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tell me over and over and over again, my friend
you don't believe we're on the eve of destruction
Here's how it happened, as far as he could tell: something, whether god, or fortune, or meddling sorcerer, or renegade weather, or not easily defined dark particle anomaly, or lunar drag, or tidal push, or uncommon spores, or uncanny pollen, or ripple in time, or words, or kings, or the old General himself, or antipodal butterfly, or the cold that cracked like a nut and made the glaciers fall like thunder, or the colt that died right in front of his eyes that summer in Kanane whose bones he saw when they marched back again next spring--anything but his own legs and heart and brain--got him in its teeth again, shook his memories loose, and dropped him here.
The landing was soft, at least. Deep, soft, green grass, smelling like life, welcoming him. Well, why shouldn't it? He was a unicorn. They were meant for each other. Here's the thing about suddenly remembering who you are--you never know whether you're back for good, or if this, too, is going to slide away into oblivion, like all the lost moments that led to this one. It's frightening.
Times like this, you almost wished your strings had never been cut, just so you'd have something to follow blindly back to someplace where they knew your name--where the milky-eyed, musing old master army healer rumbled unhurriedly, "Losing time again, Bluebell? It's perfectly natural. Stay off your feet for the day." And then you bolting to the meadow where the wounded rested or died, and creeping between them, and thrusting your muzzle beneath the patient ministrations of healers who saw you were uninjured, gave you a kind lick, and moved on. Most skins there quivered in agony. Yours--well, battle fatigue they called it, and who were you to say otherwise?
Had he known how many horses crossed the threshold woods of Helovia with no memory of how they came to be there, Bluebell would have taken some immediate comfort. Any threshold was a curious place. Sometimes they forced a fresh start. But Bluebell had not been given a clean slate. He knew who he was, and remembered plenty of things, just not the past few--how long was it? Days? Weeks? Those empty places in his memory crowded up against him, demanding an answer, but no.
No.
Don't chase the damn things. Let the memories go if they want to. It had been a long time since this kind of thing had happened, but he remembered how it went. If you fought it, you went mad, simple as that.
"Cheer up, Bluebell," He said aloud but under his breath, strangely timorous. Then, with a mustered bravado that became true the moment it struck the air: "Ay, cheer up, Bluebell. You're not hurt. Look at you. Just look at you. You're fine."
He shook himself and shifted his hooves, and every action made was an imprint on the world that convinced him he was real, and here, and not going anywhere else any time soon. He considered having a roll in the good deep grass, but didn't feel like being off his feet just yet. Instead, he went to the nearest tree and scrubbed a white-grey shoulder against its bark, taking a look around while he did so. Forest, alright. Hot, weighty afternoon, alright. Smell of water nearby, alright. There was nothing bad about any of this.
Still, he thought, I think we can all agree it would have been much better had anyone bothered to ask Bluebell if he wanted a change of scenery. No bitterness in him, really. Bitterness was not difficult to sustain, but it was an admission of defeat he wasn't willing to make just yet. Wryness was the best the inscrutable workings of fate would get out of him.
Bluebell left off scratching his shoulder and faced the tree. Taking aim at a knot in the trunk, he began a slow, repetitive grating of the tip of his horn against the rough surface. The efforts were practied and precise. He could carve an alphabet with this horn, he had that much control over it. This ritual was better suited to rocks and other things more able than wood to blunt the end of a unicorn's horn, but right now, it was doing double-duty as a pacifying habit so it didn't really matter. When the strokes descended into ruder, longer gougings that chipped white scars into the bark, Bluebell exhaled heavily and allowed the tip of his horn to lodge to a standstill. He closed his glass-clear grey eyes and leaned into tree, examining the feeling of pressure it put in his skull.
"Where the hell am I?" He muttered, somewhat rhetorically, his own breath hot on his chest.
B L U E B E L L
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DON'T FEEL PRESSURED TO MATCH LENGTH or anything, this is just how I am
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