Yulia absentmindedly stroked the brown mare's neck, wondering what she would look like nicely clipped. Victoria had asked her if she was absolutely certain she wanted to show on a horse. She didn't technically qualify for ponies anymore, but she was still U25. Did she want to take that? It seemed like a cheap shot, though she was well aware that it wasn't.
She listened to the carrying-on in the indoor. Yuri hadn't been able to sit through her lead changes right, even though she seemed to have figured them out in terms of how to make them more balanced. It sounded like they were coming better together now which meant that soon Yuri would be back on Hika permanently, Victoria was currently working on her, and Yulia had yet to be back on Tigress yet. She'd been stuck schooling instead.
"You missed your calling as a vaulter." Victoria startled her from her thoughts and Yulia realized she hadn't actually heard anything in the ring for maybe ten minutes now. She had gotten so caught up in clipping Tigress as instructed.
"What?" The teenager deadpanned.
"That move you pulled earlier, hopping on Alchemy." The school master was apparently not bomb proof as a trio of excited children knocking over a box in the hayloft had sent him off all the way down in the ring. Yulia had only just finished tightening the girth before she was suddenly jogging to keep up with him. It took her about thirty seconds to yank herself on. "You should have been a vaulter. Do you still train in gymnastics?"
Yulia shrugged. She had only done gymnastics for the sake of school.
"You should talk to Lilia when you're back in Russia." The older woman smiled, blue eyes sparkling. "She could probably get you into junior world's for vaulting in five seconds flat, you'd be good at it."
"I'm ok." Yulia shrugged her compliment off.
"Yuri did really well today—"
"Don't care." She started pulling Tigress' mane. "Seriously, don't you have something better to be doing? Like fixing Yuri's inability to look up?" For a show jumper, she was really bad at looking at where she was going. Did the chopstick seriously think her eyes were the only thing keeping her horse's head on?
"Someone is cranky." Victoria laughed, patting Tigress' shoulder and looking her over. "She looks good, ready to fly."
Yulia froze.
"What did you just say?" She gritted out.
"Ready to fly?" Victoria repeated. "Yulia, the Central European World Cup circuit starts in less than a month. You have to get back."
She wouldn't cry, not in front of anyone but especially not in front of Victoria. What was worse, she wasn't sure if they were tears of anger or happiness.
"You're going to have to hop on her for me tonight, so I can see what you need to work on and make sure you know your test. She has to leave before you else you'll never get her into the country in time." Victoria teased. Yulia fell deep into thought, letting Victoria work around her, brushing off bits of hair left behind by the clippers and helping her to tack up (though she didn't need the help).
In reality, in was an hour and a half later when Yulia was on Tigress, surprised to find she was a little sore from her ride earlier. Her manner of mounting earlier was her suspected cause for the slight ache. She closed her eyes, feeling like a child on a lunge line again. She hadn't kept her eyes closed on a horse in ages.
Connection, wasn't that what Victoria had been moaning about the past two weeks? Her lack of connection to her horse?
Yulia took a breath in and let it out, continuing around the ring while she waited for Victoria to actually enter. It felt peaceful, like she could focus on feeling the movement beneath her instead of looking at everything around her. She could feel the way that, even at the walk, Tigress depended on her hands to help balance her front end. The mare would stop immediately when Yulia reminded her she could carry herself.
"Are your eyes closed?" Victoria's voice reached her ears and Yulia glanced backwards over her shoulder.
"No." She grumbled, watching Tigress' ears flick backwards for a moment.
"Mhmm, ok." Standing off to the side and out of the way of any space Yulia would need to eventually complete her freestyle, Victoria dusted her hands on old, tan jodhpurs. "Let's get started."
Yulia kept the same, peaceful feeling throughout the warmup. Suddenly, Tigress' gaits felt more natural and less forced. She wasn't expending all of her energy pushing the mare into an extended trot so that she actually had something left in her to take on a canter afterwards.
"Whatever that just was," Victoria called after Yulia halted at the end of her test. The young blonde turned her head over her shoulder again to catch the feedback better. In response to the balance shift, Tigress moved off her leg and turned as well. "Keep it. That was it. That was what you wanted. Yulia, I've never seen you actually ride before, never like that."
"What's that supposed to mean." Yulia spat. She had been competing internationally for three years, she knew how to ride.
"That connection. I haven't seen you ride with it since that day in the yard with the school pony." Victoria grinned, patting the brown mare's neck and playfully tugging on the mane sprouting from her crest. "You ride too many sale and client horses for Yakov, you stopped connecting to them because you're worried they'll be bought. It's ok to connect with them."
There was a long silence, but Victoria kept grinning.
"Walk her out and hop off. You're done for today. Bright and early tomorrow, we have to get her ready to ship."
Yulia's emerald eyes followed the lithe frame out of the ring.
"Yulia likes troublesome horses. She says she doesn't get attached to client horses, but she does. She likes being the body on them when Yakov is training because she likes feeling like they need her." Victoria explained to Yuri in hushed tones. "Tigress is going to be one of those horses that only one person can ride, she's too nervous, and Yulia is going to make sure she's that person."
"I don't understand. She likes feeling like they need her, but she doesn't connect to them?" Yuri frowned. She had been lucky, any horse she had ever sat on, minus some school horses, had been almost entirely hers. She was the only one showing Dima, for instance, but even lower level horses. Maybe that made her spoiled, that despite being unable to own a horse she was wealthy enough to afford the opportunities in which someone would give her one good enough for her level of competition to ride.
"She wants a project." Victoria shrugged. "She wants to feel needed. Yulia has some…abandonment issues, though, and that's why she won't get attached. She has to leave them."
They watched the girl in the ring struggling to get even a real working trot out of her mare.
"I think I'll tell her tomorrow instead."
Yuri looked at the woman beside her in surprise.
"Will that give her enough time to pack and be ready?" She asked. Victoria was already cutting it close with wanting to tell Yulia today that she had a flight back to Russia in a day and a half's time. If she told the teen tomorrow, it only gave her overnight to pack.
"She'll be fine."
"That was incredible!" Yuuko praised her as she exited the ring, pausing to pick out Tigress' hooves before proceeding down the aisle. "Are you excited to join the list of Central Europeans?"
As excited as she ever would be, Yulia supposed. Under twenty-five…it was a division that mattered relatively, it only didn't matter for Olympic purposes. If she failed, but even made it to the top of that list, she might be proud of herself. She shrugged and continued to the mare's stall to untack.
"We need to work on tempis." Yulia told the mare, looking into her warm brown eyes and trying to keep the fluttering out of her stomach. Getting attached to a mount wasn't an option. Her lips pressed into a hard line. "But Yakov can help us."
The horse snorted.