Source: Rawpixel LTD/Flickr
Many thanks to Jenne Gray and C.E. Ayr for their photo prompt, The Unicorn Challenge (04/26/2024). No more than 250 words in length.
It’s a tricky business, one that grows trickier as the millennia pass.
Once upon a time, before condos, beach villas, and luxury hotels glutted the shoreline, and floating islands of plastic and waste clouded the seas, my nurseries were filled with the souls of wishes. While they might look to you like nothing more than bulbous kelp, dull and slimy, they are in fact the tadpoles of sorrow and magic, healing and transformation.
Hans Christian Anderson gave my garden a bad rap with his Little Mermaid story.
Listen to me: With every foolish wish fulfilled, there is necessary sacrifice. Sacrifice is food to sustain the tadpoles, energizing them into something beautiful, something better. Go back and read his original tale.
It takes a while to go from tadpole to seahorse, to something that easily finds clear shoreline and moon-dark night. Curved tail splits to hooves, legs, and a flag that glows and streams behind as it runs, shining brighter than any star that plummets to Earth. Its spiraling horn aims straight to the heart and either swerves or impales. Perceived in dreams – unicorn or night mare – it is known only on your awakening, drenched in a sweat of terror or passion.
You’ll never know a greater thrill. You might even heal the world.
Ignore the red flag. Bring me your wishes of any kind. Enter the deep, cold water, flow with the currents and we’ll make a fair exchange of magic.
When’s the last time you saw a unicorn, anyway?
© Liz Husebye Hartmann (2024)
Valley of the Trolls 
What a lovely thought! An excellent write ✍️
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Thank you kindly!
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A dark and magical telling from the witch, Liz.
The mixture of wish and sacrifice, the invitation to ‘ignore the red flag’ and live an exchange of magic – such imagination.
It’s just beautiful.
I would tell you when I last saw a unicorn, but I’m forbidden from speaking of the encounter – lest the magic dissolves…
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Your secret’s safe with me! 🧜♀️🦄
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I like this version better than Hans Christian Anderson’s!
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Disney, while enjoyable, didn’t have the stunning contrasts of ight and dark in the HCA originals. Inspirational and disturbing. Well worth the read & time to recover, IMO.
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What a wonderful idea to grow a unicorn from wishes fulfilled
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Thank you, yes!
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You’re welcome ☺️
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🥰
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I absolutely love how you created this Grim (ouch!) fairy tale, Liz, with your almost poetic building of horror.
And such a clever link to the picture prompt.
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Thank you! Ursula needs to speak, but necessarily be trusted. 😉
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Great piece of evocative and mind-expanding writing, Liz. But if I start having nightmares, look out. 🙂
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Thanks, Doug. Unicorns be like that, sometimes. They have to.
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