She stumbles and falls. Once more, she hears the cry of the wolf. Oh, how she hated that nocturnal keeper of sorrows. How she hated his melancholy howl. And yet, here, where night is all anyone can know and daylight has no friend, he is the master and she his powerless slave.
Picking herself up, she moves on. Somewhere, in the distance, a tree is growing. She doesn't check to see the extent of her injuries. Human nature can get used to anything. Given enough time.
The night surrounds you here. It climbs up from the roots to the trees, through your legs, and takes your breath away, to replace it with something dark that clutches at your heart.
She sees a silver shadow in the distance. Ever promising a moment of light and joy glimpsed in a flash that lasts a lifetime. If only the unicorn would stay.
She wonders how she got here. She has no memory of life before this stop halfway to hell. And yet she knows there must have been more. Did reluctant hands and a helpless heart leave her here? Or was her loneliness the work of errant friends? Friends who moved on and left her here in the abode of night?
Vague shapes in her mind are all she has left of her friends. Mirages in her memory. The vain parrot-keeper of all secrets. The rabbit that was too scared to venture into the forest with her. And there was the eagle-her best friend perhaps. The eagle that grew wings and flew away one night. One night that has lasted till now.
But other friends are still around. She remembers with fondness the owl-her mirror in the night. But he's as lost as she is. Then there's the bear. But each time she runs into them , and others like them, she hears the wolf cry from the depths of the forest and she feels the darkness clutch at her heart once again.
On particularly lonely nights, when she can hear the winds of painful memories howling through the trees, and the rustle of the leaves blends into the cries of her lonely wolf, she wonders if perhaps the reason she is in the forest is herself. Maybe she walked into the forest driven by some inborn demons that spared lesser creatures.
Then one night she came upon the clearing. Lit up by some quality beyond mere light, she knew instinctively that this is where the silver unicorn resides. This is where she would find her salvation.
Many nights have passed since that fateful night. Some have been peaceful, others have been overrun by demons. Always, the cry of the wolf has haunted her. But the Unicorn has kept her company…rarely seen but always at the periphery of the clearing. Her ticket to the future. When the wolf inside her will be at peace and the trees will stop growing. A future where daylight won't just be a fading memory.
