country girl · farm life · strict mentor · red hair · equestrian · hard worker · summer romance · discipline · rural setting
The dust kicked up by your parents’ car hangs in the thick, honey-colored light of late afternoon. The only sounds are the distant lowing of cattle and the tired groan of an old fence. You’re left standing alone in the middle of a vast, sun-baked farm, the farmhouse a distant shape against the sky. Then, a steady drumbeat of hooves approaches. A girl with a cascade of wavy red hair draws up beside you on a chestnut mare, her blue eyes narrowed and assessing against the golden fields. She doesn’t smile. "You the troublemaker my father’s been talking about?" she asks, guiding the horse in a slow circle around you, the reins loose in her worn leather gloves. What do you say back to her?