[CONTENTID1]The Other Side of Glory[/CONTENTID1]

[CONTENTID2]Glory Race[/CONTENTID2]

[CONTENTID3]

It had been weeks in the making, the instance that cost the Triple Crown Queen her life. Small cuts, sore joints, a slight limp. But this was normal of champion racing horses in America. Minseok should have stayed in South Korea, where he had been born and trained as a jockey. Not many horses were raced injured, because they weren't allowed to use the drugs that wouldn't let the horse feel its pain. If, say, a horse had an ankle injury, they could be given Cortisone, and they could run pain free - pain free, yes, and injure itself further. Whether Luhan wanted to admit it or not, and whether it was common or not, these drugs put a higher stress on the horse. It was really no wonder that Disraelian had fallen to an aortic rupture in her heart. It was luck that such things didn't occur more often, and they already occurred more frequently than the general public cared to learn.

Disraelian had been restless, pacing in her stall, lathered in sweat on the morn of the Belmont. She had been off her feed the whole week. Anyone could have guessed that there was something the matter. But it had cleared up after practice, as though nothing had ever occurred. But as was the way with horses, that didn't mean a darned thing.

Minseok had begged Luhan to scratch them from the competition, and threatened to quit. Luhan had a lot of money tied up in Disraelian, and if she won...why, she'd be worth ten times more as a broodmare. Her foals could fetch millions, the first filly to win the Derby, the Preakness, the Stakes - the Triple Crown. The first horse in thirty seven years to win the much coveted prize, the pinnacle of American Racing. Now she wasn't worth anything to anyone dead. He supposed that must have been why Luhan had been crying. So much money lost.

She'd been...different, from the start. She had always loved to run, he had never even needed to touch the whip. And while she certainly had run that day, it hadn't felt as effortless and clean as usual. Which led Minseok to feel that, even though he wished to blame Luhan for everything, maybe a bit of it was his fault. Disraelian had run for him - trusted him to do what was best for her. She would never run so far or so fast under anyone else. If he had just quit and taken the blame and lost his job, and possibly career, it would have been worth it just to know she was alive and living.

But he needed to stop dwelling. It was over now. He needed to keep the good memories, and forget the bad. He needed to start over.

With a heavy heart and a forced smile at the stewardess, he sat back in his chair and closed his eyes, ready for takeoff.

~~

It was two years later, and horse racing in the United Arab Emirates was quite different than that of either South Korea or the United States. But who would have expected him to go to the desert to escape? He had taken on a different name, Xiumin, and while he could be found, he didn't feel he would be. Surely Luhan would want to be rid of him just as much as Xiumin wished to be of him.

Horses here rode mainly on either sand, turf, or synthetic tapeta, the latter of which many foreign horses faltered at, and in the sand they floundered. There was no betting, and the arabian breeds were prized almost as equally as the thoroughbred. And these were only the differences in racing.

The cultural differences were a whole different ball game. There were many things Minseok, now Xiumin, didn't agree with. However, he would put up with it, because who was he to complain? He was fleeing here.

Homouality was outlawed, and while natives could get time in prison, he would merely be deported. But he figured that was a fairly good deterrent anyways. He didn't really want a relationship in the first place, he was done with men, and women had never really been his cup of tea to begin with. Mainly for the fact that he liked tea and wasn't British.

He rode many horses in and around the UAE, but he had yet to find a favorite. The one the he raced currently was a horse named Tick-Tack-Toe, merely because he won, and the owner paid him the most. However, he found the way this horse raced to be thoroughly uninspired. He didn't race because he loved it, he raced because he was somewhat whip shy and Xiumin carried one now. He raced out of fear.

The hot wind blew against his face, and he squinted even with the goggles protecting his eyes, as the sand particles swept across the horse and himself. Out for a training run, preparing for a desert race of one mile, the sun was already hot even in the early hours of the morning. The cloth across his mouth kept the dust particles from clouding his airways. Toe, as he nicknamed the horse, was by now used to the weather, having been born and raised there.

With a slight squeeze of his legs and a twitch of the reigns, they started off into a choppy trot. Sand was much different any track surface he'd ever been on, as was the other preferred track type, tapeta.  Horses tended to sink more, like they were walking on marshmallow - only they also slipped more. It was confusing for foreign horses, and many complaints were made