Don Juan had been utterly unaware of any activities available to him yesterday to do with hippogriffs, having joined up for this race at the last possible moment and more or less thoughtlessly. The impulse was primarily to have an excuse to avoid direct interaction with his daughter, whom he'd agreed to bring to this entire event but whose watchful presence made him squirm. His first recourse had been drink, but it wasn't working out — he had put enough pieces together now to suspect any hard liquor was doing to his stomach the same thing opium had done since January, and he couldn't spent the entire weekend bent over bushes vomiting. So here he was, entering hippogriff races instead.
He didn't much care how he fared today, but Dean's heart would drop if he allowed himself to be too badly hurt and he was loathe to look too foolish in front of Mrs. Bythesea, whom he had seen from a distance earlier. So he was at least making a reasonable attempt. Don Juan adjusted his cap and approached the beast, stopping a little more than an arm's length away and dropping to a low (slightly melodramatic, slightly cheeky) bow. He felt more like an actor than an athlete.
![[Image: 0hYxCaj.png]](https://i.imgur.com/0hYxCaj.png)
MJ made this <3
