Kate Lattey

Because that saying about sticks and stones is a pack of lies. Unkind words hurt more than anything else. You end up carrying them around in your head, wondering if they__e true. Bruises fade, but self-doubt follows you forever.

I clung to the dream like a lifeline, the only thing worth keeping going for. That was why I had agreed to come here. I'd always said I would sell my soul for a pony of my own.

The future hovered in front of her, and she rode Cruise towards it, her hands steady on the reins and her head among the clouds.

Everyone's pain is relative. We've learned how to deal with grief, because we've had to. But Bree hasn't. And our grief was shared, because we all felt it at the same time. She had to deal with hers alone.

Goodbye," she told him, running her hand across his broad back one last time. "I love you. And I'll never, ever stop missing you.

I think you're wrong.""Well I think you're naive," Hayley snapped."Maybe," Marley conceded, starting to walk away. "But I'd rather be that than a bully like you.

Never tell her that something is impossible, because she'll kill herself proving you wrong.

Real is...just being you. It's not letting yourself be defined by other people's opinions of you, of who they think you are, or what they expect you to be. It's refusing to let them squash you into the box they've built for you, and just being yourself, no matter what anyone else thinks. Because you're never going to matter to everyone, just like everyone's never going to matter to you. So you choose the people whose opinions you care about, and you be real for them.

I__ looked around my room at the ribbons and sashes and rosettes hanging from the walls, at the photos of my ponies clearing the highest fences with me crouched in the saddle, a look of utter determination on my face. I__ made myself look hard at the pictures, at my legs swinging backwards over the fences, at my body lying low over my pony__ neck, my hands grasping at the reins as I turned them in mid-air. At the way that Teddy__ eyes were bulging as I pulled him around a tight turn, at the way the veins popped out on Buck__ lathered neck, at Springbok__ open mouth, dripping with foam. I__ looked hard at them all, and I hadn__ liked what I__ seen.

The pony is mad. She can go from a relaxed walk to a flat out gallop in seconds if something spooks her, and she won__ stop until she practically crashes into something. I__e seen her buck, rear and spin around in circles. She__ completely unpredictable and I don__ even trust her on the ground. As far as I__ concerned, Alec__ welcome to her, and he relishes the challenge. For some reason, he loves that pony most of all. Perhaps it__ because no-one else would give her a chance, that they__ written her off as crazy, mean, dangerous. Alec admires her independent spirit, I think, and maybe he likes that she still has that strength of spirit, that she still challenges him every time he rides her. He can__ completely dominate her, and he doesn__ try. He wants a partnership with her. And slowly, slowly, his father is taking that away from him, bullying the mare and his son at the same time, seeking to fit them into the same mould, the only one he knows. The strong succeed while the weak fall behind.