myler bit into his mouth, and put his ear through the slit, before leading him out of the stall and towards an arena. The stallion wasn't quite in the slow pleasure mode he often go into, nor the upbeat horse he was from time to time. Somewhere inbetween. Austins stopped Mav before getting to the arena, putting a foot in the stirrup and swinging up. He sidepassed the stallion to the gate to open it, then closed it again.

-

He had the stallion set off in a brisk walk, letting him look around and get used to the footing of the arena.