[SRP] The Dragon

[Moire Frost]

Darkfire

prompt

Write me a fairytale with a twist!.You can write it as though it's happening now, as though it's being acted out, as though it's a story being told, or anything else creative you can come up with. But there must be a TWIST!

 

[Moire Frost]

Once upon a time there was a beautiful unicorn. Her coat glittered like a ruby in the sunshine, her mane and tail long and flowing, her eye green and kind. She was the daughter of the head stallion and his favorite mare, held in high regard among their small herd at the base of an idyllic mountain, and spent her entire life surrounded by love, and laughter, and joy.

But there was darkness spreading across the land. Wildfires ignited by lightning strikes had consumed half of the great meadows, forcing rival herds into closer proximity in search of food. Being up against the mountain, the beautiful unicorn's herd felt closed in on three sides by warring stallions and their bands. Violence and bloodshed was common, she could see it from where she slept. Her father assured her that no rivals would cross the deep river and head into their territory, that she did not need to worry about being harmed, that the mountain would protect and provide.

“Come now, child,” he'd whisper, guiding her to her mother's side, offering the comfort of family to ease her concerns. “We are safe here, we will always be safe here.”

Their peace did not last long. Shortly after the beautiful unicorn reached adulthood, one of the rival bands crossed the river during a storm and came upon their herd in the dead of night. They collided with the mountain herd in a clash of hooves and teeth, punctuated by the deep boom of thunder and bright flashes of lightning. She was quickly separated from her father, who had dove into the fray to protect his territory, clinging tightly to her mother's side and repeating her father's words in her head. Suddenly her mother was gone, pushed away, and in her place was another mare she had never seen before, heaving her body weight into the unicorn's side to force her to move. In the confusion and chaos, the beautiful unicorn was swept away from her family and brought back to the opposite side.

She had never ventured this far before, and it terrified her. Darkness seemed to seep from every shadow, spreading fingers toward her like black tendrils. The storm crashed overhead, the sky releasing an unrelenting torrent of heavy, dense raindrops. The lead stallion of the rival herd started making his way toward her and she decided to run, realizing her chances of survival were slim no matter what she did. The stallion chased her up into the hills, where he cornered her in a cave high above the ground.

“There's a dragon in there, beautiful girl!” he called to her, taunting against the wind and rain. “You're no safer in there with that beast than you are out here!” The beautiful unicorn hesitated, realizing that as cocky and confident as the stallion sounded... he wasn't coming inside the cave. And if that afforded her a few extra minutes of life, she would take it.

“Why don't you come out here, beauty, and we can talk about you joining my herd?” he continued. “I can wait here all night! A great hunter doesn't waste his time on rabbits!” With that, she turned and headed deeper into the cave, away from the stallion screaming into the storm and toward what she assumed was certain death. If only she had been able to say goodbye to her parents...

Soon the path became too dark, and the beautiful unicorn decided to stop and rest. It was then that she noticed a pair of green eyes staring back at her from the darkness.

“Are you the dragon?” the beautiful unicorn asked quietly, accepting her fate. There was no fear in her voice, but a touch of sadness, barely perceptible.

“Yes,” the dragon responded from the shadows, her eyes unwavering.

“Are you going to eat me?” she asked. The dragon paused for a moment, shifting forward to allow her face to catch a little more of the faint light from outside. With a shock, she realized the dragon was in fact another soquili, with the same glittering ruby coat and piercing green eyes. Where the beautiful unicorn's mane and tail were long and flowing, the dragon's mane was short, chopped, although it had been singed off by flames. Where the unicorn had a horn in the center of her forehead, the dragon did not. Instead, great leathery black wings reached forward, framing her in the darkness.

“A great hunter doesn't waste time on rabbits,” the dragon snarled, mocking the stallion outside, and charged past the unicorn into the storm. She was not much larger than the unicorn, but her spaded tail whipped behind her as she ran, and she was incredibly fast; she mad it out of the cave before the unicorn had time to even get up.

When the unicorn made it back to the cave entrance, expecting to see the dragon and the stallion in battle, there was nothing but a splash of fresh blood. Off in the distance, she saw the stallion sprinting back to his herd, a shock of scarlet on his back visible even through the downpour. She realized with a pang that the dragon had driven him off, but was nowhere to be found.

She waited at the cave entrance for the dragon all night, but the strange beast never returned. By the time the beautiful unicorn awoke in the morning, the sky had cleared, leaving behind only puddles. She stretched awake and went to inspect her reflection in one of the closer puddles.

Staring back at her was no longer the beautiful unicorn, but the dragon! She still had her glittering ruby coat and her piercing green eyes, but she also had her unicorn horn. Two leathery wings had sprouted from her shoulders, and her mane had been chopped short, as if it had been singed. She looked behind her and saw the spaded tail where her own long, flowing one should have been.

She laughed, feeling the power of the dragon surge through her. As she made her way back to her family's territory, she laughed to herself, “I guess I was the beauty and the beast all along.”

---

Darkfire growled at herself, waking from her brief sleep and shaking her head. What a stupid dream. That's not how UniKalonas like her were made. But whatever her Unicorn side needed to tell herself about their origins to help her sleep at night, there was no use fighting it, especially if it meant sleeping in...

Word count: 1092