The Inner

By Sinéad Isabella Verster

Sequences, series, disruptions. It's a shattering of ego on her hands. She looks down at blood. Breath uneasy and torrid. Blood. She doesn't see a single thing around her. There's no smell in dreams. There's a sense of it. What's real and what's not. Disrupting and distorting. Blood--why is it on her hands? Her neck snaps up at the sound of rustling. She walks out of the dark toward the sound ahead. Her hands don't stain her white dress. She doesn't even feel them but her chest rises and falls with every blade of grass she crushes. This is when it's impossible to not know nothing is real. Is it simply an illusion? Or is it more? Illusions are disfiguring. Elusive in the night as the moon is, guiding you with only enough light to allow your intuition to take the lead. Something else may be truly illuminating but she couldn't place where she was or what she was in. Like a childhood home that had become cold and unfamiliar. Her fingers felt for the bushes around her as she imagined a newly blind woman would feel around her room. The leaves were wet and slippery and they fell away with ease. What's behind them couldn't be seen till her bloody hands spread red across their pristine green. It distracted her. It pulled her from the moment to see what she had done but even more so to what she had found. White and glimmering under the stars walked what could only be a unicorn. With fluff around her hooves, a horn of gold said to promise wishes only if you cut it from its place and a mane draping to the floor like liquid opal. 

"What...do you see?" Whispered the unicorn. Her head lifted in jest. 

Still the woman stood, feeling much more like a girl, in utter silence.

"Youre not supposed to be here like this. Do you see?"

"I-i see..." her voice echoed to the creature loosely in the air as if projected from elsewhere, the walls, not her body except there were no walls. It was a black stretch of night for miles in every direction. 

"What am I seeing?" 

"I don't have your eyes. I would not know. Am I a snake? Am I your friend? Am I what I ought to be?" 

She felt rather silly but spoke anyway, "A unicorn. You appear to be a mythical creature to me. A beautiful one." 

"Ah," she chuckled and her hoof hit the ground, "That's not too bad is it? So you see me. Do not touch me but come closer."

The woman obeyed and stepped into the light where the blood on her hands became abundantly clear. Almost beautiful in contrast to the unicorn. Maybe it was not as frightening as she thought it to be initially.

"Is this why I'm not allowed to touch you?" asked the woman. 

The unicorn breathed heavily from her nose. They stood before she finally said, "You do not even ask what I see. You cannot touch me because you cannot understand what's so simple yet. You cannot handle the pure if you cannot handle the tainted."

"Am I...tainted?" 

The unicorn turned away in disinterest staring at the moon as if the girl weren't there at all. 

The woman was nervous and itching. Her feet, safe atop the forest flooring and uncomfortable with its nakedness.

The woman asked "What do you see when you look at me?" 

"There is nothing wrong with you girl. You are how you ought to be," the unicorn said. 

The unicorn did not look back yet, "I see a girl. A girl who has no clue who she is because she does not dare to venture past a shell."

"But it has cracked," the woman quivered. A violent vibration stung her throat. Her nose would soon feel it too. The urge to release from her eyes what she held in her mind. Instantly the unicorn looked back at her. The woman could've sworn she was smiling. 

"So you do dare? How splendid. We finally meet again. Why is it you shake like this, in fear? I am not one to be afraid of. Remember we have done this before. The pain should be familiar but new." 

Light bounced off the golden horn blinding the woman's eyes. A disruption. 

"I'm afraid I don't understand this. I don't know you...no I do but who are you? I'm not even sure how I got here. I-i," she grabbed at her chest gripping the light cloth between her fingers like it would push her voice out, "I did that! I asked the questions. I saw. I felt. I left the known and I walked into the dark and I walked into...I walked into the dark and into you."

"It is okay. Are you surprised, shocked?"

"Both," she snapped back, "I wouldn't think to find you here. I thought the dark would swallow me whole. I thought...i dont know what i thought," her eyes went back down to her hands, "aren't YOU scared of me?"

The unicorn tossed her tail as she traipsed in a circle. Her attitude, almost cocky, "I could not be scared of the one I serve. You don't remember me because you haven't met yourself in a while have you. Been wandering aimlessly I bet. I will tell you what to do but only because you are too lost to tell yourself. You must take my horn, take the gold but if even a drop of that blood stains my coat you will not have your wish. The choice is yours." 

The woman reached her hands out toward the spiraling horn terrified to touch it. Would she ruin the pure with her pain in pursuit of her dream? Has she done this before? Her hands stopped mid air, "Last time you were a snake. You coiled into a circle biting your tail and I rode along your back in circles feeling my life repeat itself every time I met your eyes." 

The unicorn smiled eerily, "Have you heard of alchemy?"

The woman shook her head. The whole scene felt terribly familiar.

"You cannot have my horn without blood tainting your hands. You cannot make nothing into gold if you cannot change the dark into me. That's what you've done my friend. We do not hurt each other by changing. We hurt when we stay out there" she pointed to the miles of black with her nose, "out there is where you start. Here is where you venture to. How you got here was by being here before. You were born knowing me. I am the self you will always meet. The spirals in time, the home in your mind, the figures you associate yourself with." 

The woman looked around. Her choice had been made. The unicorn stepped aside to reveal a puddle perfectly placed. The woman knelt beside it calmly. Her knees pressing the snowy dress into dew dropped grass. All the blood washed off of her hands into the muddy water. Only once her skin was free of stains did she reach her hands out again. This time bloodless, white and bruised, they gripped the golden horn and twisted it--the unicorn cried out. Blood spilled from her forehead over the woman's hands. The spirals of the horn matched her bruises. She suddenly understood everything she'd been looking for.

"I am glad you know not to apologize," the unicorn's voice husked over her face before she collapsed. The woman stepped backward, falling into the dark once again. Her feet wandered off. Her newly blood stained hands carried her wishes and dreams. She could leave now. The unicorn unfurled. Not in an ugly way. It simply changed as a phoenix would. 

"Try not come back with those stains again," was the last she heard from the unicorn before it changed. The woman saw a child in its place who ran out of the bushes toward her. This time she was not afraid. The child, pure and bright, took her hands. All the blood changed too as the unicorn foretold. It ran like water over their skin till all that was left glittered like gold. A rainbow of sparkles stuck to their skin. 

"Thank you," the woman whispered but the child giggled, "you're so silly! Don't forget me again okay?" 

The child popped her pinky finger out, "I hope you remember how easy it is to lose me out here and how hard it is to find me but it's okay" the kid shrugged, "we can do this again and again. I'm always here." 

The woman sealed the promise with her own pinky, "I will try my best."

The child giggled again, "I got to be a unicorn! It hurt my head a little but I'm glad it did." 

"Me too. I thought it would hurt us both-"

"It did hurt," the child interrupted, "Everything painful brings us gifts. That's why you did it right? Not to wound me but to have your golden horn." 

The horn ached with hope in her palms. She nodded at the child, "Mhm. We have a golden horn…come with me?"

"I cannot do that. You are you and I am me."

The woman frowned, "but we are one in the same?"

"So silly," the child laughed, "You're all grown up, you can't be me anymore. I'll be right here though whenever you want to have a chat. As long as you don’t forget me again, I'll be in everything." 

"Sure. You should be in everything and I should be in the real world." 

The child jumped in joyous bounds, "Yes! Yes! The real world! The horn won't look a horn there but you'll have it anyway." 

The woman pushed it into the child's hands, "Yes, exactly. I'll have it anyway."