Chapter Text
It is, unfortunately, that second evening that everything gets ruined.
After a disappointing dinner of watery tomato pasta, the parent chaperones attempt to organise the children so that there is less frantic dashing around in the morning - evening skip outs, tack cleaning, haynet filling, all the jobs that most of them are lazy enough to leave until the last minute - but the five of them are adept at escaping adults and spend the time passing around Bart’s gameboy. An hour of attempting to wrangle all the children into some semblance of order later, the adults give up, and the older teens organise a game of man hunt to pass the time until they need to be in tents. What they did not tell this year’s chaperones is that man hunt was banned the previous year after an incident involving the water jump and copious amounts of slime. The boundaries are marked only by the fences surrounding the grounds. Everywhere is a potential hiding spot, and everyone wants to win.
This is how Tim ends up taking a phone call from his parents halfway up a tree over a mile away from camp.
They do not usually call after seven in the evening, but they do normally call on days they do not watch him, so he supposes they must have been busy. Adults have rich and fulfilling lives outside of their measly offspring; Tim had learnt this at a young and tender age, just as he had learnt not to question. They ask about his day, listen to not a word of it, tell him about theirs, and Tim listens to not a word of it. Then they get to their real business.
“We’ve been thinking, darling, and it simply is not proper for you to still be on a pony. It is only right we start finding a proper horse for you, none of this pony nonsense.” Tim stops absently swinging his legs and starts paying attention.
“Mum, where is this coming from? I don’t need a new horse; I’m fine right now. With how things are.”
“You’re thirteen now, Timothy. We’ve let it pass this year because, well, you’re only just thirteen, and it’s not like you’re tall for your age, but it’s almost unseemly now. You know what the committees are like. You’ll never be picked for teams or move up the rides on just a pony.” Tim hums as if he does not care. In truth, he isn’t sure he likes where this conversation is going, but many of the things his parents said they’d do never actually happened.
“There’s a lovely horse for sale, a few hours south-west of here. We’re going to drive down tonight and view it tomorrow. All going well, you will have a new horse and a new ride before the end of the season. It’s a showjumper, I’m told, with a very prestigious bloodline. Gorgeous creature.” Tim feels something in him curdle. It isn’t that he feels any particular loyalty to his pony, but he doesn’t want anything to change either.
“But, mum…”
“I thought you’d be pleased, lad. We’ll go hunting in the winter, just you and me.” That's his dad. Sounds like their minds were made up, seeing as he could hear motorway noises in the background when his dad spoke. He sighs.
“Sure. That sounds great.”
“Wonderful. Well, we’d best be off. Call us tomorrow, around 4. We’ll talk then.” A beep as the connection cuts out. Tim pockets the phone, then looks around. While he was distracted, the forest had become dark, and he realises that he could hear no voices calling out, no footsteps or shrieks of glee. The game of man hunt was long over, and Tim had not been found.
They all realise Something is Up by the end of breakfast the next morning when Tim has not said more than three words to any of them. He isn't sure what the problem is really - changes are normally sudden with his parents, not something he gets more than a week's notice of - but their petty squabbles over where to put the wheel in the musical ride seem juvenile and, well, petty.
"What's up, Boy Wonder?" Steph asks him on the way back to the stables, elbowing him good naturedly in the ribs. Tim cracks an echo of a matching grin, but it falls away quickly. He shrugs.
"Dunno," he says and scuffs the toe of his boot against the gravel. His parents would hate it. He does it again.
"Let's nick some carrots from the kitchen," Steph suggests. "We can give the ponies a treat and I know being sneaky always cheers you up." Tim narrows his eyes at her suspiciously.
"Is this part of your scheme to convert me to a life of crime?"
"It's for a good cause!" she pleads. "The ponies deserve carrots. You can't possibly disagree - they've been working so hard." She's right. The ponies have been working hard. They do deserve carrots.
"Okay then," he tells her, wrapping an arm around her briefly in a half hug. "Here's what we're going to do."
Tim is mostly back to his usual self by their morning session. Steph has always had that effect on him. His parents despise her, think she's a bad influence, but she brings Tim out of his head and into the present every time. If anything, she's a good influence. It hurts to think of a single rally without her, without any of them really. And oh, there's the sadness again. There's the horrible feeling in his chest like something or someone is dying.
He clamps it down deep inside and doesn't look at it. It's all he can do really.
Their musical ride plan is coming along. Sort of. They still don't have a floor plan nailed down, which is a problem, but they have costumes. Unfortunately, costumes are not compulsory. Knowing where you're going is kind of a requirement of musical rides. To add to their troubles, they have to contend with Tim's terrible luck with musical rides: the kind of bad luck that results in something going wrong every. Single. Year.
Tim must have angered the god of pony club musical rides in a past life because it is the one thing the ride have never won and it is entirely his fault. Costume failures, turning the wrong way, scratched CDs, all of them Tim's fault. This year, Cassie has told him, he will not have a single responsibility so he cannot possibly jeopardise their chances just by existing. If anything goes wrong, it will be on someone else's shoulders. It's the sort of kindness Tim never expects, but has come to associate with Cassie in team leader mode: pragmatic, sensible kindness.
Their first ride through is, predictably, a disaster. Bart and Kon’s centrepiece manoeuvre almost ended in a head-on collision. Steph turned the wrong way twice. Tim somehow ended up on the wrong rein and ended up on the final centre line backwards. Cassie got so frustrated shouting at them she almost left the ring. Mr Tornado watched impassively, as if he knew something they did not, but Tim honestly couldn’t see how this could possibly come together in time.
They try a second time, then a third, and every attempt ends in disaster. Never the same mistake twice, of course, they are all intelligent teenagers, but enough errors that tensions are running high by the time they break for lunch.
Wednesday is, by tradition, the day they have chip butties for lunch. Or rather, the chip van appears as if by magic five minutes before lunch and they make sure to have cheese sandwiches ready to stuff full of chips. As clouds roll across the sky, they sit outside the tent in equally stormy silence and do not look each other in the eye. After lunch will be stable management, then cross country. There is no more time and they are not ready.
Tim cannot help but feel that the team, close-knit and carefully constructed as it is, is falling apart around him. It is his fault, he thinks, knowing it is irrational. He’s been off his game all day, the phone call with his parents a lingering distraction, and it has ruined any progress they could have made. When Greta was with them… But he stops that train of thought in its tracks. It is no use wishing for the past. Time to plan for the future.
He says nothing to the others. It’ll be a nice surprise.
Stable management is an exercise in futility. Mr Tornado, in his endless patience, attempts to teach them once again how to plait. Steph and Kon have already perfected it, Cassie is well on her way, but Tim and Bart are hopeless. Bart’s attention span is not sufficient to plait all the way down, tie off, roll up, band again, even once, let alone nine or even eleven times. Sewing in plaits would likewise be beyond him. Tim, meanwhile, simply tangles his poor pony’s mane up in knots trying to manage the three sections in each plait. His bands keep snapping, his sections are uneven, his plaiting too loose in some places and too tight in others. It’s hopeless. And Mr Tornado must know it, because he sends them off to tack up and get ready for cross country early.
This is when Tim discovers that his body protector has disappeared somewhere and spends a full ten minutes tearing apart his tack box looking for it. He digs out all kinds of junk he hadn’t realised he still owned, but no body protector. Kon, attempting to be helpful, stands in horrified silence for a moment before fleeing back to his own stable. Traitor.
The time to get out on the cross country course passes, and the pony stands, head low, waiting for Tim to drag it out to the field. He still cannot find it and it is driving him insane. A cough from the door catches his attention. It’s Kon, leaning against the doorframe with a hand behind his back.
“Still looking?”
“What do you think?” TIm snaps, irritated.
“Need help?”
“No. Maybe. Yes.”
“Well,” Kon says, “I know it’s not yours, and I know you’re particular about these things, but I’ve got a spare? You can borrow it for today and have another look later.”
Tim could cry. He could actually cry; there is water in his eyes.
Holding it like something holy, he takes the body protector from Kon. It’ll be a bit long in the back, and probably wide in the shoulders - Kon’s built differently and even his old outgrown one is going to be far too big for Tim’s stunted height - but it'll do. It only needs to last him a few hours. Spontaneously, he crushes Kon in a hug, then slings the body protector over his shoulders and zips up the front. He can adjust the straps after getting on.
Kon, lanky with teenage growth, can vault onto his pony, but Tim has to find a convenient fence or tree stump. The camp stables do not, of course, have a mounting block. Why would they? It’s not like they have a camp full of children on horses they can barely reach the heads of or anything. Fully mounted, they bounce their way over to the meeting point for cross country: the large expanse of green field they use to warm up, and as they do, a thunder rumbles, followed by a crack of lightning splitting the sky. It won’t be enough to call off the afternoon sessions, but will probably be enough for them to avoid sheltering under trees or braving the derby bank.
They get their time trial times recorded first, then manage a few warm up fences before the heavens open and Cassie falls off in the ditch they weren’t even meant to be attempting. Her last pair of jodhpurs. Ruined. She hops back on without complaint, but none of them were clever enough to bring coats, so she, and the rest of them, are all shivering lightly.
Mr Tornado takes pity on them somewhere around the hour mark, when even Robin was beginning to face her quarters to the rain and wind and ignoring Steph's frantic signals to Not Do That. Sending them back to the stables to dry off, he requests their presence in an hour in the clubhouse for a meeting. It is a sombre end to a difficult day, and when Tim looks at his watch he realises with a start that he only has two hours until his phone call with his parents. It opens a pit in his stomach that cannot be eased by his friends having a vicious towel fight, or even the parent chaperones bringing all the drenched children polystyrene cups with hot chocolate (with marshmallows). Probably the upcoming meeting with Mr Tornado isn’t helping his worry, but he… doesn’t want to talk to his parents.
It sounds terrible.
It doesn’t change the fact that it’s true.
“I want a written floorplan,” Mr Tornado tells them when they slink in through the door. “Written, drawn, whatever. I need to see you know what you’re doing tomorrow morning.” He is one-hundred percent serious, not a trace of the benign, absent smile on his face. All business, no playing around. “You have twenty minutes.”
Cassie immediately scrambles for the paper, while Steph and Bart grab the pot of coloured pens. A good two minutes of their precious time is spent trying to find a pen that works. It is surprisingly hard for a pony club part-funded by Bruce Wayne the literal millionaire to have a stash of working felt tips apparently, but eventually they find five that do. Tim, always the precise one, draws out the arena, complete with letter markers at the correct proportions. He mumbles the rhyme to himself as he goes: All King Edward’s Horses Can Manage Big Fences. Steph and Kon take over then, grabbing the coloured pens and drawing their route exactly as Cassie tells them. Things are too serious now to muck around, and none of them want to let their team leader down. Tim and Bart, with an extra piece of paper and a pencil, write down exactly what she says, all the notes, all the reminders, and hope it is good enough.
Mr Tornado looks it over with furrowed brows, not letting anything show on his face. Then, looking up at them, he nods once, and lets the cheers wash over him.
“I have my concerns still,” he says over their din, “but this is a good start. You need to learn it now.” He looks at his watch and sighs. “Go now, have a break, have your tea, but make sure you take the time to learn this floorplan before tomorrow. If you don’t,” he levels a withering look in their direction, “you do not stand a chance of winning this year. I hear Dinah’s ride in particular have been working hard on theirs.”
They don’t need telling twice.
Tim feels jittery. It’s the only word for the shivers running up and down the insides of his bones, the churning in his stomach. He knows he looks pale and uncertain, can see the concern in his friends’ faces, but it’s nothing, really. He shouldn’t be like this. It is just a phone call with his parents, and he’s not like Jason or Steph, who have a complicated relationship with father figures in general, or their old friend Cissie, whose mother was a real piece of work, or Cassie, whose relationship with her parents basically boiled down to showing them the middle finger and doing her own thing. His parents are fine. He’s fine. Everything’s fine. Except he’s all…wrong. Messy. Shaky.
He knows the rest of them go to their ponies when they’re upset or stressed or angry, and let the soft noses and ears and trusting, unjudging eyes ease all their problems, but Tim has not and does not do that. Ever. He’s not here for the pony. He’s not here for the prestige or the rosettes or the learning or the thrill. He’s here for his friends. (He’s here because his parents want him to be; the friends just make it worth it.)
At four, he leaves them sprawled in the hallway to brave the cold and the wet. He would rather not talk to his parents in front of his friends. There is no particular reason why, but it is a truth universally acknowledged that his little team and his parents must remain separate. This is only partially because Steph and Kon in particular have such a terrible reputation with them.
The phone rings, an obnoxious jingle that came preloaded and he never bothered to change, and he answers hesitantly, “hey, Mum, Dad.”
“Timothy,” his mother answers, he supposes dad must be driving. “Your training is going well, I hope?” she always speaks like this: like pony club is the gateway to grand achievements, like it’s training for the youth olympics and not a gathering place for a mishmash of all kinds of pony-mad kids.
“Yeah,” he says, rooting up a clump of grass with his toe. The soil underneath is thick and black, turning gloopy with the rain. “We did some cross country this afternoon, but it got rained off.”
“Oh,” she sounds disappointed. Tim should rectify that. “Nothing else of use?”
“Well our musical ride is shaping up well,” he offers, though he knows she will sniff derisively at it. He is, as usual, right.
“Whatever is the use of that, I wonder? Back when your father and I went to pony club we didn’t do any of that nonsense. We trained hard and we liked it. Gymkhana games are bad enough but musical rides? Whatever is the world coming to?” Tim winces.
“I know, Mum, but it has its uses I suppose. If ever I need to do a freestyle to music, I know how to choreograph a test, at least.” She sighs loudly enough that the phone crackles.
“No matter. It’s not your fault that club seem to take pride in wasting our time and money. We are on our way back from Somerset, Timothy, where that horse was.”
“Oh?” he says, trying to sound interested, rather than full of dread. His mother hums.
“Yes. It was a beautiful thing, bold, scopey, good bone.”
“Will you get it vetted?” Tim asks. This is a safe question.
“We are still thinking over whether it is entirely suitable for you. It is, after all, a very large horse, with lots of power, and you are rather on the small size.” Tim hears a chuckle from further off. His dad, most likely.
“Well he certainly gets that from you, Janet.” Definitely his dad.
“Shh,” she teases, and there’s a muffled thwack, like she’d slapped him lightly with the back of a gloved hand. “Anyway, it’s a big horse, with lots of scope and power, and there’s no use buying it for you if it’s going to make you look even worse than you are.” Tim does not take offense at this. He would have, had he been a few years younger, but new, improved, teenager-Tim has thick skin and a steel heart. It’s barely an insult really.
“Ok,” he says, in a voice that is not small. “So what’s your plan now?”
“Keep looking,” his mum says with a sigh. “That’s all we can do, really. There are plenty out there and it’s a buyers market at the moment so we shouldn’t find it too hard. Worst case scenario we import from the continent, but it really is better to keep these things in-country, you know?” Tim does not know. He cares even less about bloodlines than the average horse-person, in part because he cares very little for the horses themselves to begin with. His mother, on the other hand, follows specific breed lines avidly, and has preferences on things like introducing new blood, and what grandsires are best.
“Well good luck,” he tells them. “Let me know how it goes. Will you be coming to watch on Friday?” Friday is, and always has been, one-day-event day, and the parents all try to attend. There’s an official photographer, an ice-cream van: it’s like a circus, almost, but without the colour. Tim’s parents have always attended in the past, but he still would like the reassurance.
“We will try,” she tells him. “If we don’t make the morning, we will be there in the afternoon to pick you up, and to take you to the prize giving in the evening.”
That’s as good as he’s going to get.
Dinner is another disappointment, bean chilli and overcooked rice that’s somehow still crunchy. They scarf it down quickly and sit in a circle playing an impromptu game of never have I ever with cups of flat lemonade in the girls’ tent. Tim…never wanted to know this much about his friends. It's a nice reprieve from the stress of the day.
“Never have I ever,” Steph begins slowly, pausing at the end of the phrase to think, “had my pony sold out from under me.”
Kon drinks, with a bitter mutter about Jon taking his first pony, to which Steph thwacks the back of his head and tells him it doesn’t count when it's your own brother, but it's Bart who notices Tim had drank too.
“I’m on my third pony,” he explains. “Mum and Dad sell them when they think I need something better, then get me something new. I think this is the longest I’ve been on the same pony, and it’s half because I had Robin last season.” He shrugs ambivalently, but the others look horrified.
“That’s awful, Tim.”
“That’s just how it goes. They want me on a horse next season, ‘s why they keep calling every day.”
“Do you want to be on a horse next season?” Cassie asks. Tim shrugs again.
“Doesn’t matter, does it? They’re my parents. They make the decisions.”
“Well I’m taking that as a ‘no’.” Tim shrugs helplessly. It seems to be all he can do.
“Alright team!” Cassie has her leader-voice on now, and claps her hands eagerly as if she doesn’t already have their attention. “Our new mission is ‘change Tim’s parent’s minds about the pony.’ All in favour say ‘aye’.” All present say ‘aye’. Except Tim. Tim’s face merely burns with embarrassment.
“Anyway,” Tim says, eager to change the subject, “I’ve been thinking and I’ve got a plan for musical ride practice.” The others, used to Tim’s ways, allow him to direct the conversation.
“Meet in the stables at eleven? Lights out is ten, so that gives the adults time to think we’ve all gone to sleep. Wear your boots and jods.” None of them ask questions, which is pretty normal for a Tim-plan. They agree to reconvene later, and split to do late night feeds and head ‘to bed’. Despite the unseasonable chill, the driving rain that has not let up, and the terrible day they've had, Tim leaves the girls' tent feeling somewhat hopeful.
The rain had fizzled out to a spitting mist by the time curfew came about. It is a terrible type of rain, worse than the heavy downpour earlier in the afternoon, and the parent chaperones are clearly fed up by the time lights out comes and goes. They do one walk around with torches, then vanish to wherever adults sleep at night. And then the team congregates in the stables.
Tack is dragged out of boxes, whispered greetings given to ponies and gentle shushing noises as they begin to move around. Helmets and boots had already been put on in the tent, but gloves and, at Cassie's insistence, body protectors are slipped over pyjama tops, and jackets over the top of that to protect against the rain. They can see very little. Their fingers fumble straps they thought until that moment they could do up in their sleep. Bart stumbles on a loose stone that had been there since the beginning of the season. One of the ponies whinnies suddenly, and it splits the night sky like a bolt of lightning. They stop. Listen. Look carefully around them for adults. None come and so they breathe a sigh of relief and continue.
They do not turn their head torches on until they are out in the field, far out of sight of any tents or adults. When they do, they can just about make out the arena markers popping up out of the dark grass like giant molehills.
“Cassie,” Tim hisses, his voice loud in the darkness despite himself, “You got the floorplan?”
“What do you take me for? Of course I do,” she hisses back and calls Bart over to her end of the arena.
At no point did they consider that there could be danger here. They trust this space, their skills, their ponies, implicitly, with no doubt in their minds. There is something thrilling about riding by torchlight, about the darkness that smothers their path, about knowing that the adults would be horrified if they could see. After half an hour of running through the same movements individually, they attempt to run through the whole thing, humming the music jerkily to themselves as they do so. Cassie’s head torch flickers out, but with Bart right behind her, it had mattered very little to begin with. Then, with a shriek, she almost collides with Steph, and the illusion of competency is broken.
This had been a terrible idea.
Right before the final centreline, Tim skids to a halt
“Adults coming,” he gasps, and the others turn in horror. Sure enough, five bobbing lights are moving towards them through the darkness.
“Scatter!” Cassie hisses, and they do. After turning off his torch, Tim and Kon make their way back to the stables the long way round, behind the greyscale graveyard that was the jump store, ducking between the lorry park and the forest.
The stables, thankfully, are temporary stables on grass, rather than a purpose-built block on concrete. They could sneak in softly, rather than hoping the clattering of hooves doesn't wake anyone. Untacking in silence, they keep a careful ear out for the others, or for the adults. But all is quiet, no adults and no Cassie or Bart or Steph. They return to their tent in silence and worried.
The next morning, though, all had been forgotten. They are giggly all through breakfast, much to the adults’ suspicion, and carefully hopeful all the way through to meeting up with Mr Tornado.
“Whose idiotic plan was it to go out last night?” are Mr Tornado’s first words to them. They stop, look at each other sideways, and close ranks.
“No idea what you’re talking about,” Steph says gleefully.
“What would we be doing out after curfew?” Tim asks angelically.
“Plan? What plan?” Conner says guilelessly.
“We’re not idiots, Mr Tornado,” Cassie finishes, and they all look at Bart.
Bart is looking over the field at the approaching storm clouds.
“What?”
Mr Tornado rolls his eyes.
“You think you’re so clever,” he says. “I wasn’t born yesterday, you know? But I won’t push. Let’s run through your ride one more time, then I’ll send you off to change. Costumes ready?”
They all nod, and take their places.
Their musical ride goes well. Very well. Better than any musical ride they’d done any years previously. Tim’s terrible luck strikes once again, but even that is not as catastrophic as it could have been. He only misses Steph’s hand in the high five, no crashes or missed turns or kicking the fence. The music works perfectly: no crackles or distortion and their inelegant final halt fits perfectly with it. They get a round of applause that was more than just polite, and even a small but proud smile from Mr Tornado, which is basically glowing praise from him. Dinah’s ride puts on a good show too, but a very standard one for them, polished, professional, dull. The babies on the lead rein do their usual walk-and-trot display to the Pink Panther theme. The big kids on their fancy horses do something suitably dramatic with lots of complicated canter work but little in the way of costumes. They stand a chance this year, Tim is sure. He isn’t going to get his hopes up - pessimism never leads to disappointment - but he feels that little flickering flame grow in his chest anyway. Not even the promise of unmounted games that afternoon could deter it.
Unmounted games are, almost unanimously, everyone’s least favourite part of camp. They are messy and undignified and often observed by far more parents than usual who all want their beloved offspring to win at any cost. It doesn’t help that all the usual teams are split up: nominally for the sake of fairness, but in actuality just so they could split up the kids prone to shenanigans. This means a whole afternoon without Kon or Bart or Cassie or Steph. In other words, an afternoon of torture. There is nothing worse than an afternoon where the entire objective seemed to be to get as filthy as possible with none of your friends to cheer you on. Tim’s least favourite race of the lot is the apple bobbing, entirely because the parent chaperones always devise a new and exciting way of making it the worst kind of suffering. Last year, there was vinegar in the water.
This year, they had added an extra step to the apple bobbing. Bob for an apple, in a normal bucket of water, then run to another bucket, this one full of bran flakes, and bob for a lolly. You are not allowed to dry your face in between. You are not allowed to clean your face afterwards. Tim thinks very seriously to himself that this might be the race that breaks him.
But he survives. Somehow. And they have pizza for dinner - proper takeaway pizza, delivered to camp by a very confused uni student - with strawberry jelly for dessert. Every little helps, as they say at Tesco. They eat surrounded by similarly soaked and miserable older teens, the ones all jaded and fed-up of the immaturity inherent to unmounted games. The oldest girls complain about their hair and nails getting ruined (as if horses don’t do that anyway), and the boys lament the lack of water guns and opportunities for shenanigans. Privately, TIm agrees with this assessment: the ability to drench the adults subjecting them to this torture would make it much more bearable.
Between unmounted games and dinner, however, Mr Tornado took them all aside and, brush and water bucket in hand, shows them - for the fourth time, no less - how to do correct quarter markers.
“I expect these to be perfect tomorrow,” he tells them sternly. “No more second chances.” It is the reminder they had all needed that the final day is tomorrow. Friday. One day event day. Tack and turnout day. They do not heed it.
The final night, as was now tradition, is prank night. The youngest kids are the easiest targets and thus are ignored. It's only fun if it's something of a challenge. Their target this year is Dinah’s ride, who had set up camp only metres away, and had the temporary stable block across the way from them. Dinah's ride, all week, have been their enemy, their nemesis, and they are going to rue the day they crossed Tornado's ride. Justice would come down upon them this night and Dinah's ride will see once and for all that they are simply inferior in every way.
To prepare for this, Steph, who was always vocally disgusted by most of the unmounted games, and Tim who simply had not wanted to be there and had made that abundantly clear, had wandered off midway through the afternoon and collected a range of creepy crawlies. They had found beetles under paving slabs, woodlice and earwigs crawling up fence posts, snails and slugs in the shade of the trees, and, their big find, a large and hairy spider near the hay storage. All these, they had placed in several empty plastic containers and waterbottles, ready for use in the evening. And ready they are. With darkness cloaking them, they creep from their tents, join up by the fence, and carefully take a container of bugs each. Dinah's ride are split among three tents, and they are all, bar one, outside getting sweet revenge on whatever team they have decided is worthy of their ire this year. Tim and Kon set off in the direction of one of the tents, careful to stay out of the way of any swinging head torches, and stepping high to avoid tent pegs and guy ropes. Carefully, near silently, they slide the zip upwards and wait for their eyes to adjust to the darkness of the tent interior. Inside each sleeping back, they scatter a few of their prized creepy crawlies. In their welly boots, they tip a large quantity of leftover flat lemonade. In the event that the liquid itself evaporates by morning, the stickiness will remain.
They slip out of the tent, zip it up, and fly like bats back to their tent. Which means, of course, that they bump into each other, the tent pegs, the guy ropes, the fence, and, unfortunately for Kon, a tree, on more than one occasion. Their prank, however, is complete and in the morning, they will reap the rewards.
They do not, of course, escape a night of mischief unscathed. Tim discovers, as he reaches for his helmet the next morning, that it has been filled with dirty leaves. When they get to the stables, they find someone had swapped everyone's browbands. Everyone's. In the whole pony club. Not even the little ones were safe, much to the parent chaperones' chagrin. This delays everyone's morning by at least an hour, as close to a hundred exhausted children attempt to figure out who has their browband and whose browband they have and how to get it back to the right person. The ringleader of that particular prank does not come forward, but they will go down in history as a pranking legend. It rankles at Tim a bit, but he can appreciate a good prank as much as the next guy, even when it's not one of his. Tim had, in fact, been woken by the sweet sound of squealing and shrieking from the direction of DInah's ride, as they discover what exactly had been sleeping in their tent with them, and what had filled their wellies overnight. They were lucky, Tim thinks, that the unspoken rule is good-natured pranks only, or else it would be something far worse than lemonade filling those boots.