Venice Masquerade

just a lovely freestyle project, my "mysterious partner " and I planned for about half a year and now at last finished… I am not so happy with the drawing style, but like the lighting. I recommend using the music as inspiration for that extra chilling eerie-ness

Try to solve that mystery?

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The event was already in full action. Several shows had been done already, you could hear the cheer of the audience through the thin plastic walls of the stable and now an eerie sad music for the current performance that was taking place before their own show. Tressis had always been bombproof. She was one of the rare horses that seemed to have been a guard dog or something very cool in their former lives and came to the horse world as a foal, but with all their memories. Ready to walk through fire and not even flinch at it. So the whole atmosphere of this event had no effect on her, even if it was strange compared to those normal dressage shows. The horse had been transported to the arena by the event managers, like all show horses did. No name, no mark on the box door to tell who she belonged to. The box walls were covered with black cloths and also the room before the box was hidden from public sight. If someone walked in to the stable tent behind the arena, no one could tell which box or which horse belonged to him. All participants were advised to wear their show outfit right from the start so no one would see their face around the event, if they did not intend to. It was Masquerade Ball in Venice too, so no one took notice of people wearing masks at all. The light in the tent was already dimmed so the Tressis rider had some trouble to put the tack on her, because the mask was also hindering his sight a bit. He could hear the snorts of other horses and some meters away the familiar sound of a horse being bridled. A sound that had a certain feeling of happiness to many riders. Tressis rider was among them.
A guide came into their space and nodded. “You can go into the preparation arena now.” He nodded back. The black curtains between the single boxes parted in front of him and he walked towards the entrance of the great hall. The warm up was done in a small arena before the main entrance of the great Hall. It had also been devided so he had actually half of it to itself. The music of the act before him was still playing. He didn’t know what their own music would be like, he had tried to riddle it from the movements and was expecting something mighty classical, grave … Bach or Beethoven-like. He could hear his partner for the Pas de Deux coming into the other part of the small preparation arena. He heard a steady, strong stride in the sand. Just like his own horse, the other did not hesitate to walk, trot or canter past the big candeliers, to step into the glowing mist that was created by some machines for the arena and did not react because of the lighting. Everything had to be tested. The rider on the other side very carefully rehearsed the Kuer, he had prepared unusually intense for the show. It meant unusually much to him, he had not been in show rings for a while, not to speak of high class dressage, trained blindly and finally about to perform together with someone he did not know. Some second he thought in horror, what happened if he messed this up in public. But then he realized that no one would ever know if he did not want to. He had this ridiculous black and white mask, the hair had been braided and put into a neat knot so he was not obviously different from someone with short hair. Sadly though, obviously different from nice blonde. So he wouldn’t have a partner in the nice blonde he saw some minutes ago rushing through the stable tent. No need to fear he’d mess up, no one would know. Another part of his mind joined in. The other one, whoever that might be should better not mess up their performance. He wouldn’t like to be seen with a total retard in that arena, even with a mask. Suddenly there was a bit of silence, no horse moved anymore and both riders knew that they had been thinking about each other somehow. With an almost audible grin both riders resumed their warming-up again. Until their time came. The show before their own performance ended with thundering applause from the audience. Some silence and another applause. The riders came out of the arena some moments later, they had taken the masks off for the audience on their own free choice. Two show guides came to both riders that were now ready to start the show. They approached the entrance with the barrier between them, a lot like a starting gate at a racing event.

Show Music Here
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The beginning of the deep chant called them to start their performance. In a slow , collected walk they came into the show arena, that was lit in deep red. Not much was visible for them, everything was shapes and lens flares as both horses started to passage exactly on the heavy beat of the song. Both adjusted the stride of their horses slightly, so they went down the middle line perfectly parallel, turned away from each other at the short side and cantered measured towards the corners. In halfpass they met each other at X again, parted striding towards the corners. There they fell into trot, passing each other in front of the heavy black curtains that now hid the entrance. Tressis passaged down the long side of the hall, while the other was doing pretty vivid two tempi changes on the diagonal exactly on the beat of the music. Tressis stopped and performed one of her marvelous piaffes, while the other one turned around on a wide half circle until they were both on mirroring sides of the arena. From there they took off in measured canter. With Tressis’ rider chosing the wrong lead, but the other quickly adapted to symmetry. They did a half circle around each other in the center of the arena, then symmetrically crisscrossed through the arena with perfectly measured half passes. Both horses then turned in synchronized tempi changes. The riders saw that the other, both understood what they were doing and couldn’t be more pleased with the ongoing performance. They were proud of their horses and their obvious skills. No one would ever suspect these two had never trained together nor seen each other. Arriving in the opposite corners of the long side both bolted off in extended canter just on collision course. The audience started to mumble and then a second later there was silence as both riders passed each other by without stopping visibly, but the tail of the pale horse swished along Tressis legs. The most spectacular point though were the pirouettes, when both horses were performing them so close to each other, that the riders would have been able to touch each other. The horses spun perfectly in time, like clockwork. Now it was the first time that differences in their riding style where visible to the eye. While Tressis Pirouette was Baroque-Textbook, the pale horse lifted up in the front doing some mixture of rear and western spin, that looked spectacular. Tressis rider had time to think about what he saw. He liked the communication of rider and horse, though the pair seemed not as accomplished and fine tuned as he and Tressis were. They had an oldschool quality about their style, something reminding him of a unpolished version of his Grandfathers way of riding, who was a cavalry officer. There was not much the horse could tell him, it seemed some crossbred, slightly baroque in his quiet pride. And between the light flares that were constantly blinding him and sending coloured spots over his visual field he could see too that the rider had longer hair. He suspected she was one of his dead friends later students, who had been chosen to do the performance with him. Anyway as they stood next to each other actually not seeing much from the applauding people in the arena he disagreed to unmask. He liked being all mysterious and he liked reading about the performance in the papers tomorrow, without his name written under the picture. Tressis did a reverence for the audience to another chant of “O Death”. The rider of the pale horse nodded and the horse did a flawlessly balanced Levade and Tressis joined in only seconds later. They left the arena together, every rider probably smiling behind their masks and they returned to their compartments without showing their faces, but not without wondering about the other for some more time.


to be continued