Ryuu James had always been a teacher. When he was young he would teach his brothers and sisters all the wrong things – tell them right was wrong and wrong was right. He taught Kailie that eating grass was good, and that horses liked it when you pulled on their tails. No wonder his younger sibling was so deathly afraid of the beasts. As he got older, Ryuu would learn and then pass on how to neck a whole pint in one go, how to get the most out of a cigarette, how to snort up all the powder. When he left home, he went and taught snowboarding in the French Alps, and finally he ended up here in Kentucky, teaching riding to the students of Elmendorf Academy. You would never have guessed that he actually enjoyed it.

“For fuck’s sake woman sit back!” hollered the instructor, sweeping a hand through his shoulder length hair. The girl clinging to the horse’s neck in front of the jump it had just refused glared at him.
“Don’t give me that look! If you’re going over th’ jump, y’ don’t sit forward till y’re off the ground, right?” Ryuu ranted, his thick French accent clipping off the end of his words. She nodded moodily and manoeuvred her horse back onto the track.
“Get ‘im a bit more forward in th’ trot, girl! Heels down! Y’re fuckin’ determined t’ come off that horse ain’t you?” Ryuu continued to nag the girl incessantly as she made her way large, and Ryuu became even more agitated as she came towards the jump.
“Don’t fold till y’re off th’ ground!” he yelled as the horse lunged forward, clearing the jump with several feet to spare. The girl yelped half in exhilaration, half in surprise that she’d actually done it. Laughing raucously, Ryuu hurriedly rounded off the end of the lesson. He was desperate for a cigarette and he couldn’t smoke in front of students (even if everyone already knew he smoked).

Sitting on the mounting block, Ryuu devoured the smoke like his life depended on it, the green flash of his eyes alert to everything that was going on around him. The outdoor arena was surrounded on three sides by pasture, the other side backing on to the feed barn. Horses grazed, some rolled in the summer hardened earth, clouds of dust rising like the smoke from the tip of his cigarette. A pretty dun chased her black stable mate across the field, whinnying to each other and tossing their heads. Ryuu smiled and looked down at his shoes. When he’d been in the Alps and Paris he’d missed horses badly. He’d tried to find places to ride, but visiting once a week just wasn’t the same as living surrounded by the animals all the time. Sighing, he lit another cigarette and waited for his next student to arrive.