Side note: This story was developed as part of a challenge to me by a friend who came up with three words/phrases and asked me to do the same and from those 6, i was to develop an original story. The given words/phrases were: A presence, impending darkness, hope, Disimpassioned, A red dress, and A lush forest. I hope you enjoy what i came up with. :)

(Fiction)

A young maiden appears out of the dense, lush forest, that surrounds the small meandering creek. Slowly and with deliberate caution she approaches the water that flows ever so indifferent through the woods. The fire of woman’s red dress seems matched only in intensity by the fire of her long locks of red hair that fall down her back, nearly touching the earth upon which she walks.

With quick glances around her she in time feels safe enough to move in and take a sip of the glistening waters. The parched woman carefully cups the water in her hands as if it were a treasure that she could not part with. As she lifts her hands to her mouth her gaze is caught by something in the distance. Forgetting all about her thirst she releases the much-needed fluid.

She rushes toward the distance white object as if already knowing what she would see. As she gets closer she feels herself gripped with a feeling of fear. The sky above clouds over and fills the woman’s heart with the feeling of an impending darkness and evil all around her. The disimpassioned woman falls to the ground weeping the fluids that her body so richly needs as her fear is realized, and she sees what it is that pulled her attention this way.

The ground is saturated with blood from the once majestic animal. She had heard that they no longer existed, but here to truly was proof that not all of the unicorns had perished by the hands of the evil emperor during the massacre, so long ago.

Her thoughts race, “what if THIS was the last one?” She knew the answer before she asked. Without the pure hearts of the unicorns upon the world to act as a balance, the lands will surely fall into a darkness that she and others like her hiding from the emperor will never be able to escape from. The evils of the world would rule unchecked and no one would be safe from the tyranny.

As she knelt there weeping, her tears fell and mixed with the blood of the fallen beast. She can’t help but feel that all is lost. But even as she feels this emptiness within her, she can’t help but feel a sense of hope for the future. She lifts her teary face from her hands and looks around her. Something is out there, somewhere. She can feel a presence that she can’t explain around her. The feeling becomes stronger and stronger. She can’t help but be afraid of what evils lie in the dark unknown of the woods that she feels is there, but can’t see.

She catches a glimpse of something moving to her right, but it disappears just as quickly from view. Then something to her left, but again she can’t discern what is approaching her. She cowers in fear and with her back against a tree she pulls her legs to her chest and buries her face in the folds of her dress, whose red brilliance pales in comparison to the blood that has pooled around her.

The woman hears things approaching her from all sides and feels that her time is up; whatever killed the unicorn is going to take her now as well. A twig snaps right beside the woman, and coming to the reality that her time has come she decides to look death in the eyes, in whatever form it takes for her.

She looks to her side and catches the gaze of a towering white creature beside her. Tears of fear turn to tears of joy as she realizes that the last unicorn had not fallen!

Glancing around her she finds herself surrounded by unicorns, young and old who have come together at this horrible place of death, to pay their last respects to their fallen brother. The woman watches as the unicorns surround the fallen one and bow their heads in respect. She watches as their horns begin to glow with a brilliant white light that she can’t look into, and buries her eyes in her hands to avoid the light.

As she sees the light between her fingers begin to subside, she pulls her hands away to find the body of the fallen beast has disappeared. All that remains to mark where the fallen beast once lay is a patch of grass and a young sapling that has already started to reach for the sky like all of the other trees that fill the forest that the woman is in.

The unicorns one by one turn away from the new life that has sprung up from this place of death. One by one they disappear into the dense forest until the woman finds herself alone once again.

The woman rises to her feet and like the unicorns before her, she begins to walk away from this place of birth. Thinking twice the woman can’t help but look back at the young sapling reaching proudly toward the sky as its older brethren all around have been doing for hundreds of years before. A feeling of comfort and warmth comes over the woman as she realizes she was never in danger here, for she never was alone, after all...