Failure to Launch

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Name: Srslyimasqwrl
Barn name: Nut
Gender: Mare
Breed: Thoroughbred
Color: Bay Sabino
Genotype: Aa / EE / nSa
Markings: Blaze (mid-forehead), right front stocking (extends to elbow), left rear stocking ermine spots on front, left rear stocking.
Discipline: Racing
Bloodlines: Starter x Starter
Breeder: ~Honey-Hill [link]

2yo - no starts
3yo - 2 (0-1-0) Plcd $2,150

In a row of metal doors, his locker was in the far end of the room. In this section, he was as good as alone. A moment passes before he pauses, feeling the eyes on him before he knew who was looking. How many times had he felt that burning stare as a kid? It had to be countless. So many times that perhaps he just didn't want to remember. It was something else, something that made the hair prickle in the back of his neck, and goosebumps rise on lean arms. The scrawny man standing at the other end of the room, slim, aloof, reminding him of a slithering venomous snake, dark beady eyes staring at him like they always had...with an eerie sense of quiet malice. When their eyes meet, the slender slimy man only smirked.

Her entire season as a two year old had gone for her to do a proper workout on the track. It had taken ages to just make her go through the gates without closing them, countless hours practicing just standing there and being patient. She was still very nervous, very skittish, but he knew what power she had in stored in those slender legs. She had done one start in a maiden race before this moment, but she had finished last, being far too spooked by the roar of the stands to concentrate on her task. After that, he had done his best to train her to ignore the sounds and run like she had been bred. It wasn’t his job really, but he actually liked that more than what he did now. Riding gave a quick rush, but not the same satisfaction as he got when he figured out what problem the horse had encountered and surmounted it. He believed firmly that there were no problem horses, only horse problems. The vast majority were not the fault of the animal at all, but the people around the horse. Most people, despite enjoying horses, were blind to the subtle language of them.

The creepy man would ride in the same race as himself. His mount was small, a scrawny dark chestnut filly by the name of Pit Viper. If Nut was…Nut, this mare was the Devil's bride. Perhaps she didn’t look vicious, looking more like a starving foal than a race horse, but it soon showed. Jace cursed under his breath as the jockey in the maroon silks lingered near him, and for Nut who started to get nervous. She was already sweating. The dark chestnut mare had already passed them once and Nut had threw a fit when the other filly had flatten her ears and snapped at her. His poor little Nut, she was so nervous that even being lead by a slightly aggressive horse, scared her. Svea had been a little so and so regarding her temper and thought it was cruel to let her race if she was so scared. She trusted him, she had said, trusted that he knew what he was doing. Jace sighed as the signal came up to go into the gates. He felt Nut tremble beneath him, not just the fine quiver of nerves, but real fear. Beside her the dark chestnut mare stood, ears plastered to her skull, yellow teeth bared. The serpentine man on the devil mare curled a lip in a cruel smile and hunched a little more over his mount.

She broke so well, placing herself well after the leaders and he felt his heart soar to the sky. Maybe this time she would at least do a good job, a real job and learn how it was suppose to be done! He was however, quickly pulled down to earth as he felt her hesitate when the chestnut mare closed in on her side. The dark mare's ears still rode tight back on her skull as she ran, black eyes filled with hatred. The panicking mare pulls the reins, Jace knew he couldn’t let her go yet, it was too soon. Her growing panic was plain, rolling in waves up through his body through sensitive hands. If he could he would have put a hood on her, blinkers, anything to focus her attention, but she had freaked out when they had even tried to bring the things near her head.

Closing in, but without doing it so obviously, outside any limits what could be counted as interference, the jockey in the maroon coloured silks continued to harass them, playing vicious mare against terrified in subtle movements. Finally, Jace saw the opening he had hoped for, letting the shaking mare go. He didn't really need it, but a flip of the whip at his side was a good as any for as a cue for the filly to run. It actually felt like Nut gave a sigh of relief, the tension starting to ebb from her body as he gave her any excuse to leave that mare behind. With a jerk, the filly shows the one thing she has in great excess, Speed. So eager was she to put her terror behind her, Jace was almost left behind as she shifted into another gear. A blur of movement and a shot of color, he glanced to the side and once more the beady eyed man was by his side, snarling at Jace with a sneering smile.

“¡No huyas, pendejo!” *

Urging his mare, slowly at first, the man steered closer to Jace and his nervous filly, pressing them as close to the rail as he could without seeming to deliberately do it. The chestnut mare pins her ears once again, eye rolling as her target comes back into view, spooking the sabino mare with her sheer malicious presence and bared teeth. A few desperate seconds, and the tempo explodes, filly and mare sprinting ahead of the rest of the pack as one tried to outrun the other. This wasn’t at all what he had planned, but by now nothing would convince his little Nut to do anything other than run her heart out to escape this demon mare. That was another of her problems. When it got too much she simply shut down, her mind fixated on one thing, closing itself to all others. She was impossible to connect with after this happened, and nothing else mattered. The snake-like man continually urged his mare closer, then away, trying his damnedest to spook her more, even in her panicked state – despite what seemed so obvious to Jace, the small man was still clear from something he could be charged for. Everything that had happened was subtle, and insidious.

If as the vicious dark mare could have laughed, she blew past the scared filly, leaving her terrified and struggling to keep up as they careened towards the finish line. Space slowly opened between the two, and with ears still pinned to her savage skull, the liver mare lunges under the line, leaving a stunned straggler to pass under with a disheartened Jace aboard.

They had been sabotaged by the fillies own mind, but also by a man who knew all their weaknesses. While the jockey in the maroon silks steered his mount towards the winners circle, the other walks away towards the barns beside a mare, both of their heads hanging low, a man in the shadows chuckled. This was only the beginning.




Ref: Google
(was supposed to be a 3 horse groupshot with bodys and everything but pic was way to cluttered with things...I got mad and just did headshots of 2 horses...mutters)

*(Don’t run away chicken shit! - I dont know any spanish so I looked this up - Im sorry if its wrong)