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Strange, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct18

This is to rhodielady_47‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

“What do we do with this?”

The villagers of Lastowe surrounded the newly-minted unicorn foal. The foal that was supposed to be a unicorn.

“I heard over in Cardenborn…”

“Cardenborn is different. That sort of thing doesn’t happen here.”

“What about that thing in Shepachdar?”

“You know about those sheep-herding towns. Lawstowe is a holy hill.”

Aaron might have sounded more firm about it if he hadn’t been connected to the unicorn-not-a-unicorn, if his daughter wasn’t leaning over the thing, protecting it and sobbing.

It was easy to say there was an abomination in another village. It had been easy, Aaron remembered hearing, for his ancestor to say not us. We won’t give our virgins to the unicorn, no matter what the other towns do. It was always easy to condemn other people’s problems.

Aaron looked around at the women, who were, to a one, watching Aaron’s daughter Susanna. At the men, watching the women. At the children, hiding and pretending they weren’t watching what was going on. He looked at the thing on the ground, and coughed.

There was a lot of coughing. Lawstowe was a very tall hill, the reason for some of its holiness. And the factory smokestacks, whose clouds of black smoke rolled over the valley towns and brushed lightly by the lowlands, tainted the air in Lawstowe more and more in recent years. Even Susanna was coughing…

…and then the thing that wasn’t quite a unicorn nosed her, and the coughing stopped. The circle of villagers fell silent. Susanna sat up, and breathed. Once, twice, her lungs sounding clear and healthy.

“Lawstowe is a holy hill.” Aaron stood up taller. This thing had come of his family’s blood. He would make it be all right. “A holy hill touched by the blemish of the Factories for too long. And this wingéd creature, this is the blessing given to us, to protect us from the pollution of the air.”

The creature on the ground spread one feathered wing carefully, and then the other, as it tottered to its feet. As one, the villagers breathed out. “Awwww.”

“Of course.” The murmurs started again, but now they were proud. “We’re a holy place.”

“This sort of thing blesses us. We are honored.”

“Let’s see Shepachdar try to beat this.”

“Let’s see the Factories do something now..”

“We’ve got ourselves something special.”

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/410096.html. You can comment here or there.

Change, a story of the Unicorn Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct18

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to flofx‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

This story totally did not come out how I intended.

“I hear in Cardenborn, their unicorns went weird.”

Burghard Doser heard lots of things. He was the sort of man that you found in any tavern, any where in the Seven Counties, anywhere in the Five Kingdoms, anywhere in the world. He Heard Things. But unicorns going weird, that might have been something Burghard should not have heard, not that day.

The girl on his lap tensed. “Why would you say something like that, you?”

Nobody wanted the girls in the tavern to get unhappy. Shepachdar was a small village, a glorified sheep camp on a bald hill. That they had a couple woman of the sort who liked to spend time in taverns – that they had woman in the village who were not their mothers or sisters or daughters – was a luxury the little hamlet had not often seen. Nobody wanted to scare them off.

“That’s just his ale talking.” Rolf’s own ale made the answer hurried and brash, but it was an answer nonetheless. “You don’t want to listen to Burghard when he’s in his cups.”

“Oh, but I might.” Ursel was a pretty thing, young and bright. The sort of girl that might make a good wife, if she could be coaxed out of the taverns. And Rolf had just lost her off his lap. “I’ve heard of unicorns going strange before. Being born bad.”

“We don’t talk about that.” The girl on Burghard’s lap was getting very unhappy. Uncomfortable, even, an unbiased observer might notice.

“Why not, Adalinda?” Fazenia leaned forward over her ale. She had no need of a pretty wife, no need to keep difficult women in the town. “When a unicorn is second-born, everyone knows. When they are second-born wrong, everyone speaks of it. Don’t they do that where you come from?”

“Who’s to say what is wrong and what is strange?” Adalinda stood up, her skirts swishing. Burghard reached for her, but his hands were clumsy, and she was not. “Who’s to say what is simply change?”

“Change,” Fazenia pointed out, “is what brought us the Factories.”

“Evil brought us the Factories.” Ursel glared at the older woman. “And change let us live through them.”

“You weren’t there, you little stripling.”

“And neither were you.” She tossed her hair angrily, the silken curls shaking away from her forehead. “We all change.”

The tavern had frozen. Ursel’s fair forehead, normally covered in long fair hair, bore the tiniest bump of iridescent horn. A unicorn who had not been second-born. A unicorn acting as a tavern wench. A unicorn whose horn had not come in. A female unicorn.

She was aware, by this time, of their attention. She tossed her hair again, and looked around at the suddenly-more-sober crowd.

“Some of us just don’t… Change.” She offered it up nervously, looking at them all.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/409308.html. You can comment here or there.

The Black Unicorns of Cardenborn, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the Giraffe Call

Oct16

My Giraffe Call is Open here! Stop in and leave a prompt!

This is to ysabetwordsmith‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here

The word went up and down the water, up and down the silver road. It was whispered, not shouted, murmured, not spoken, alluded to and never written down. Nobody wanted the factories to find out, the Town to find out, but everyone else wanted to know.

The word did go into the Towns, too – the Towns hired any number of Villagers, after all, and, perhaps most especially, the Towns employed women of an age but not an inclination to know better. Sujennia’s mother called them, into her pottage, “no better than they should be.” When it came to Cardenborn, however, the opinion was quickly coming that they were far better than expected. Sujennia and her age-mates certainly thought so.

Cardenborn, a thicket-ringed village near the lake end of a wide stream, had been home to a small family of unicorns for far longer than any other Village in the area; even before the factories had come, the most-downstream places often found themselves with water needing purifying.

They had made their deals, the same as any village. Generation after generation, they had purified their water and given their virgins to the unicorns. Nobody had really noticed – except, Sujennia guessed, unicorns from other villages, who never came too close to Cardenborn – that their unicorns weren’t quite as white. At first, the grandmothers told, the unicorns had just been a little grey. Then they’d been a little greyer, and a little less fussy about the purity of the virgins sent to them.

Sujennia’s great-auntie told of a time when, during her youth, a white unicorn had ventured near Cardenborn. “That thing, let me tell you, sniffed the air once and ran away. And there were our unicorns, laughing the whole time.”

And now? Now the black unicorns of Cardenborn were a whisper, a legend, a sneaky rumor, and every working girl in the seven counties was working their way to the thicket. Because the black unicorns would not touch maids like Sujennia and her age-mates, no. The onyx horns wanted only experienced women.

And the Villagers of Cardenborn were more than willing to pay for a few hours of working girls’ time, because it meant their maids all lived, all intact, to pass their virginity on in a more human manner.

And the waters might shimmer oddly, but they were as pure as any in the seven counties.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/408257.html. You can comment here or there.

(Pat the Bunny) Stroke the Unicorn, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the Rabbit Safari

Aug28

For [profile] ysabetwordsmit‘s Prompt

Warning: this turned out a bit dark.

“Have you ever stroked a unicorn?”

The tavern wasn’t the sort that catered to women, certainly not to delicate, smooth-skinned women wearing silk reminiscent of a habit or a widow’s weeds. She made the men who drank there uncomfortable, hard-working rough men who drank hard, rough drinks. She made the bartender nervous, a man who kept two knives and a cosh under his bar and had used all three without flinching. She made the boy who ran errands and the girl who waited tables nervous, skinny orphans who had seen more in their lives than the hard men had in spans three or four times as long.

And they didn’t seem to be making her nervous at all.

They’d tried, they really had. Leering, rude jokes. Excessive, sarcastic chivalry. Belching. They didn’t even have to work at the body odor. When all else had failed, they’d just tried ignoring her, and yet, night after night, bad drink after bad drink after worse food, she kept coming back.

Tonight, when they all sat three seats away and tried to ignore her bubble of presence, tonight, when they’d finally managed to actually forget she was there for a bit, tonight, she came up with that one.

The bar fell to silence. They all stared at her, then stared at Jakob. Jakob could answer. He had an answer for everything.

“Stroked a… Lady. Lady, what in the blazing furnaces…!”

It was the answer they would have given. Tavern-goers nodded sagely. What in the blazing furnaces, indeed.

“A unicorn.” She sipped her ale as if it were wine. “Its coat is very soft, you know.”

“No, I haven’t… who in the ground gears pets a unicorn?”

“I wasn’t intending to pet it, you see.” She sipped her ale again. “Barkeep, something a bit stronger, if you please.”

“Lady, I think you’ve had enough.”

“Barkeep.” Her voice had taken on a new edge, an edge of pearl and dagger, an edge that reminded them of the unicorns they were all trying so hard to forget. “I have had hardly sufficient to begin. I ask you again, all of you, have you ever stroked a unicorn?“

It occurred to Jakob just about then that the black of her habit covered a waist that could have been thickened with age, or, perhaps more likely, with bandages. It occurred to him what he had heard of those the unicorns didn’t favor, when the towns and villages sent their women to the water. “Give her what she wants.” His voice was harsh now, too. His daughter had gone to the river. She had come back with a baby. He didn’t think that was what this woman had returned with. “It’s on my tab.”

“No, Lady.” He held the eyes of every man in the bar for one long minute. “None of us have ever touched a unicorn, but we would be honored to hear your story.”

Next:
Unicorn Strokes (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/395035.html. You can comment here or there.

Unicorn-Chaste, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the February Giraffe Call

Mar9

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of
Unicorn Chase (LJ) and Unicorn Chased (LJ).

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

I have a feeling this one needs a content warning.

Infe noticed the changes in her daughter, as the unicorns filled the village.

At first, Felfen lit up, becoming happy in a way she hadn’t since Infe and Fennix had taken jobs at the Factory. She began making more friends, her skin turned brown with the sun and her hair bleached fairer, and she smiled, all the time, she smiled.

Infe smiled more, too, and Fennix did, proud that their daughter was helping the Town and the Factory, proud that she was becoming a valuable member of the community. More than that pride, though, they were happy that their flower was blooming again, that their lovely daughter was smiling and playing again.

And then something started happening.

Infe wasn’t sure, at first. Felfen was at that age where girls could be smiling one moment, crying the next, and shouting with rage the next. The frowns could have been passing thunderstorms. The worry lines could have been a friend speaking unkindly to her. The smiles were still there, at least. She was still spotting unicorns…

…at first. When Felfen started letting Angwe, a year younger than her, take the credit for the unicorn spottings, Infe knew something was wrong. She took her twenty minutes on lunch one day, and walked out in the Town, to see what was going on.

There. There was Infe’s daughter, the jewel of her life, sneaking across the market square, and there, there was a shadow Infe couldn’t quite see, and Felfen blanching.

“Leave me alone,” the girl muttered, backing towards the fountain. “Leave me alone. I won’t tell them, anymore, but why won’t you just go away? Please?”

Infe didn’t know what the unicorn did, but her daughter backed up until her legs hit the low wall of the fountain’s surround. “Please, please. I don’t know why you’re following me. I don’t know…”

For one moment, one moment of horrible, awful clarity, Infe could see the unicorn. It stood at the shoulder almost as tall as a man, and its horn was long, and pristine white, its hooves golden, its tangled tail and mane streaked with the same gold color.

And its horn was leveled straight at Felfen.

Infe screamed. Across the square, someone else took up the panic, and someone else. They could all, it seemed, see the creature. And they were all terrified for Infe’s daughter.

Only she, Felfen, staring at the creature, seemed calm. Frozen in terror? No. Infe made herself calm down, and walked, as quietly as she could towards her daughter. Not frozen, but ready.

“I understand,” the girl whispered. The look in her eyes… Infe remembered that look on her own face, many many years ago in a wedding bed. “I’m ready.”

“Fel…” but it was too late. The unicorn was piercing her daughter with its horn, the blood dripping into the fountain, staining it red, staining Felfen’s dress red. Her daughter’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell into the water.

And the unicorn was gone from Infe’s vision, the water pure and clear, and Felfen, un-wounded, floated like a lily in the fountain pool.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/297419.html. You can comment here or there.

Right and Wrong, , a continuation of the Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call (@anke)

Mar8

After The Grey Line (lj), Productive, and The Governors (LJ), for [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned Prompt.

Part Three of Three

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Antheri’s desk was somewhere between a mess ans a complete loss. The man had kept everything visible so tidy, Guilian had, naturally, he thought, assumed that the files would be just as orderly.

But the employee files, the production notes, the construction plans, the purchasing and selling paperwork, all of it was jammed haphazardly into cabinets, with labels that made no sense: “Castorry,” “Engaran,” “Tibinibit,” and so on, all in Antheri’s careful copperplate.

It was young Santha, Myrlo the engineer’s daughter, who suggested they could be names. “You said,” she suggested, when he conscripted her to help him sort out the mess, “that he’d been screaming about the governors?”

“He had,” Guilian agreed. That had been bothering him more and more. How long had Antheri been going mad? Worse… had it all been madness?

“Maybe these are the names he thought the governors were called? I heard him, sometimes, muttering to himself,” she added, “and sometimes he’d call me in to take dictation… here.” She pulled out a wide folder full of very tidy notes. “These are mine. I don’t think they make any sense, but they are at least legible.”

He noted that, unlike many of the workers, Santha seemed neither fascinated by or bothered by the young unicorn foal that was still following him around; she fed it, like one would any pet or working animal, and otherwise left it alone. She had come highly recommended as a practical, level-headed young woman, but her reaction to the unicorn made him wonder.

“Do you see it?” he asked, apropos to nothing, as they were still looking at her file of notes.

She was either used to dealing with strange comments out of nowhere, working with Antheri as she had, or she was used to oblique references to unicorns, living in the Town as she did. “I do,” she admitted. “It’s very pretty, but the unicorns frighten me.”

“And why’s that?” he asked, trying to be gentle. The unicorns had frightened Antheri, too.

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes with her own sky-blue gaze. She had, the Administrator was startled to realize, a very piercing, uncomfortable gaze.

“My mother was from a Village, Administrator. The unicorns… they purify the water, of course. But everything has a price.” She took the folder back from him, and flipped through the notes. “Here. Read this. Antheri might be mad, but there were things he understood very well.”

Guilian sat down at his former assistant’s desk and began reading. After a while, he looked up, to find Santha still tidying papers into files, and still watching him. “If a third of this is true…”

“At least a third of it is true,” she confirmed quietly. “Why do you think the Villages hate the town?”

“I don’t know, I thought, the pollution, the people we steal for the factory…”

“All that. All that and everything else,” she murmured. “But what choice does the Town have?”

“Antheri thought none.” He studied the notes. “He thought the governors…”

“Yes. He thought that they demanded sacrifice. And he believed that they would take a higher toll if he didn’t give them what they wanted.”

“And he was right about the unicorns.”

“And he was right about the unicorns,” she agreed. Her eyes seemed to be boring through him.

“What if,” Guilian whispered, “he was right about everything?”

Next: Cleaning House

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/294965.html. You can comment here or there.

The Governors, a continuation of the Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call

Mar4

After The Grey Line (lj) and Productive, for [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned Prompt. Part Two of ??

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“Ah, Antheri,” Giulian sighed. “It is sad but unsurprising that you think me a fool.” He could feel the foal’s presence near his ankles, but he needed to ignore that for a moment. “It is entirely unsurprising,” he repeated, moving slowly towards the man. “After all, so many of my predecessors have, clearly, been fools.”

“All of them! Even you! Soft! Unwilling to do what was needed! Unwilling to see what it was that had to be done! They are always asking, always writing, always peeking,” he gibbered, “those in the City, the owners of the factory, the bosses, the governors. They demand progress! They demand productivity! And you Administrators, every one of you, fools, blind sheep to be steered by whoever whined last!”

“No.” As long as he kept the man talking, he was unlikely to be shot. Giulian did not want to be shot today. “My position is to stand between the unreasonable demands of the governors and the unreasonable demands of the workers and find the balance that keeps everything working.”

“Your position,” the man sputtered. “Your position? What do you know of your position? Have you ever met the governors? Have you ever stood in a room with them for more than ten minutes? Have you ever tried to answer their questions? Have you ever disappointed them?”

It was a strange question. “No,” Giulian answered, wondering at the man’s grip on reality. “I was hired through the agent that worked with my previous posting. As were you. As was every Administrator and bureaucrat here. What are you on about, man?”

“The governors,” Antheri hissed. “The governors. Their eyes. Always watching. Always judging. And you, all you fools, all you damn fool Administrators, getting in the way, worried about the people, worried about the river. The river will be cleaned. The river will trickle through the fields and lose its taint. The people will live, or they will die, and there will be more. But the governors, Administrator, the governors. Their will is all that matters, irrational demands or not. Their will is All. That. Matters.” He jabbed the gun into Giulian’s stomach with each word, his eyes even wilder, spittle flying from his mouth.

And, finally, the guards stepped in, large, sturdy men Giulian had hired when the death of his predecessors began to look suspicious. They grabbed Antheri from behind, wrestling the gun from him.

“It is becoming clear,” Giulian told him, speaking loudly to be heard over the man’s incoherent screams, “that you have been affected by the stresses of the job and the crowded conditions of the Town and need a respite, likely in a quiet place off in the mountains. I will see to your transport there, Antheri, and go about the work of training your replacement.”

It wasn’t a quote so much as it was a compilation of Antheri’s reports on Giulian’s predecessors, but it was clear that the words got through to the man. He stiffened, a slow, mad smile crossing his lips.

“Then the governors will be yours to deal with. I wish you the pleasure of them, Administrator, you fool. I wish you the pleasure of them.”

Next: Right and Wrong

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/291767.html. You can comment here or there.

Making Harvest Wreathes, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the Feb. Giraffe Call

Mar1

For [personal profile] kelkyag‘s prompt.

Unicorn/Factory has a landing page here.

The village was tense as they prepared for the harvest festival, the mothers and the unwed daughters holding themselves as if afraid to hope, the fathers and sons and young children hating the helpless feeling, rattling around slamming into things like an animal gone mad, all of them trying to hard not to remember, not to think about it, not to worry, not to show what they were feeling.

It made fingers tremble, as they hung the garlands. It made hands shake, as they wove the wreaths, twisting grapevines and roses together. It made smiles tense and sharp, and greetings unpleasantly perfunctory.

Orna, weaving the wreaths in the town square, remembered when it had been a joyous occasion, not a tense one. She remembered when the crown with the thorns had been considered a blessing, the Autumn Queen, the charmed one, not a potential death sentence. She remembered when she had worn it, and when she had gone down to the river, all smiles, and received the unicorn’s blessing.

Now, she knew that there would be three crowns with red roses and thorns, three wreaths that would send their wearer down to the river, lip-bitten and trying not to cry. There would be three that she wove that could lead in death, or in a small child with no father to name…

…and one of those crowns could land on her granddaughter’s head. She bit her own lip and did what needed to be done, as they all did, and thought about happier times, when their wreaths had meant a bit of naughty pleasure and nothing more.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/288100.html. You can comment here or there.

Productive, a story of the Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call (@anke)

Feb27

After The Grey Line (lj), for [personal profile] anke‘s commissioned Prompt. Part One of ??

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Administrator Guilian had found the unicorn foal a very light burden, barely heavier than a small child, so light he could almost, if it weren’t for the horn pricking at the side of his throat, forget it was there.

But his assistant’s reaction, now, that reminded him fully why he was there, and why he was carrying this small burden. He advanced slowly on the man, watching Antheri’s hands. He was reaching for something in his drawer… that couldn’t be good.

“The unicorns, their touch can kill you,” Antheri repeated nervously, as Guilian kept closing on him.

“That is what I’ve heard. And yet, I’ve also heard that their touch purifies. I’ve heard that their touch can do other things, as well…” The images he’d gotten didn’t really count as “heard,” and they hadn’t been all that clear, but he’d gotten some interesting bits here and there.

“Kill. Their touch can kill.” Antheri whipped out his revolver, pointing it with shaking hands at Guilian. “And you’ve brought one of those monsters in here, you madman. After everything I’ve done to keep them out. After everything we’ve done to cleanse the Town of their taint. What were you thinking?”

“I was thinking that it was time for a change,” Guilian told him, his eyes firmly on the gun. He set the foal down carefully; he couldn’t see it, he wasn’t that pure, but he could feel it, and feel where its legs were shakily settling onto the ground. “I was thinking that the Villages hate us, And wondering why that was.”

“They’re backwards. Ignorant. Spiteful. They cling to their old ways.”

“What happens to the waste from the factory, Antheri? That part of the tour kept getting put off. I imagine you would delay it until I was replaced, am I right?”

“If goes into the river,” the little today spat. “Where else would it go?”

“In other Towns, in other Factories…”

“And their production is not nearly as high as ours. It goes into the river, Administrator, because it halts the reproduction of these monsters. And with less of the pests around, the factory workers focus better, and produce more. And there are none of those pesky filters, no water recycling back end, no stupid swamp tanks to clean out and nursemaid. And we produce, Administrator, more than Any. Other. Factory. And that is what they pay me for.” The toady stared wildly at Guilian, waving the gun with no clear purpose. “And now you will die, and they will send me another fool.”

next: The Governors (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/285354.html. You can comment here or there.

Unicorn-Chased, a story of Unicorn/Factory for the January Giraffe Call

Feb21

For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of
Unicorn Chase (LJ).

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Infe’s daughter Felfen was thrilled by the Unicorn sightings, not in small part because the Factory bosses were so unhappy about the whole thing, because the grumpus-grownups (not her mother and not her father, but the others, the dour sour-puss-faces who didn’t like smiles or laughter or fun) were so miserable about it, because her horrid teacher had been telling all of them that Unicorns Did Not Exist, they were a fairy-tale figment of fevered fantasy.

Felfen was happy, too, because the unicorn was beautiful, and because most of the adults and even the older kids couldn’t see them, so they were something special, just for her and the other kids. Only they could see the bright creatures eating the flowers, and the laundry, and the pies left out to cool. Only they could tell their mothers when it was safe to keep the washing out, and when they should bring it in. Only they could tell which plants the unicorns seemed to turn up their noses at – there were only a few – and suggest those to the gardeners who suddenly wanted their opinions much more than they ever had.

Kids who had been, until now, underfoot, obnoxious, brats, were suddenly being called Valued Members of the Community, and not just for their ability to handle small machinery and get things out of tight places. And in the lead of this child Unicorn-spotting force was Felfen, daughter of the shift supervisor and the town clocksmith, proud as could be and being very virtuous about the whole thing.

“They don’t like coriander,” she told her mother, who told the foreman. “They make a face at it if they even get just a leaf. And they really hate mint, of course.” Everything hated mint. Even Felfen. “But they like the wool socks the best.”

As the Townfolk began hanging their socks with coriander in the toes, and leaving their boots wreathed in mint, Felfen noticed that one unicorn in particular – the one with the horn with no pink in it, and the mane with the golden streaks – had begun following her around.

At first, she thought it was a coincidence – the Town was big, but it wasn’t that big, and she and her gang of Unicorn Spotters were all over its streets now, forgoing classes and sometimes even work. There were, she thought, about twelve unicorns that liked spending time in and around the Town. You could tell them apart, if you knew what to look for, by horn shade and mane color, height, and shagginess of the fetlock feathering. And the one following her was, she was pretty sure, always the same one.

Once she was sure it wasn’t a coincidence, Felfen began to worry. What was it the thing wanted from her? Were they unhappy at being spotted and pointed out, spied on? Did they want her to stop? She started taking shortcuts through buildings, trying to sneak away from the unicorn. She started hiding inside more, even when it meant someone else got the praise for spying. She started going back to class. And yet, every time, when she stepped outside, there it was. It was chasing her.

Looking into its red eyes, Felfen wasn’t as thrilled by the Unicorn sightings anymore.

Next:
Unicorn-Chaste (LJ)

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/279109.html. You can comment here or there.