Private Swooping Season - Printable Version

The streets of Denocte were in many ways like a living thing- pulsing, breathing, dreaming. And by the Spring of 506, they felt like old friends of mine. Much of my childhood was spent there, running wild down the back roads and slinking like a panther through the markets. I had my favorite places and my secret spots. I knew the way it looked in every light-- the evening’s long shadows, the orange lick of the bonfires. Foggy mornings were my favorite, the streets shrouded in a haze so heavy I could pretend I did not know where they ended.

That spring evening, I was racing my wolf, who had taken the meandering back alleys. I had taken the more direct but far more crowded route through the market, and I bounded through it quickly and recklessly. The snow had thinned but not yet melted, it clumped on the sides of the streets in sullen, dirt-fringed mounds.

I slid to a stop and tilted my head to direct my horn to the sky- one of the first things a unicorn learns is that there is a weapon in the center of their brow, and it will cut even when you don’t want it to. Too late. “Ow!” We stumbled into each other, bumping shoulders rather roughly. The crowd mindlessly continued their path around us, parting on one side then reuniting on the other like flowing water.

“I’m so sorry. Are you alright?” I looked her over methodically and checked to see if she had dropped anything. It was not the first time I had collided with someone at the markets, and it would not be the last. I was and had always been quite clumsy, and I also liked to run. The gemstone beneath her horn caught my attention. I had never seen anything like it on a unicorn, and it deeply intrigued me.

We definitely had never met before, which wasn’t unusual. I knew many of the vendors and stalls, but there was always something new to see, someone new to meet. Anyway I had always been a little aloof, more interested in the wares than the people looking over them. I think that’s just the way I was, like I had been born with something in me always stubbornly turned inward, but maybe my magic had something to do with it too. With it I could talk to the stone streets and the tables heavy with merchandise, and I usually found their stories far more interesting than the hawk-eyed vendors.

The race had already been lost, there was no way I would catch up to Furfur. I was not terribly bothered by it- there had been nothing on the line except pride, and I didn’t have much of that to begin with. I looked into the stranger's eyes, one unicorn to another. “Where were you going in such a hurry?” I grinned. Usually my twin and I were the ones running through the markets, catching dirty looks.

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