For flofx‘s commissioned prompt, a continuation of
Unicorn Chase (LJ) and Unicorn Chased (LJ).

I have a feeling this one needs a content warning.

Infe noticed the changes in her daughter, as the unicorns filled the village.

At first, Felfen lit up, becoming happy in a way she hadn’t since Infe and Fennix had taken jobs at the Factory. She began making more friends, her skin turned brown with the sun and her hair bleached fairer, and she smiled, all the time, she smiled.

Infe smiled more, too, and Fennix did, proud that their daughter was helping the Town and the Factory, proud that she was becoming a valuable member of the community. More than that pride, though, they were happy that their flower was blooming again, that their lovely daughter was smiling and playing again.

And then something started happening.

Infe wasn’t sure, at first. Felfen was at that age where girls could be smiling one moment, crying the next, and shouting with rage the next. The frowns could have been passing thunderstorms. The worry lines could have been a friend speaking unkindly to her. The smiles were still there, at least. She was still spotting unicorns…

…at first. When Felfen started letting Angwe, a year younger than her, take the credit for the unicorn spottings, Infe knew something was wrong. She took her twenty minutes on lunch one day, and walked out in the Town, to see what was going on.

There. There was Infe’s daughter, the jewel of her life, sneaking across the market square, and there, there was a shadow Infe couldn’t quite see, and Felfen blanching.

“Leave me alone,” the girl muttered, backing towards the fountain. “Leave me alone. I won’t tell them, anymore, but why won’t you just go away? Please?”

Infe didn’t know what the unicorn did, but her daughter backed up until her legs hit the low wall of the fountain’s surround. “Please, please. I don’t know why you’re following me. I don’t know…”

For one moment, one moment of horrible, awful clarity, Infe could see the unicorn. It stood at the shoulder almost as tall as a man, and its horn was long, and pristine white, its hooves golden, its tangled tail and mane streaked with the same gold color.

And its horn was leveled straight at Felfen.

Infe screamed. Across the square, someone else took up the panic, and someone else. They could all, it seemed, see the creature. And they were all terrified for Infe’s daughter.

Only she, Felfen, staring at the creature, seemed calm. Frozen in terror? No. Infe made herself calm down, and walked, as quietly as she could towards her daughter. Not frozen, but ready.

“I understand,” the girl whispered. The look in her eyes… Infe remembered that look on her own face, many many years ago in a wedding bed. “I’m ready.”

“Fel…” but it was too late. The unicorn was piercing her daughter with its horn, the blood dripping into the fountain, staining it red, staining Felfen’s dress red. Her daughter’s eyes rolled back in her head, and she fell into the water.

And the unicorn was gone from Infe’s vision, the water pure and clear, and Felfen, un-wounded, floated like a lily in the fountain pool.

This entry was originally posted at http://aldersprig.dreamwidth.org/297419.html. You can comment here or there.

After The Grey Line (lj), Productive, and The Governors (LJ), for anke‘s commissioned Prompt.

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

Antheri’s desk was somewhere between a mess ans a complete loss. The man had kept everything visible so tidy, Guilian had, naturally, he thought, assumed that the files would be just as orderly.

But the employee files, the production notes, the construction plans, the purchasing and selling paperwork, all of it was jammed haphazardly into cabinets, with labels that made no sense: “Castorry,” “Engaran,” “Tibinibit,” and so on, all in Antheri’s careful copperplate.

It was young Santha, Myrlo the engineer’s daughter, who suggested they could be names. “You said,” she suggested, when he conscripted her to help him sort out the mess, “that he’d been screaming about the governors?”

“He had,” Guilian agreed. That had been bothering him more and more. How long had Antheri been going mad? Worse… had it all been madness?

“Maybe these are the names he thought the governors were called? I heard him, sometimes, muttering to himself,” she added, “and sometimes he’d call me in to take dictation… here.” She pulled out a wide folder full of very tidy notes. “These are mine. I don’t think they make any sense, but they are at least legible.”

He noted that, unlike many of the workers, Santha seemed neither fascinated by or bothered by the young unicorn foal that was still following him around; she fed it, like one would any pet or working animal, and otherwise left it alone. She had come highly recommended as a practical, level-headed young woman, but her reaction to the unicorn made him wonder.

“Do you see it?” he asked, apropos to nothing, as they were still looking at her file of notes.

She was either used to dealing with strange comments out of nowhere, working with Antheri as she had, or she was used to oblique references to unicorns, living in the Town as she did. “I do,” she admitted. “It’s very pretty, but the unicorns frighten me.”

“And why’s that?” he asked, trying to be gentle. The unicorns had frightened Antheri, too.

She looked up at him, meeting his eyes with her own sky-blue gaze. She had, the Administrator was startled to realize, a very piercing, uncomfortable gaze.

“My mother was from a Village, Administrator. The unicorns… they purify the water, of course. But everything has a price.” She took the folder back from him, and flipped through the notes. “Here. Read this. Antheri might be mad, but there were things he understood very well.”

Guilian sat down at his former assistant’s desk and began reading. After a while, he looked up, to find Santha still tidying papers into files, and still watching him. “If a third of this is true…”

“At least a third of it is true,” she confirmed quietly. “Why do you think the Villages hate the town?”

“I don’t know, I thought, the pollution, the people we steal for the factory…”

“All that. All that and everything else,” she murmured. “But what choice does the Town have?”

“Antheri thought none.” He studied the notes. “He thought the governors…”

“Yes. He thought that they demanded sacrifice. And he believed that they would take a higher toll if he didn’t give them what they wanted.”

“And he was right about the unicorns.”

“And he was right about the unicorns,” she agreed. Her eyes seemed to be boring through him.

“What if,” Guilian whispered, “he was right about everything?”

Next: Cleaning House

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After The Grey Line (lj) and Productive, for anke‘s commissioned Prompt. Part Two of ??

Unicorn Factory has a landing page here on DW and here on LJ

“Ah, Antheri,” Giulian sighed. “It is sad but unsurprising that you think me a fool.” He could feel the foal’s presence near his ankles, but he needed to ignore that for a moment. “It is entirely unsurprising,” he repeated, moving slowly towards the man. “After all, so many of my predecessors have, clearly, been fools.”

“All of them! Even you! Soft! Unwilling to do what was needed! Unwilling to see what it was that had to be done! They are always asking, always writing, always peeking,” he gibbered, “those in the City, the owners of the factory, the bosses, the governors. They demand progress! They demand productivity! And you Administrators, every one of you, fools, blind sheep to be steered by whoever whined last!”

“No.” As long as he kept the man talking, he was unlikely to be shot. Giulian did not want to be shot today. “My position is to stand between the unreasonable demands of the governors and the unreasonable demands of the workers and find the balance that keeps everything working.”

“Your position,” the man sputtered. “Your position? What do you know of your position? Have you ever met the governors? Have you ever stood in a room with them for more than ten minutes? Have you ever tried to answer their questions? Have you ever disappointed them?”

It was a strange question. “No,” Giulian answered, wondering at the man’s grip on reality. “I was hired through the agent that worked with my previous posting. As were you. As was every Administrator and bureaucrat here. What are you on about, man?”

“The governors,” Antheri hissed. “The governors. Their eyes. Always watching. Always judging. And you, all you fools, all you damn fool Administrators, getting in the way, worried about the people, worried about the river. The river will be cleaned. The river will trickle through the fields and lose its taint. The people will live, or they will die, and there will be more. But the governors, Administrator, the governors. Their will is all that matters, irrational demands or not. Their will is All. That. Matters.” He jabbed the gun into Giulian’s stomach with each word, his eyes even wilder, spittle flying from his mouth.

And, finally, the guards stepped in, large, sturdy men Giulian had hired when the death of his predecessors began to look suspicious. They grabbed Antheri from behind, wrestling the gun from him.

“It is becoming clear,” Giulian told him, speaking loudly to be heard over the man’s incoherent screams, “that you have been affected by the stresses of the job and the crowded conditions of the Town and need a respite, likely in a quiet place off in the mountains. I will see to your transport there, Antheri, and go about the work of training your replacement.”

It wasn’t a quote so much as it was a compilation of Antheri’s reports on Giulian’s predecessors, but it was clear that the words got through to the man. He stiffened, a slow, mad smile crossing his lips.

“Then the governors will be yours to deal with. I wish you the pleasure of them, Administrator, you fool. I wish you the pleasure of them.”

Next: Right and Wrong

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