[P] lady i swear by all flowers

[Sarkan]

Sarkan The moral of the tale is this: whoever allows himself to be whipped, deserves to be whipped.   The sun was inching higher, fuller, brighter with each moment, but Sarkan had seen a thousand sunrises lovely enough for a poem. He had never seen a unicorn such as she, with an instrument, with a horn that caught the rising sun in a way that made him think of a spiderweb hung with dew and glowing. Curiosity grew within him; the setting (their solitude), the woman herself, the anticipation of a closed case that crawled with harlequin patterns or vines or spiderwebs or nothing at all (he could not tell, and told himself it was the dimness of the light, there in the shadows of the grass at their feet) - it felt as though a fae queen from a children’s story was going to play him a song. Sarkan pushed away thoughts of the other unicorn. That one had not been magic, he was sure. That one had been no rarer than himself. Still, he was surprised by the breath he loosed when she eased the instrument from its case. It was a boyish sound, a sound fo awe, and it was difficult, despite her own otherworldly beauty, to wrest his eyes from the violin to meet her gaze when he felt it on him. “It - plays itself?” he echoed. He very much wanted to hear it. And he did not want to hear it at all. For something turned over within him at the clear magic of it, something uneasy, something that murmured of snares. A unicorn with an enchanted violin was, perhaps, no stranger than a man with an enchanted cloak and knife; but he was accustomed to trusting his instincts, and now guilt was growing. But before he could say or do anything else, the violin began to play. It was, of course, a beautiful sound. One note, low and rising like a lone wolf’s howl, that seemed to press thumbs into his heart and lungs and push. It felt like a finger, pointing at him, and though the hair did not rise along his back the muscles of his face were tense and his blue eyes were like a well as he stared at it for the duration. He was glad it could only sing, and not speak. It did not seem much like a fairytale to imagine what truths it would give. The Percheron pulled his gaze away from it, though it still shone in the corner of his vision like the moon, demanding to be looked at. He met Jasmine’s eyes, wanting to give himself a shake all over like a dog. “I only know drinking songs,” he said, summoning his earlier smile. “I don’t suppose it plays many of those.” Sarkan wondered whether she was magic, too and what the worth of them was together and apart, the violin and the woman. He raised a brow. “I hope you don’t make a habit of performing for strangers in the wilderness, Jasmine.” He said it almost like a joke, and not a warning at all - but he couldn’t help but wonder, now. How he might do it. The air sounded empty without the violin’s voice. Maybe that was another part of its magic - that now it always would. @Mesnyi