Shut up, Malachi ( beginning 1/5 )

I can't wait to get the stable introduction all done xD Then I can move on to drawing the ponies again! lol! Everyone's very excited at Misty Mountain because they're FINALLY getting the horses in. You can't tell of course... because in the picture, Marianne's quite busy yelling at Malachi. He deserved it.

Not entirely happy with this; mostly with how Marianne and Pepper turned out. I was sort of rushing to get this up and over with, and get this part of the story out of the way. But, I did have far too much fun with colour overlays xD Sorry! But hopefully they don't bother too much.

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The morning air was frigid as Marianne pushed through the front door of the manor house, her gloved hands shoved into her armpits as she watched her breath accumulate in a depressing cloud of mist before her. She actually had to fight to keep her teeth from chattering. You’d think she was used to the cold, considering she had been born and raised in New York, but she hated it.

No. That was incorrect. She loved the snow – from inside, when she was warm and cozy by the fire sipping a cup of hot chocolate through a straw as she watched reruns of Friends or Gavin and Stacey, or something equally as homey. She didn’t mind the winter at all then. But now, as she trudged through the snow, she cursed it with every molecule of her being. Why did the stable have to be so bleeding far away from the house?!

She kept her head down as she walked, pushing against the wind and trying to blink the sleep out of her eyes. And then, quite suddenly, a thought burst into her mind that wrapped her up warmer than any blanket, and sent her sprinting the last few meters toward the newly refurbished stable. The horses, she thought. The horses are coming!

She’d lived here for two months now, and had owned the stable for two and a half, and during all her time here there hadn’t been a single horse in residence. Dogs, yes. Pepper was having a grand old time since they’d moved out here; she ran everywhere, even if she didn’t have to. But having the horses here would finally make it real – all their hard work, restoring the tumbling down stable, fixing up the paddocks, and making the ‘lodge’ habitable again – it would all finally pay off today! Doing the construction had been fun there was no doubt about it, and she had been sort of sad the day they’d christened the stable complete. They’d had so much fun pulling it back together. But she couldn’t say that she wasn't glad they were finally done -- not now, anyway. They were getting their horses!

As she neared the empty stable, she saw all the lights were on, and there was noise coming from inside. She groaned to herself, (how was she late?! She lived there!) pushing through the stable door and into the morning ruckus. Pepper barked loudly as she came in, wagging her tail furiously as she always did.

“So that’s where you are,” she said as the dog came loping towards her, ramming into her legs the way she tended to do, shoving her heavy bum against her knees in a silent demand for affection. Marianne bent down and gave her a hug as a giant bale of hay soared out of the tack room at the back of the stable.

“Look who finally decided to show up.” Marianne’s smiling pink lips dropped into a firm snarl. She hated that indignant sneer, and wondered for the millionth time why she didn’t fire Malachi’s irritating arse. She had to remind herself countless times in a day that he was an asset. She needed him. She needed him. She needed him. She needed him. That had become her mantra these past few weeks.

“Another glorious morning to be alive, Malachi?” she said with an obviously forced smile, poison in her sugary sweet voice.

“Shut up and put some hay in stall seventeen,” Mal snarled, heaving the bale onto his shoulder and disappearing into stall nine.

She hated it when he talked to her like that. Which to be frank, was all the time. “Don't yell at me! I pay your salary!” she snapped at him, getting up to do what he told her to anyway.

“I build your stables,” he snapped back from somewhere inside the closed off stall.

She huffed and made her way over to the tack and feed room, and slid open the wood door separating said tack from said feed. She loved the smell of this room; the clean, sharp smell of the new leather saddles and bridles mingled so well with the musty, homey smell of hay and oats and whatever the heck else they kept packed into those boxes. She grabbed one of the bales by the twine cord that held it together, and heaved, disappointed when it moved hardly a foot.

“I can’t carry this!” she called out, folding her hands over her chest as though he could see her stubborn determination to fail.

“CHRIS!” Malachi called out from somewhere outside. “Help Tinkerbell!”

Not a moment later, Chris’ mop of hair peered around the door. “What am I doing?” he asked, leaning against the doorpost.

“Morning Chris! Make Malachi move it,” she said, frowning. She liked Chris; he was fun and exciting. That’s why she wanted Malachi to suffer.

“Are you crazy? He’s been PMSing all morning,” Chris told her, cracking his knuckles before wrapping his fingers around the twine and hauling the bale onto his shoulder the way Malachi had done.

“… Should I ask?” she asked, following him outside as he hefted the bale down the aisle towards the two hoverstall-seventeen, opening the door for him.

“Probably not,” he said, looking down at the hay bale and motioning her toward it. “Wait – aren’t we not – MAL! Whose stall is this?” Chris asked, counting up the stalls they had prepped this morning. “Aren’t we only getting nine? This is ten.”

“Norwegian Warmblood comes in tomorrow evening,” Mal said, dusting his hands off on his jeans as he walked out into the aisle. “How are you not done yet?”

“Shut up, Malachi,” she snarled. “What do I do now?” she asked, turning to Chris and ignoring Malachi completely as he walked up behind them.

“It’s precise and difficult. You tear it apart. Then you scatter it. It’s tough, but I think you can probably handle it,” Chris said, and Marianne shoved him back into the stall door. It was different when Chris insulted her; with him, you knew it was a joke. With Malachi, it was dead seriousness.

“Where’s your dad, Malachi?” she asked as she began to fumble with the twine that held the bale together. Mr Black was far more pleasant than his son was, and to be honest, Marianne had no idea how such a great guy could sire the devil reincarnate. He knew everything Mal knew – but apparently, Malachi was a far better rider, which Marianne found hard to believe. At this point, it seemed like everyone was equally good, though they kept insisting that wasn’t the case.

“Dentist,” Malachi told her bluntly, staring out the open stable door and into the snow beyond it. “He’ll be by to check everyone out afterwards. Speaking of which, we’re short handed. Three people can’t run a stable by themselves,” he told her matter-of-factly.

She stopped and looked over at him. “There’s four of us,” she told him just as frankly.

“No,” he replied, folding his arms over his chest and glaring at her with blatant challenge in his blue eyes. “There’s us, and there’s you. You can’t even figure out the hay. Use some scissors.”

She was going to say something snarky back at him, but then they all heard something that made them stop. Except Pepper, who was busy running back and forth, intermittently examining all the stalls and chasing her shadow around the walls. She was very good at entertaining herself.

The rumbling of wheels and the screeching of brakes sounded loudly outside the stable door, and Marianne leapt to her feet, both the hay and the witty-come-back forgotten for the moment. “That’s them!” she announced excitedly, in a strangled screech so high that Pepper looked back at her curiously, tilting her head inquiringly. For a moment, Marianne didn’t know what to do – and then she scrambled out to of the stall and flew out the door; and there they were, three massive horse trailers, parked in her car park. The time had come. She was going to meet her horses. She was going to meet HER horses!