Go Home
Home is just too hard to resist. Starting to head back the familiar path back home, Dan mulled over what to tell his parents and how he’d communicate this mess to them. He tried to figure out a horsey sign language. But, then, thinking, he remembered that unicorns often possess a mental communication through telepathy. “Perhaps, I have that.”
Rounding into his own driveway, Dan paused. Instead of the normal garage, the cars were parked on the street and the garage seemed to have... no garage doors? Instead, it had barn-esque doors. “Ah! Honey!” he heard his mother call, a familiar sound since she always left the kitchen window open to ‘taste the breeze’ she claimed. “Dan’s home!”
“How’d she know it was me? I-I’m a unicorn!” he thought, but as his parents came out, waving, he realized they, like his friends, saw no issue with him as a unicorn.
“There’s some new feed in the stable for you, honey” his mother said in a gentle voice, petting through his mane.
“And after you get some food, let’s bless a few more bottles of product,” his father said, smiling wide. Dan’s brows fixed together, confused, but as they walked into the ‘stable’ together, he saw what the man had been referring to. Lining the walls were the inventory of glass juice bottles all with homey labels reading, “Genuine Unicorn, Love-Kiss Natural Healant: A Sip and Chronic Pain is Gone” Though, the ailment varied depending on the batch as did the colors of the caps ranging from colds to hair loss. Based on the awards mounted around the room, the business was well rated and booming.
“We were going to wait! But it’s just too exciting!” his mother started, suddenly bouncing on her heels. “Our offer was accepted! We got the house!”
“70 acres! No more cramped back yard for our special kiddo!”
“And! A man from a local show called and he wants to get a personal, at-home look at the life of a unicorn!”
Dan, baffled and overwhelmed, let his parents lull him into eating a dried berry mixture that actually tasted decent before he spent a few hours with his father guiding his horn into bottle after bottle of water. Then, as they went to bed, Dan sat puzzling over everything.
But one day bled quickly into the next and somehow he never found he could pull himself away from the ease of this strange life and before he knew it a local home interview led to a tour across the country, then a documentary, and soon he became a strange public figure, much like Virgin Mary may once have been, who people visited to touch and pray for a miracle.
His days were filled with visits from people who always left happy, some in tears and some in joyous laughter, but he never saw persisting sadness. His life evolved around some wave of magical healing that seemed to seep happiness into every waking moment, but in the nights, his mind drifted back to that dreary house and he always wondered why he never saw his friends again.
Written by Picklessauce69 on 29 April 2016
The end (for now)