Mother did not tell me about the hunger of unicorns in any of her stories. Each tale of a unicorn was filled only with dragons, and lilacs in a garden, and moons that shed bits of themselves and called the pieces stars. She told me a story once of a unicorn with a horn black as oil (darker even than mine). She told me of how that black-horned unicorn saved the city that shunned her only for the evil lingering in the look of her.
When I was a child I did not think to question her. As a child I had laid my ear to her belly, where I could hear the roar of the sea like mother was just a shell, and wondered how I could be as heroic as that unicorn in the story.
But I know better now and I think that this unicorn, with her sinister red eyes, knows better too. Mother was a hero as much as she was a monster. Mother gave birth to both. I am not the hero; I never was. This unicorn is no hero either. We are monsters.
And I smile at her monster’s smile with a reflection of that same endless, ancient hunger. Foras grows longer in the shoulder and hip as he turns himself into a brutal reflection of this unicorn and I. Together we step forward and I lean the flat of my cheek against the flat of her blade like she’s offered me a kiss instead of death. The teeth in my mouth ache and my jaw snaps as instinct begs me to swallow her up like the tide swallows up the shore. She would be the brightest thing in the sea, all bloody instead of pearl-pale.
“Of course I want to go home.” I know, as much as I know the sound of my own rage, what she is offering. How many times, in the belly of war, had I laid my point against a dying warrior and offered the same thing? But I think I like the way she offers, like each word might be a dandelion instead of a nightshade bloom.
I’m almost tempted to tell her yes, yes, yes, just to see how quick she can kill.
But I know that Foras, as he bares his teeth and snarls, is tired of the taunting games I play with fate. He is tired of watching me bleed, and cut, and sigh in pain instead of joy. With a look, a bellow of a look, he tells me in the language of wolves, not today.
Today I am kind enough to listen. It’s been so long since I have been and I have forgotten how it feels to obey. “Would you like to come with me?” And I wonder, as I watch the light dapple through her horn across her face, which question she is going to answer.
@Isolt
