Post by Eri on Nov 30, 2012 22:22:29 GMT -5
Well, I stumbled across a short story I wrote back in my freshman year of high school. That was about what...six, seven years ago? God, I feel old and I'm only 20. Anyways here is unicorn reaper. I won a contest with it, so yay!
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erica Fernandez
The Unicorn Reaper
“Looks like another person was killed last night.” Kyle looked over at his sister, Aria. She was busy on her laptop, trying to finish the last of her short story. She scowled as she tore her gaze from the glowing screen to look at the television. The news was on; a woman with far too perfect features was frowning as she described another body forest rangers had found. The way she looked in comparison to the grave news didn’t make it any better.
“That’s the third body they’ve found this week,” he continued, turning to watch his sister’s expression.
Aria stared at the picture on the screen. It was ironic how the photo they used for the murderer was completely off. There was a unicorn in the upper right corner, with a white coat and rainbows coming out of its hooves. Its coat was pure white, with an invisible wind blowing behind it as it reared on its legs. She could feel her stomach churn at the irony of it, but she knew they were trying to make light of something that was taking the world by storm.
Unicorns were back.
Well, to be more specific, they were attacking people. The environmentalists found out they never left. Their natural habitats were almost completely wiped out now, forcing them to move closer to human civilization. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the unicorn stories she had been told as a little girl were far from the real thing. Unicorns were predators, and had a deadly poison in their horns to help them kill large prey. They had fangs just like a lion, and were as brutal as any wild animal. Anyone that entered their territory was attacked and killed, whether they were human or squirrel.
That included the small town in which Aria’s family lived. It was a small town in Montana, only a few hours from Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone had already been closed to the public. It was an ideal place for the man-eating monsters. They had first started appearing back in April, and now October was coming around and the authorities were still having trouble controlling the situation.
Aria shivered as the memory of watching their younger sister being stabbed and bludgeoned to death by one of those vicious creatures passed her mind. Kyle would have been dead too, if she hadn’t dragged him up that tree. She could still hear the unicorn’s cries from when it slammed its horn against the bark of the tree and the crunching of her sister’s bones in its jaws.
“Did they say who it was?” she finally asked, ignoring his prying gaze by hiding behind her laptop again. “I mean, the person who was killed?” Kyle stood and walked over to stand behind her before reading the words on her computer screen over her shoulder.
“It looks like another teen. You know how some idiots like to disobey their parents.” He turned his gaze back to the TV screen as it switched to the latest controversy over foreign oil. Really. As if killer unicorns weren’t bad enough, now gas prices were skyrocketing. It was too dangerous to ride bikes or walk around, so why make it too expensive to drive?
She sighed before closing her laptop screen; there was no way she could finish her story now. She knew Kyle was going to start talking about unicorns, and it would be too hard to focus on her work.
Aria published a book on unicorns back when they weren’t known as man-eating machines, and had become a famous author. It was quite unexpected. She had been an athlete in high school, and during her senior year the local newspaper had a contest for young writers. Her teacher, Mr. Smith, had offered his students extra credit if they submitted a story, and the story tells itself. Her story had been such a hit a local publisher had it up on the shelves within a few short months.
“Do you think it’s the same one?” he questioned, his head tilted to the side. Kyle had the same curly hair as Aria, but his curls were dark while hers were a strawberry blonde. He had their mother’s blue eyes while she had inherited her father’s hazel. He was tall, with a stocky build. If it hadn’t been for the unicorn, he would probably be on the football team. It was hard to play football with a three-inch split on the top of your skull. A unicorn had done it, making contact sports too dangerous.
Aria was much smaller than her younger brother. She was built for speed, and had multiple varsity letters, but that didn’t stop her from thumping his shoulder at his question. “I don’t know.”
“But those people that came by said that...“
“Those people don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”
“But they said they could teach you to kill unicorns. You could get the one that killed Karina.”
Aria’s fists clenched at that statement. “You know people can’t kill unicorns. They heal like they do in the stories.”
“But you’ve seen those pictures online!” he snatched the laptop from her and quickly opened an image he had saved for arguments like these. “Look! Somebody has to be killing them!” The image he was showing her was one of the few pictures of a dead unicorn. The dead bodies were always found randomly, with no real signs of how it was killed. A lot of people claimed to be unicorn killers, but as far as Aria believed, they were all liars begging for media attention.
“It doesn’t mean I have to be the one to kill them!” she punched him again, her fist connecting with his arm. “Besides, why would I be able to kill them?”
He rubbed at his newly formed bruise, “I don’t know, but there are a lot of things I don’t know; like how you managed to climb a tree while lugging my body over your shoulder. Aria, I’m twice your size!”
She ignored his statement. For some reason, when the unicorn attacked the three siblings, she had felt a rush of power. If she hadn’t been so frightened and confused, maybe she would have been able to save Karina too.
But she had been weak.
“I’m going for a walk,” she muttered, grabbing her coat from the counter and storming outside. She knew he would try to follow her, so the moment she was off the porch steps, she sprinted across the back yard and into the woods. It was suicide these days with unicorns scouting the trees for potential prey, but she had learned long ago that despite all their powers, they couldn’t climb, and they couldn’t fly.
She kept running until she felt as though her lungs would burst, then slowed down to catch her breath. The woods around their house used to be a second home to her. She had been born and raised in this town, and damn it, she wasn’t about to let a horse with a mutant growth coming from its head take it away from her.
She kicked at the fallen leaves around her feet as she scanned the foliage to see where she was. She couldn’t see the house anymore, but it wasn’t hard to figure out where it was. Kyle was calling for her to come back. He should have known not to push her so far.
She didn’t blame him completely, though.
The attack had struck him the hardest. He had been in a coma from his head injury for over a week, and once woken, he had been distraught. He might not have been the oldest, but he had always watched over his two sisters.
Aria finally stopped, settling down on a fallen tree. It was in the same place that Karina had been killed. In fact, it was the tree that had saved her life. The tree had been damaged by the poison in the unicorn horn, and died within a week. She had to force her parents to leave it in the forest, so she could come back to it. It used to be too painful to come here, but over the past two years, she had learned to deal with it. She knew that at that time of the attack, she wouldn’t have been able to save her sister, and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop all the killings.
The key word in that is ‘all’. During the time Kyle was in the hospital recovering, a group of people had arrived at their doorstep. Their parents had been at the hospital at the time, and Aria was home alone. The media hadn’t given out their names yet, so it was interesting how these people even knew a unicorn had attacked her.
They had spouted nonsense on how her power had called to the beast. They were all women, their ages ranging from their late teens to early thirties. At first, she thought they were some weird feminist group; which still hadn’t made sense to her at the time. They continued to talk about how certain people were born with an immunity to unicorn poison, and that their magic seemed to rub off on them to give them supernatural speed and strength.
It had been gibberish to her at the time, but now she saw they might have been right. After that first unicorn sighting, she could sense where the creatures stalked the forest. They were attracted to her, but seemed to keep their distance depending on her mood. Today she was angry, and they were keeping a rather large distance. Did they fear her like she once did them?
Karina had been immune to their poison as well. It had baffled the coroner, but unlike the other bodies found after being attacked by unicorns, Karina’s body hadn’t decayed at a rapid rate due to the poison.
It was the multiple stab wounds and broken bones that had killed the child, if you didn’t count half of her body had been devoured not five feet from where Aria stood now.
She shivered, brushing that picture to the back of her mind. It was that sudden image that made her snap out of her daydream long enough to realize she wasn’t alone.
She froze, turning her head to stare into the red eyes of a unicorn. Its lips were curled back to bare its yellowed teeth, which oozed saliva mixed with blood; it must have just eaten something. The horn on its head was gray in color and pointed straight from its head like a spear. It was large, probably male, though it was hard to tell from where she was standing, with a brown coat. It would look like any normal horse if it didn’t have a horn, fangs, and red eyes. That’s what she hated about the story she had once written. She had described these creatures not as perfect and beautiful creatures, but as a simple part of nature.
Now she wasn’t quite so sure what they were as this one continued to stare at her. She could feel her palms sweating from fear and nervousness as she glanced to the nearest tree.
That was a mistake.
The moment her gaze left the unicorns, it charged at her with its head down. She quickly jumped out of the way, rolling on the ground before leaping onto her feet and sprinting to the nearest tree. She felt that same surge of power from years ago race through her veins, and leapt a full six feet from the ground to grab onto the lowest branch before swinging herself up. She could almost feel the horn whip past her as the beast tried to jump to her level.
She quickly moved up to a higher and sturdier branch before looking down at the unicorn. She could see now that it was, indeed, a male, and that he was injured on his left flank. She felt her brow rise in confusion. These beasts healed rapidly, and the wound looked at least a few days old.
“Don’t move!” she heard a voice say from below, and turned her head to see one of the women who had appeared on her porch standing there.
With a sword.
Where the hell did she get a sword, and what the hell did she think she could do with it?
It took her a few moments to realize that the woman had called out to the unicorn, and not to her. The creature turned its head, a high pitched screech erupting from its lungs as it reared up and kicked its legs in the woman’s direction. It’s hooves pawed at the air in warning, but Aria could almost sense its fear. This human-eating monster was afraid?
“Hush, hush.” The woman placed the sword in a holster on her back, raising her open hands into the air. Her hands were delicate and white, like a pianists fingers. The unicorn’s eyes widened as it snorted, turning its head back and forth in uncertainty. It seemed to want to run, but at the same time confused on why it should. All the while, the woman was walking forward with her arms extended, moving closer and closer until she was within kicking distance. “Hush, boy. Calm, calm.” The woman’s voice was suddenly so smooth, like honey. It tugged at Aria’s mind, and she realized that it felt like the same power she had felt when she had jumped.
The unicorn was suddenly still, as if paralyzed by an invisible force. The woman reached up, grasping the unicorn’s horn with slender fingers before suddenly giving it a hard tug. Aria nearly screamed when the unicorn let out a banshee-like screech, his voice piercing the sky like a blade. The woman ducked back, gesturing to Aria to move from the tree and onto the beasts back. She narrowly dodged a hoof aimed at her head.
“Are you nuts?” Aria yelled over the unicorn’s cries. It was waving its head from side to side as blood poured from the gaping hole on its face. The wound on its flank had reopened as well, and the stench of its blood filled the air.
“I can’t kill it. I’m the soother, while you are the reaper.” The woman took out the sword again, tossing it to Aria. She caught it by impulse, though she nearly sliced off her hand in the process. “I don’t have the magic to nullify its healing abilities. You do.”
Aria could only gape, but instantly realized she had to do this. Well, she felt that she knew what the crazy lady was talking about. She was about ready to piss her pants from fear, but the screaming unicorn seemed almost pitiful.
She would never pity a unicorn.
She slid off the branches, landing neatly next to the unicorn as she brought the sword down through its neck. It sliced skin, muscle and bone like a hot knife through butter all in one stroke. She could feel the magic from the unicorn rushing from its body and into hers, before winding its way to the blade of the sword. It felt…exhilarating.
It was silent for a moment before the body fell to the ground with a thud. Blood began to pool around the severed neck, where the head lay with its eyes wide and dead only a foot away.
Aria dropped the sword, taking a step back from the corpse. The woman was behind her, and was quick to pick up the sword and wipe it off before guiding her away from the scene. Aria wanted to ask her what had just happened, but was more grateful for the guidance as they left the dead unicorn behind them.
They were silent until Aria’s home came into view. It was almost dark now, but she could see the outline of Kyle in the kitchen. He was probably sitting at the table with their parents, watching the trees for her to come back.
“What’s your name?” she finally asked, stopping to look at this strange person. The woman was at least forty, the oldest she had seen in the group. She had dark hair, with a few strands of gray. Her eyes were blue, but they held a depth that seemed to draw you in. Maybe it was those eyes that had calmed the unicorn?
“Evelyn…” she said slowly, as though she was unsure whether Aria was really okay or not. She had just killed a killer unicorn, after all. “Do you believe what we were telling you now?”
“…” Aria was silent for a moment before slowly nodding her head, “Yes. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t. I mean, I killed it! It took me less than a second!”
“You did very well for your first kill. That dark horse was the one who killed that boy the other day. I’ve been chasing it for hours.”
“Dark horse?”
“Not all unicorns are bad. The unicorns that have horns that spiral are our companions, though their horns are still poisonous. They don’t attack people, and try their best to stay away from towns and cities. The dark horses horns sprout straight out of their skulls, which is why I have to break it before you can kill it.” She explained, trying to make it as simple as possible.
“So, there are bad unicorns and there are good unicorns?”
Evelyn nodded, “Yes, but the good ones are few. It’s difficult to explain, but I’m a unicorn hunter. Only women inherit the ability, and we’re still confused on where it even starts. All we know is that we have the ability to kill unicorns. We’ve been around for centuries, protecting certain regions in pairs.”
“The soother and the reaper.” Aria stated, putting the rest of the story together on her own. She was a writer, after all. She could guess the rest of this story.
“You are a reaper. The only one in this side of the country, actually.”
“Which means you expect me to just join you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you implied it.”
Evelyn placed her fingers onto the ridge of her nose. “I don’t have time for this.” She reached into her pocket, pulling out a slip of paper. “Look, if you want to help, call me. This doesn’t take over your entire life, and it’s something you have to decide on your own.” She shouldered the sword, using her coat to hide the weapon. “Just think about it. It’s dangerous work, and it takes brutal training.”
Aria took the paper, folding it neatly before placing it into her pocket. She gave the woman a nod, watching as she turned to head back into the woods. She watched until she was out of sight before turning and running back into the house.
Kyle was at the door before she could even open it. “Are you alright? I heard these noises coming from the woods, but mom and dad wouldn’t let me look for you.”
Aria raised her arms, showing that she wasn’t injured. She then shoved her hands back into her pockets, fiddling with the paper. “I’m fine, but…” she smiled, “I’ve got something to tell you.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Erica Fernandez
The Unicorn Reaper
“Looks like another person was killed last night.” Kyle looked over at his sister, Aria. She was busy on her laptop, trying to finish the last of her short story. She scowled as she tore her gaze from the glowing screen to look at the television. The news was on; a woman with far too perfect features was frowning as she described another body forest rangers had found. The way she looked in comparison to the grave news didn’t make it any better.
“That’s the third body they’ve found this week,” he continued, turning to watch his sister’s expression.
Aria stared at the picture on the screen. It was ironic how the photo they used for the murderer was completely off. There was a unicorn in the upper right corner, with a white coat and rainbows coming out of its hooves. Its coat was pure white, with an invisible wind blowing behind it as it reared on its legs. She could feel her stomach churn at the irony of it, but she knew they were trying to make light of something that was taking the world by storm.
Unicorns were back.
Well, to be more specific, they were attacking people. The environmentalists found out they never left. Their natural habitats were almost completely wiped out now, forcing them to move closer to human civilization. It wouldn’t be so bad, but the unicorn stories she had been told as a little girl were far from the real thing. Unicorns were predators, and had a deadly poison in their horns to help them kill large prey. They had fangs just like a lion, and were as brutal as any wild animal. Anyone that entered their territory was attacked and killed, whether they were human or squirrel.
That included the small town in which Aria’s family lived. It was a small town in Montana, only a few hours from Yellowstone National Park. Yellowstone had already been closed to the public. It was an ideal place for the man-eating monsters. They had first started appearing back in April, and now October was coming around and the authorities were still having trouble controlling the situation.
Aria shivered as the memory of watching their younger sister being stabbed and bludgeoned to death by one of those vicious creatures passed her mind. Kyle would have been dead too, if she hadn’t dragged him up that tree. She could still hear the unicorn’s cries from when it slammed its horn against the bark of the tree and the crunching of her sister’s bones in its jaws.
“Did they say who it was?” she finally asked, ignoring his prying gaze by hiding behind her laptop again. “I mean, the person who was killed?” Kyle stood and walked over to stand behind her before reading the words on her computer screen over her shoulder.
“It looks like another teen. You know how some idiots like to disobey their parents.” He turned his gaze back to the TV screen as it switched to the latest controversy over foreign oil. Really. As if killer unicorns weren’t bad enough, now gas prices were skyrocketing. It was too dangerous to ride bikes or walk around, so why make it too expensive to drive?
She sighed before closing her laptop screen; there was no way she could finish her story now. She knew Kyle was going to start talking about unicorns, and it would be too hard to focus on her work.
Aria published a book on unicorns back when they weren’t known as man-eating machines, and had become a famous author. It was quite unexpected. She had been an athlete in high school, and during her senior year the local newspaper had a contest for young writers. Her teacher, Mr. Smith, had offered his students extra credit if they submitted a story, and the story tells itself. Her story had been such a hit a local publisher had it up on the shelves within a few short months.
“Do you think it’s the same one?” he questioned, his head tilted to the side. Kyle had the same curly hair as Aria, but his curls were dark while hers were a strawberry blonde. He had their mother’s blue eyes while she had inherited her father’s hazel. He was tall, with a stocky build. If it hadn’t been for the unicorn, he would probably be on the football team. It was hard to play football with a three-inch split on the top of your skull. A unicorn had done it, making contact sports too dangerous.
Aria was much smaller than her younger brother. She was built for speed, and had multiple varsity letters, but that didn’t stop her from thumping his shoulder at his question. “I don’t know.”
“But those people that came by said that...“
“Those people don’t have a clue what they’re talking about.”
“But they said they could teach you to kill unicorns. You could get the one that killed Karina.”
Aria’s fists clenched at that statement. “You know people can’t kill unicorns. They heal like they do in the stories.”
“But you’ve seen those pictures online!” he snatched the laptop from her and quickly opened an image he had saved for arguments like these. “Look! Somebody has to be killing them!” The image he was showing her was one of the few pictures of a dead unicorn. The dead bodies were always found randomly, with no real signs of how it was killed. A lot of people claimed to be unicorn killers, but as far as Aria believed, they were all liars begging for media attention.
“It doesn’t mean I have to be the one to kill them!” she punched him again, her fist connecting with his arm. “Besides, why would I be able to kill them?”
He rubbed at his newly formed bruise, “I don’t know, but there are a lot of things I don’t know; like how you managed to climb a tree while lugging my body over your shoulder. Aria, I’m twice your size!”
She ignored his statement. For some reason, when the unicorn attacked the three siblings, she had felt a rush of power. If she hadn’t been so frightened and confused, maybe she would have been able to save Karina too.
But she had been weak.
“I’m going for a walk,” she muttered, grabbing her coat from the counter and storming outside. She knew he would try to follow her, so the moment she was off the porch steps, she sprinted across the back yard and into the woods. It was suicide these days with unicorns scouting the trees for potential prey, but she had learned long ago that despite all their powers, they couldn’t climb, and they couldn’t fly.
She kept running until she felt as though her lungs would burst, then slowed down to catch her breath. The woods around their house used to be a second home to her. She had been born and raised in this town, and damn it, she wasn’t about to let a horse with a mutant growth coming from its head take it away from her.
She kicked at the fallen leaves around her feet as she scanned the foliage to see where she was. She couldn’t see the house anymore, but it wasn’t hard to figure out where it was. Kyle was calling for her to come back. He should have known not to push her so far.
She didn’t blame him completely, though.
The attack had struck him the hardest. He had been in a coma from his head injury for over a week, and once woken, he had been distraught. He might not have been the oldest, but he had always watched over his two sisters.
Aria finally stopped, settling down on a fallen tree. It was in the same place that Karina had been killed. In fact, it was the tree that had saved her life. The tree had been damaged by the poison in the unicorn horn, and died within a week. She had to force her parents to leave it in the forest, so she could come back to it. It used to be too painful to come here, but over the past two years, she had learned to deal with it. She knew that at that time of the attack, she wouldn’t have been able to save her sister, and there wasn’t anything she could do to stop all the killings.
The key word in that is ‘all’. During the time Kyle was in the hospital recovering, a group of people had arrived at their doorstep. Their parents had been at the hospital at the time, and Aria was home alone. The media hadn’t given out their names yet, so it was interesting how these people even knew a unicorn had attacked her.
They had spouted nonsense on how her power had called to the beast. They were all women, their ages ranging from their late teens to early thirties. At first, she thought they were some weird feminist group; which still hadn’t made sense to her at the time. They continued to talk about how certain people were born with an immunity to unicorn poison, and that their magic seemed to rub off on them to give them supernatural speed and strength.
It had been gibberish to her at the time, but now she saw they might have been right. After that first unicorn sighting, she could sense where the creatures stalked the forest. They were attracted to her, but seemed to keep their distance depending on her mood. Today she was angry, and they were keeping a rather large distance. Did they fear her like she once did them?
Karina had been immune to their poison as well. It had baffled the coroner, but unlike the other bodies found after being attacked by unicorns, Karina’s body hadn’t decayed at a rapid rate due to the poison.
It was the multiple stab wounds and broken bones that had killed the child, if you didn’t count half of her body had been devoured not five feet from where Aria stood now.
She shivered, brushing that picture to the back of her mind. It was that sudden image that made her snap out of her daydream long enough to realize she wasn’t alone.
She froze, turning her head to stare into the red eyes of a unicorn. Its lips were curled back to bare its yellowed teeth, which oozed saliva mixed with blood; it must have just eaten something. The horn on its head was gray in color and pointed straight from its head like a spear. It was large, probably male, though it was hard to tell from where she was standing, with a brown coat. It would look like any normal horse if it didn’t have a horn, fangs, and red eyes. That’s what she hated about the story she had once written. She had described these creatures not as perfect and beautiful creatures, but as a simple part of nature.
Now she wasn’t quite so sure what they were as this one continued to stare at her. She could feel her palms sweating from fear and nervousness as she glanced to the nearest tree.
That was a mistake.
The moment her gaze left the unicorns, it charged at her with its head down. She quickly jumped out of the way, rolling on the ground before leaping onto her feet and sprinting to the nearest tree. She felt that same surge of power from years ago race through her veins, and leapt a full six feet from the ground to grab onto the lowest branch before swinging herself up. She could almost feel the horn whip past her as the beast tried to jump to her level.
She quickly moved up to a higher and sturdier branch before looking down at the unicorn. She could see now that it was, indeed, a male, and that he was injured on his left flank. She felt her brow rise in confusion. These beasts healed rapidly, and the wound looked at least a few days old.
“Don’t move!” she heard a voice say from below, and turned her head to see one of the women who had appeared on her porch standing there.
With a sword.
Where the hell did she get a sword, and what the hell did she think she could do with it?
It took her a few moments to realize that the woman had called out to the unicorn, and not to her. The creature turned its head, a high pitched screech erupting from its lungs as it reared up and kicked its legs in the woman’s direction. It’s hooves pawed at the air in warning, but Aria could almost sense its fear. This human-eating monster was afraid?
“Hush, hush.” The woman placed the sword in a holster on her back, raising her open hands into the air. Her hands were delicate and white, like a pianists fingers. The unicorn’s eyes widened as it snorted, turning its head back and forth in uncertainty. It seemed to want to run, but at the same time confused on why it should. All the while, the woman was walking forward with her arms extended, moving closer and closer until she was within kicking distance. “Hush, boy. Calm, calm.” The woman’s voice was suddenly so smooth, like honey. It tugged at Aria’s mind, and she realized that it felt like the same power she had felt when she had jumped.
The unicorn was suddenly still, as if paralyzed by an invisible force. The woman reached up, grasping the unicorn’s horn with slender fingers before suddenly giving it a hard tug. Aria nearly screamed when the unicorn let out a banshee-like screech, his voice piercing the sky like a blade. The woman ducked back, gesturing to Aria to move from the tree and onto the beasts back. She narrowly dodged a hoof aimed at her head.
“Are you nuts?” Aria yelled over the unicorn’s cries. It was waving its head from side to side as blood poured from the gaping hole on its face. The wound on its flank had reopened as well, and the stench of its blood filled the air.
“I can’t kill it. I’m the soother, while you are the reaper.” The woman took out the sword again, tossing it to Aria. She caught it by impulse, though she nearly sliced off her hand in the process. “I don’t have the magic to nullify its healing abilities. You do.”
Aria could only gape, but instantly realized she had to do this. Well, she felt that she knew what the crazy lady was talking about. She was about ready to piss her pants from fear, but the screaming unicorn seemed almost pitiful.
She would never pity a unicorn.
She slid off the branches, landing neatly next to the unicorn as she brought the sword down through its neck. It sliced skin, muscle and bone like a hot knife through butter all in one stroke. She could feel the magic from the unicorn rushing from its body and into hers, before winding its way to the blade of the sword. It felt…exhilarating.
It was silent for a moment before the body fell to the ground with a thud. Blood began to pool around the severed neck, where the head lay with its eyes wide and dead only a foot away.
Aria dropped the sword, taking a step back from the corpse. The woman was behind her, and was quick to pick up the sword and wipe it off before guiding her away from the scene. Aria wanted to ask her what had just happened, but was more grateful for the guidance as they left the dead unicorn behind them.
They were silent until Aria’s home came into view. It was almost dark now, but she could see the outline of Kyle in the kitchen. He was probably sitting at the table with their parents, watching the trees for her to come back.
“What’s your name?” she finally asked, stopping to look at this strange person. The woman was at least forty, the oldest she had seen in the group. She had dark hair, with a few strands of gray. Her eyes were blue, but they held a depth that seemed to draw you in. Maybe it was those eyes that had calmed the unicorn?
“Evelyn…” she said slowly, as though she was unsure whether Aria was really okay or not. She had just killed a killer unicorn, after all. “Do you believe what we were telling you now?”
“…” Aria was silent for a moment before slowly nodding her head, “Yes. I’d be an idiot if I didn’t. I mean, I killed it! It took me less than a second!”
“You did very well for your first kill. That dark horse was the one who killed that boy the other day. I’ve been chasing it for hours.”
“Dark horse?”
“Not all unicorns are bad. The unicorns that have horns that spiral are our companions, though their horns are still poisonous. They don’t attack people, and try their best to stay away from towns and cities. The dark horses horns sprout straight out of their skulls, which is why I have to break it before you can kill it.” She explained, trying to make it as simple as possible.
“So, there are bad unicorns and there are good unicorns?”
Evelyn nodded, “Yes, but the good ones are few. It’s difficult to explain, but I’m a unicorn hunter. Only women inherit the ability, and we’re still confused on where it even starts. All we know is that we have the ability to kill unicorns. We’ve been around for centuries, protecting certain regions in pairs.”
“The soother and the reaper.” Aria stated, putting the rest of the story together on her own. She was a writer, after all. She could guess the rest of this story.
“You are a reaper. The only one in this side of the country, actually.”
“Which means you expect me to just join you?”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But you implied it.”
Evelyn placed her fingers onto the ridge of her nose. “I don’t have time for this.” She reached into her pocket, pulling out a slip of paper. “Look, if you want to help, call me. This doesn’t take over your entire life, and it’s something you have to decide on your own.” She shouldered the sword, using her coat to hide the weapon. “Just think about it. It’s dangerous work, and it takes brutal training.”
Aria took the paper, folding it neatly before placing it into her pocket. She gave the woman a nod, watching as she turned to head back into the woods. She watched until she was out of sight before turning and running back into the house.
Kyle was at the door before she could even open it. “Are you alright? I heard these noises coming from the woods, but mom and dad wouldn’t let me look for you.”
Aria raised her arms, showing that she wasn’t injured. She then shoved her hands back into her pockets, fiddling with the paper. “I’m fine, but…” she smiled, “I’ve got something to tell you.”