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Lesson 1: How to Tame a Unicorn
Bruin
The sharp horn narrowly missed my throat, but one of the hooves found its mark. I repressed a scream as pain shot through my shin and up my leg. Only years of experience kept me from making the fatal mistake of crying out. Loud noise would only upset the stabhorn further.
“Easy, girl,” I muttered soothingly while staying out of reach of the deadly horn. My voice was tense with pain, but I hoped she wouldn’t notice. “Calm down.”
The mare didn’t listen. She reared up again, her hooves coming perilously close to crushing my skull. An’tia was huge for her age and gender. I barely reached up to the lowest point of her back. With a furious whinny, she landed on all fours again. Golden mist rose from her nostrils, a sign of her anger and fear.
“Take it easy. I’m not here to hurt you.”
An’tia didn’t care. She glared at me with her azure blue eyes, her disdain and wrath evident. She was going to be a handful. Every new arrival at the sanctuary was scared, dangerous and unpredictable, but her size set her aside from the other stabhorns. I wasn’t a small male, not in the slightest, but next to her, I felt tiny.
Her hooves scraped across the ground as she got ready to attack again. The golden mist coming from her nostrils surrounded her like a cloud, shimmering in the evening light of the Second Sun. Maybe it was time to give her some space and try again tomorrow.
An’tia pointed her horn at my heart, the tip dark with dried blood. The blood was green, probably from one of the Quurkat traders who’d transported her on their ship. I hoped they’d sought medical attention. An’tia was a venom-tipped stabhorn, a rare breed whose horns were coated in a slow-acting poison. If the injured traders didn’t take the antidote, they’d be paralysed within three intergalactic hours.
With a snort, An’tia shook her mane, her horn still pointing at my chest. It was time to retreat and give her some space.
Very slowly, I backed away. My injured leg hurt when I put weight on it, but I managed to keep from wincing in pain. I’d head to the nearest medpod as soon as I’d written a report on this first encounter.
An’tia whinnied, but stayed in place as she watched my withdrawal. I kept eye contact with her to show the stabhorn that I wasn’t prey. I wasn’t giving up, I was just taking a break. I’d be back and return again and again until she was ready to trust me.
And then everything happened at once. Someone shouted from behind me. I stumbled. And An’tia charged.
Blinding pain exploded in my chest. Blue eyes met mine. An’tia’s triumphant gaze was the last thing I saw before darkness and pain overwhelmed me.
I floated on a river of golden hair. It swept around me, enveloping me in a soothing embrace that washed away all memory of pain. I let the river take me, too weak to resist the steady current. Above me, a blue sky was dappled with fluffy white clouds unlike I’d never seen before. The blue reminded me of something, but the thought was carried away by the river before I could grasp it.
I didn’t know how long I drifted. A deep feeling of harmony and peace filled me. I was content simply to float and let the river carry me. The destination didn’t matter.
Over time, the clouds above me became larger until they drowned out almost all the blue. Even after they'd hidden the sky, they continued to grow, expanding downwards. When the closest one was only an arm's length away from me, I tried to swim away from it, but my limbs got tangled in the hair. I was trapped. Helpless, I could do nothing but watch as the clouds grew. A strange scent reached my nose, spicy and exotic. Was that what clouds smelled like? And then a voice echoed through the whiteness, a female, speaking in a melodic language I couldn't understand. But then the cloud touching me solidified,pressing against my face-
"Stop struggling."
A familiar voice made me stop immediately. I was used to following his orders. My sire.
I opened my eyes. As always, it was as if looking into a mirror. A mirror that showed me what I would look like forty rotations from now. My sire had the same angular face, the same piercing purple eyes, the same curved ears that seemed too large for my head. He had a few wrinkles around his eyes that I lacked, but otherwise, we were identical. Not surprising considering I was his clone.
"You barely made it," he said with a sigh. Disappointment swung in his words. Not because I'd almost died. Because I almost destroyed his legacy. He'd paid a small fortune to have me created, yet I'd not given him what he'd expected in return. It didn't matter that I'd become the best stabhorn tamer on the planet. It didn't matter that I was happy with my life. No, to my sire, I was a constant source of disappointment.
"How bad is it?" I asked, then coughed. My throat was dry, but my sire didn't offer me a drink. He simply stared down at me with an unreadable expression.
"They had to give you an organ transplant or you wouldn't have survived."
Wow. I'd really come close then. I'd been wounded by stabhorns before, it was almost part of the job description, but I'd never been hurt this badly.
"I gave permission to have the credits deducted from your account," my sire continued. "But since you've clearly not handled your money well, you're now in debt."
I wasn't surprised he'd not offered to pay for my operation with his own credits. He'd always told me that creating me had been expensive enough. I'd had to work for my living from the moment I was old enough.
Debt. Great. I wondered how long it would take me to pay back the credits. Being a stabhorn tamer came with a lot of prestige, but the salary was way below what my sire earned in his job as a Professor at the Intergalactic University.
"Where's my Commband?" I asked weakly.
He handed it to me and waited while I pulled up my bank balance. I cursed when I saw the amount, then closed my eyes in denial. It would take decades.
My sire clicked his tongue in disapproval. "You know you shouldn't use such language. It doesn't befit your status."
