The Creature in the Barn
Inside, the barn smells of hay and thunder. And there, in the far corner, folded into the straw like a dropped ribbon — is a unicorn.
You know the word for her the instant you see her, the way you know your own name. She is smaller than a horse and finer, pink as the inside of a seashell, with a mane like spun silver. Her horn glows, faintly, a nightlight of a glow — and it flickers, because she is trembling.
Along her flank runs a wound. It isn't bleeding. It's worse: it's grey, a streak of that same impossible photograph-grey, and the pink around it is fading like cloth left in the sun.
The unicorn raises her head and looks at you with eyes as dark and deep as the storm outside.
“Please,” she says — and her voice is the silver-bell sound, shaped into words. “Please. They followed me through. I need somewhere to hide.”