For kelkyag‘s prompt to my December Bingo Card – it fills the “Anniversary” square.

An hour afterwards, she lay in the river, the blood washing away in the water. She stared up at the setting sun and wondered if she would ever move again.

A day afterwards, she curled up in her bed in her mother’s house, her entire body awash with pain. She stared at the wall because she could not sleep, and wondered if she would ever leave the house again.

A week later, she limped slowly out into the town circle, where girls of a certain age often gathered to do their work. She brought with her the wool of her family’s sheep and, carefully wrapped in her mother’s wedding hankie, two cards’ worth of unicorn hair.

The unicorn hair, they spun into a fine, fine yarn, and from it they knit the tiniest baby hat, all of them, in turn, handling the fine stuff.

A month later, she knew that the unicorn’s horn had done its work. All its work. She kept knitting, tiny things of linen and wool and every last scrap of the unicorn hair. She sat in the town circle and spun, and knit, and spun, and knit, and wondered if she could sit here forever.

Eight months later, she brought forth a son, down in the river. The unicorns stood in attendance, their horns in the water, and the infant’s first touch was from a unicorn’s careful hooves. She lay in the water, her infant balanced on her chest, and thought about staying here forever.

A year after she had gone down to the river, she sat with her son by the sun-dappled banks and brushed the most patient unicorn-father with her cleanest curry-comb. She could stay here, forever, watching the sun on the pearly horn, watching their child play with the wispy strands of unicorn hair.

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