Unbridled

Unbridled

         The stars grew pale, like dots of frozen cookie dough, just one like the newborn sun. Its flashes shimmered of liquid silver, more of spilled wine that a star in the midnight sky.

         I sighed sorrowfully. In this famous horse capital of the world, it was more like the small-town where my sister was born in New York, a 'city chick', a 'walking wardrobe', something else than me entirely. Me, myself, and I, that's all I need besides Toby.

Oh Toby, why did Lou have to die today? After only your birth did she get sick! Now she is gone, and you as my foal with demolish as well without a mother. . .

         Toby, the chestnut colt foal born just six weeks ago on our Icelandic Horse Farm in Lexington, Kentucky, was now an orphan. Had I not been there that yesterday hour when Lou, Toby's silver dapple mother died of a not-to-soon case of fatal colic.

         Then, with the little piercing shatter of a rusty cowbell, the horses nickered frantically, like saying 'hello' to the world for the millionth time. Eva, my best friend, was like a tiny peck of shaving galloping down the darkened hill side towards me. Her steed, Luna, an expensive Icelandic show mare, slopped her back and leaped the stream rushing before me.

"Hello!" my friend greeted, pulling Luna to a sliding stop. "How's it going?"

Had she forgotten? Lou is dead! My baby is going to perish!

         I looked down, feeling the tingle of my cheeks flush pastel shadows against the dawn light. "Fine," I replied.

         With her unexpected gasp, without seeing her, I could tell Eva rolled her eyes. "C'mon, Sophie! Just one hack, that's all. Lou is watching you, always."

         I could just narrow my blurred sight to touch the blaze of salty tears ring in the back of my eyes. "It's just too hard, Eva."

         With a scuff, I heard Luna’s hooves pound and fade away like flushing something down the toilet for no apparent reason.

* * *

June 16th, 2000
Library of the Dead
The Realm of Moonfrager

         A monster that was a standing vampire and werewolf stood, buttoning his black cloak of emerald lace and spider thread. A gargoyle picked what seemed of random books from the cob-webbed shelves.

“Done yet, Jackal?” the monstrous being growled.

The gargoyle whimpered. “Yes, Master, almost done!”

         A cat jumped the crack in the floor, like an earthquake had struck the same place more than five times. In her air-leap, she emerged into a hag. One girl with fiery red hair, braids tied with twine-rope, rags for a gown, and slippers made from doe leather.

“Wicked, you must be bloody angry! Are you hungry, my dear, sir?” she bowed.

He smirked. “Only the earth faerie interests me, Elle, just the dust and the steed in which is an angel without wings. . .”

* * *

June 17th, 2000
The Kentucky Horse Park
Planet Earth

         Everything was happening too fast. Too fast! My heart raced, it was almost my turn, the sun shining, and the cheers of the crowd. . .

“Sophie O’ Malley and Frantic Whisper!” the audio announcer hollered. The wooden gates pushed aside, but by the time the light hit us, I was gone, not anywhere to be seen. The saddle was empty, and Frantic was just standing, there, without a blink.

         The sky had turned dull this day of the Icelandic Horse Show. The clouds rumbled and roared, loud and scared. Eva had gone home, with an odd case of the flu, her horse with a cracked ankle bone, sick with colic.

If this horse has a broken ankle bone, she can’t walk to fight the colic. . . I remember the vet saying during the lunch break to Eva. She had crackled into tears.

* * *

June 17th, 2000
Palace of the Unheard
The Realm of Guda

         Wicked did his pleading by burning bottles of oil and rainbow potions into a bubbling cauldron in the center of the tower. Elle and the Jackal stood, watching his every movement like those pictures with moving eyes.
Finally, Elle decided wisely to speak. “The Earthling with expire with a half-heart, her weakness is what will bring her down! Maybe she shall not lack her powers, thus not even knowing about them at all!”

Wicked froze, glared at her, with his glowing yellow eyes with no pupils. “How can a faerie born on Earth not know of a power to overcome? Hmm?”

“That’s just the point. Master, Earth is just what it is! Earth! On this planet, magic is a myth, a fairytale, as they put it! Some even say—“ the Jackal was cut off.

“That love is the closest thing they have to magic,” Elle finished.

         The Master looked puzzled.

“Did you guys go to Earth College or something?”

         He went back to his pot. Strolling over to a jar of man toes, Elle mentally pushed it aside the edge of the shelf’s brink, bringing it to a shattered position on the floor.

“Elle!”

         They, the Jackal and the peasant girl, vanished in the hanging dust.

* * *

Night of July 17th, 2000
Breeder’s Cup Classic Stage Track
Planet Earth

         I stood, sitting on the edge of the rocky, mossy, cliff. The breeze combing my hair like my mother once did. Man, why was it so hard? To live not including the stories and truths of the human girlhood, I grew missing someone that must not have been there at all.

         Suddenly, the sun set, the wind hushed, and my breathing ceased. A cold, icy hand had clasped over my mouth like a dead lock, holding my breath back in a chamber in myself.

His black, dirt-stained lips of fur and polished fangs practically brushed against my ear. “Dearly beloved, Earth Faerie, come with me to the underworld.”

         I shook, trying to scream.

A woman’s voice clattered. “Stop it Wicked! She is not Her!”

         Then his other hand dangled a veil of green, glue-like substance above me.
“This would tell!”

         He poured it into my brunette honey mane. No! It prickled like needles, my skull expanding and breaking all at once. My hands emerged into one, like a stone, gray-silver hoof of gold. Secondly, my body grew longer, and from by back-shoulders I could feel the agony of wings morph.

An angel? Me? I’m dieing, no!

         A headache brought forth a spiraled horn, shimmering and brightening in the misty night with inner ivory vines. My eyes little black pits, and my mane and tail of lioness and silver spider thread.

I am a unicorn? A Pegasus? A pegacorn?

The man screeched. “Yes! She has awakened from her hiding spot on this mere planet! Now, she is. . .mine!”

         Wicked plunged forward, I ducked, my horn pointed towards him. With a splatter of bluish blood did I pierce his heart. He is dead, me a unicorn. . whatever you call it.

         Elle motioned me to a place near the heavens. Lou was there, and so was my mom.

* * *

         Eva was singing a solo for the school play in a remaking of Walt Disney three years
later. . .

“It’s a small world after all! It’s a small world after all!”

         In the background, a fancy dressed Kentucky woman smiled, a man of three feet sitting with a business suit on next to her.

She leaned over. “Now that’s what you call a faerie, right Jackolee?”