Little Dark Wings

I have never trusted unicorns. All they really are is horses with horns, that doesn't make them special. And horses are terrifying enough with the horn, have you see their teeth?

You might find this odd. Unicorns are perfect. But that's the thing: nothing is perfect. So where's the catch? Dragons, serpents, brownies, you know their flaws. When you know flaws, you know what to expect. Unicorns, therefore, are dangerous, weaponized and unpredictable.

Then one showed up at my door.

I'm different. I always have been. If this were a fairy tale, on my sixteenth birthday a prince would hold a ball and fall instantly in love with me, marry me and whisk me off into the sunset on a (creepy) white horse. Oh, and I'd be a princess.

Love at first sight. How ridiculous.

Love is knowing someone inside and out and loving them anyway. It's a promise to be there always. Love means standing beside your special person, even when the winds rage high. To love someone, you need to know them, and how can you know them if you've just met them? It's too easy to confuse attraction for love.

So yes, different. I never knew my father. I think he was the special one, because he passed something down to me. Animals have always liked me, and I like them, as long as they aren't perfect. I have a gift for lying, and a natural distrust of people. He must have been the same, because my mother believed him when he said "I love you." Three simple words that ruined her life.

Now my mother is in the grave and I'm a girl with her reputation so stained no amount of bleaching with get it out. The hermit of Bards Hill.

All that trouble, and Fate's cruel hands still aren't letting me go. Why a unicorn, of all things?

This unicorn, though. I've seen it before.

It was the day my father left. I was six. It was cold in the house, and my mother woke up and screamed. I ran downstairs to find her sobbing, her beautiful hair in tangles, her glowing eyes puffy. I remember donning mourning clothes and pleating my hair stiffly down my back, hiding the slowly gray tendrils with twists and knots. That's one less thing for her to worry about, I thought.

Mourning clothes for a man who wasn't dead. I remember the story my mother so carefully crafted.

Because he had left in the middle of the night, my mother pretended he was away on a business trip, giving him time to return. When one week passed, she forged a letter from his "employer" stating his death and offering condolences. He was is a fire, I heard her say to a friend, as real tears mixed in with fake. They never found a body.

The memorial service was small. Quiet. I remember a unicorn weaving in and out of the guests, and my shock that I was the only one who could see it. Then I looked at my mother's face, and I knew: while my father might not have died that day, part of my mother definitely did.

After that one lie, they came so easily. When my mother at last passed in body as well as soul, I was an easy target for marriage offers. Of course the poor orphaned girl would be lucky to be married and accept anyone's hand. They convinced themselves they were doing me a favor, despite the fortune that was in trust to me. Despite my looks. Despite the most important thing: that I was a person, with thoughts and feeling and ideas of love.

I said no to them all.

I'm sickly, you don't want me.

I'm sorry, I'm promised to someone else.

I don't understand.

Then, one day, I left. I left my hill, my town, my life. I forged papers of excellence, made up acting jobs. I became famous. I played flute and piano. I sang and danced, and I acted and acted. I still remember the glitter smeared under my eyes, the way my hair flew around my face as I twirled and spun, a puppet for puppets in the hands of Fate. The way I felt like starshine and moonlight, imagining the dust of Heaven floating down. These cruel lies I told myself, and all through it, I knew the unicorn was still there. Watching, silent in the shadows. I knew I was the only one who saw it, its dark silvery mane, the blotches that looked like stars on its legs. It watched and listened.

While I was surrounded by people, I never felt so alone.

Finally, my prince came. Prince Stefan, the Jewel of Aryinya.

Lies, they catch up to you. I lost it all for him, and he lost me. I was ruined and alone, and I finally understood the unicorn. It had watched me, knowing my fate. From the moment my first lie left my lips, my fate was sealed. I was carried away on the dark wings of lies. The seduction of becoming someone else, of escaping my mind, it tore me up. This unicorn, it knew that.

All my life, I had been waiting for my life to start. I was a broken creature, a dying rose. I left life after life behind, I created new stories until one stuck. I left a mark, an ink blemish, on the pages of history, yet I never had a history, I was left and abandoned. I was never truly loved. Princes and horses and fairy tales are as much of lies as any.

I lied to my self, and I died for these lies. You will know me not as myself, but as the self I created.

The most important thing I ever did is but a footnote. When I died, I left all my money to charity and saved too many lives. I suppose the most important thing I ever did, then, was die, for in death, I was saved from further lying.