A Secret of Your Own
You decide: the fewer people who know, the fewer people the wolves have reasons to circle. Not even Aunt Bee. It feels wrong and safe at the same time, like most secrets.
Keeping a unicorn secretly fed is a career. You learn how much a healing guardian eats (a lot), what she likes (apples, the singing kind of oats, one entire jar of 1987 apricots that you will owe Aunt Bee for someday), and how to walk past a grown-up carrying a bucket while looking bored.
You are not, it turns out, as smooth as you think. That evening Aunt Bee fills the good scrap bucket with apple peelings, cold porridge, and — you watch her do it — a long drizzle of her best honey. She sets it by the cellar door without a word.
“For the compost,” she says, eyes twinkling like a whole night sky. “Mind something doesn't eat it on the way down.”
Down in the cellar, Sera crunches apple peelings and listens to your day like it's the evening news. The grey on her flank has reached another rib. Neither of you says so out loud.