Unicorn Lost

Presents

W	ithout thinking, Kathy rears up and strikes the sword from the angry skunkette's paws.

Simultaneously the chipmunks and the ferret tumbled from her back, shrieking and squealing.

"What are you...out of your mind?" the unicorn roared in a voice of thunder. "Running with scissors is one thing, kid; but threatening your friends with that pigsticker is quite another."

Suddenly Pence, drawn to the fracas from where Kamida had asked him to hide in the bushes, leaped to his mistress's defence. The sharp scales on his neck bristling.

"Look out!" Florence screamed, falling back with the smaller animals clustering about her legs. "It's the Red Dragon!"

"Where? Where?" Jeanette cried out, staring half-blindly around the glen, struggling against her mother's restraining arms. "Let me at him! Where's my father's sword! Vengeance is mine!"

The dragon had by this time intersposed itself between Kamida and the unicorn, snarling like a rabid pit bill, acid drool searing the ground. But it is yet only a wyrmling and has not eaten of the flesh of another wyrmling, and so cannot spit fire.

"Back off runt! I'm not gonna hurt your magus," Kathy growled, lowering her horn. A dangerous blue glow had begun to sparkle along its polished length. "I got an alicorn here, an' I ain't afraid to use it!"

The wyrmling lowered its neck scales, and attained the posture of a dog which had decided to give ground--tail between its legs and its head low. "You aren't a real unicorn," Pence muttered sulkily.

"No--I just play one on this plane," Kathy responded, lifting her head.

Kamida put her arms around Pence's neck, stroking his scales like the feathers of a bird. "Pence is my familiar...," she began to say, when suddenly Jeanette succeeded in tearing free from her mother, and made a lunge for the discarded sword.

"I'M GOING TO KILL THE DRAGON--KILL THE DRAGON!!" she sang in heroic fashion, hefting the sword over her head.

Florence grabbed it, and plucked it from her fingers. "No you aren't," the wolf informed her.

"Gimme back my sword!" Jeanette protested, making ineffectual leaps, but unable to succeed in getting the weapon back from Florence.

"Look...don't you see?" Florence asked her, and with a look around at the others. "This is a trick of the ogre, who holds my Love hostage in his castle of ice. He is trying to disrupt us, to cause our Company to dissolve due to suspicion and infighting. Who are we? We are a disparate band of adventurers, each with our own reasons for being here, and yet we have come together to try to save my Love...and perhaps save our own selves in doing so."

The others regarded her quizzically.

"Look. Kamida, here, is obviously under an enchantment. Who enchanted her? Why? And what part in this does she play?" asked Florence, gesturing. Suddenly Kamida, her eyes going blank, began to softly recite, "Six foot two...eyes of blue...spiral horn and cloven hooves...has anybody seen my Unicorn?"

Florence blinked. Kamida looked up at her. There was a shimmering opalescent butterfly perched on Kamida's ear. "I was singing this song just before I saw the man with the chocolate bush. I...I don't know why I was singing it. It seemed to be making itself up as I went along... about a missing Unicorn and the person who was trying to find him." She turned to Kathy. "And then I saw you, and I thought you might be the wolf-lady--but you weren't. And then I saw you again and you were a Unicorn now."

"Ah, and why is she a Unicorn?" Florence asked archly. "I think if we can figure that out, we'll learn a lot of things about how this ogre operates."

"I wasn't transformed by an ogre," Kathy said indignantly. "I was given three wishes by a...by a...by a Majestic Presence."

"A majestic presence?" echoed the incredulous chorus of animals.

Kathy scowled. "Yes, well...it made sense at the time. I mean, just as much sense as climbing a chocolate beanstalk and ending up in a place like this; and just as much sense as packing cans full of haggis in your bloody backpack, when some slices of nutbread would have been lighter, easier to eat, and a HELL of a lot tastier!" She turned her scowl from the spilled contents of Kamida's backpack to the skunkette herself. "Honey, if you're a magician--make those disappear and get us something we can eat without gagging."

"MY GLASSES!" Jeanette cried in delight, pouncing down among the scattered cans to clutch at her frog-adorned glasses-case. Holding them up in triumph, she slipped them onto her face with a smile of satisfaction. "Thank you, Kamida," she said, rising to shake the skunkette's hand. Then, scuffing a toe, she added, "Sorry I tried to kill your dragon."

"Sorry I doubted your mother," Kamida answered, lightly stroking Jeanette's arm. "It's just that...I've been troubled by hallucinations."

"It appears we've all had trouble seeing properly, since this ogre got loose in the world," Florence said. "And I suspect that, like our friend Kathy here, things are not all that they seem here. We should be cautious, and not take anything for face value. Come along, we should get moving."

Jeanette and Kamida bend to scoop the objects back into the pack, but Kathy puts her hoof down.

"Leave the haggis here," she ordered. "I've got enough trouble carrying you lot without a bunch of over-processed sheep-guts rattling around too!"

"SHEEP GUTS!" screamed the little chipmunks in abject horror.

"They're not so bad...with pickles," shrugged the ferret queen, speaking to no-one in particular.

"Mama...why do you have SHEEP GUTS?!" weeped Elaine, wishing she had something in her belly to throw up--if only for the dramatic effect.

"Hush, children...it's not for you," Rebecca assured them.

"Then...who's it for?" Provence sniffled in deepest disgust.

"The...the dark-haired stranger who will cross the threshold first," Rebecca replied vaguely, picking up a can of the horrible mess and slipping it into the backpack.

Kathy looked displeased, but Florence added the rest. "You never know when a can will come in handy," the wolf explained to the unicorn, who only sigh wearily.

"Some days it just doesn't pay to get up in the morning," she muttered, as Florence boosted the little ones onto the unicorn's back.

Kathy looked down at Pence. "Hey, Stubby...you wouldn't mind carrying that backpack, eh?"

"Certainly not," Pence agreed, shouldering the load.

Florence regarded the far horizon. There was something gleaming with a dazzling brightness high up in the jagged mountains. A cold wind tugged at the ruff of her cheeks as she said, "There is where we have to go."

"I knew you'd say that," Kathy grumbled, plodding after the wolf with a lash of her lionlike tail.

-page oo32-
written by Nightstar

Copyright and Credit:
  · Florence from "Freefall" © Mark Stanley.
  · Magic Gardener © Hortmage.
  · Jeanette © Jeanette Isabelle.
  · Kathy from "Carry On" © Kathy Garrison.
  · Kamida © Guest #1.
  · ToraKiyoshi - Writer.
  · White Pony from "Cross Time Cafe" © S.Kidwell.
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