Welcome to my new story "The Sound of Silence". This is my first fan fiction in quite a while, I decided to start with a clean slate so I deleted my old stories and will start fresh with this one. I don't quite know where this story is going to go, so if it turns into a Mary Sue, I will apologize ahead of time.
Happy Reading! Please review when your reading is completed, no flames please, I don't have a fire extinguisher next to my laptop! J
Chapter One- Introductions..
Maura is a young woman with a seemingly average life. She is a twenty year old sophomore at the University of Portland where she studies ancient history. The blue eyed woman with soft, sable colored hair made friends easily at University, outgoing, talkative, and enthusiastic; Maura had a social circle of close friends. One thing that Maura loved more then anything, was riding her bay Dutch warmblood show jumper, Fighter's Folly, or just Folly for short. Maura trained with Folly with staying determination and was rewarded with blue ribbons at most of the shows she went to, up and down the west coast.
Maura lives a pretty average life….except for one thing, the soundtrack of her life is silent, Maura was born deaf. She has never heard the sound of her parent's voices, the song of a bird, or even the soft, blowing nicker of Folly's greeting. Her world is like a silent movie, moving pictures and action without words or songs or sounds to accompany it. Maura communicates with her friends and family using American Sign Language. She relies on an interpreter and her skill of lip reading to understand what is being said in her classes at the University. Even her riding instructor, Jilly, developed easily seen hand signals to aid Maura in understanding what she is saying while riding a course or during training practices.
There was only one thing that Maura could communicate with, without resorting to a third party, Folly. She could gaze into the geldings liquid brown eyes and now exactly what he had to say, how he was feeling, and what he wanted to do. Even while on his back, there was the unspoken communication of body language between horse and rider. Their bond was inseparable, their souls were of one entity.
At summer's end, there is an end of the year show called Derby. It was a sort of celebration to close the showing season, but its classes were still full and the jump courses were as challenging as ever. As Maura warmed Folly up over 4' fences, she felt that something wasn't quite right. It wasn't a sign given off by Folly, rather a feeling that Maura felt in her heart. It had rained pretty heavily the night before and the footing on the course was muddy and slick. Maura had screwed studs into Folly's shoes to give him traction on the slick surface and in the warm up ring, they seemed to be working alright.
Jilly walked up to her and signed, "They are calling your name and number, do you remember your course?"
Maura didn't respond with her hands, rather, she gave a curt nod of her head; all her concentration was on the task ahead of her, fifteen 4' high fences with tight turns and roll backs.
Maura and Folly trotted into the rain sodden arena and began their canter circle. Fence number one felt good, Folly found a deep spot to the fence and had easily cleared the top rail. There was a tight right turn to fence number two and then a rollback to fence number 3. Six fences into the course, and Maura started to relax, perhaps her bad feeling was just a feeling after all.
All of a sudden, while approaching fence number 8, a wide oxer, Maura realized that Folly's strides were off. She asked him to slow to get their rhythm back, but to no avail, Folly was focused on the fence! Too late Folly realized that he was at a bad distance to make the jump but desperately tried to clear the rails as he was trained to do. His hind hooves slipped on the slick mud and he crashed head first into the top rails of the fence. Maura felt her feet coming loose from the stirrups and desperately tried to control her flight through the air. She hit the ground hard, her shoulder taking most of the impact, but Folly couldn't avoid her in his fall from flight and he clipped her head with his hind end as he went down.
Maura's world went dark.
To be continued…Please review, no flames!
Glossary
Studs- Metal cleats that screw into the horse's shoe, like cleats on soccer boots.
Fence- a jump made of rails and standards that a horses tries to clear without knocking rails down.
Oxer- A jump made of two or three fences that are close together to form one fence that a horse jumps singularly.