> It's that unicorn. It has to be. Gah!

The pain is very intense.
Ivy jumps at my scream and goes to get help.
"Gerty! Julian!", I grimmace through clenched teeth, "Take me to the
Unicorn. Now!"

"Hey, Doll. You don't look so good." The Star pokes her head into
Ivy's booth. "Help me follow them." I scoot out of the booth, one
hand to my head and the other grabbing the arm of the elderly lady.

"You sure you wanna be doing this, Doll? Maybe you should lie down
for a while." She raises a painted eyebrow at me.
"With you or without you, I'm following them. I have to do this."
"Ok, ok Doll. Take it easy, we'll get you where you need to go. Here,
hold my arm. Now what? We're following that goose? Terriffic, I'm on
a goose chase for real here. Reminds me of that movie I almost made
with Erroll Flynn, what a dream boat he was. Well, until it came out
that he was a Commie spy. Watch it, Doll. Here's some steps."

The pain in my head was starting to encompass my whole body and I was
barely able to walk. I focused on her stories as we made our way
through the corridors to the hidden meadow.

I began to get visions. As we turned the corner to the opening of the
meadow, I started to 'see' colors. I could make out shapes, there was
the outline of Gerty, a goose shaped pattern of blues and greens and
the Star was smaller than I would have guessed and a bit hunched over
but her shape was filled with every color imaginable swirling all
around. I followed the colorful blur of a shape that was Julian as he
flew into the glade singing out for his beloved.

"BaaaaaaaaybeyCakes! Where's my sweetest sugar dumpling, scrumptious,
succulent mouth droolingly yummy honey bun?!"

His fugure crashes into the huge shape of the Unicorn. Her shape is a
flaming conflaguration of reds.
"Shut up, Julian and get out of the way." She snorts.

I let go of the Star and move towards the Unicorn.
"You don't belong here." I say as I begin to take steps towards her.
"You know it and you want to go, but you stay. Why?"
She shakes her mane and lets out a snort, "You are keeping me here.
You want me to use what little power I have left to cure you."
"I have no hold over you! If you want to leave, then go!" Everything
seemed wrong about her being here. I could feel her chaos in the air
around me. "You don't belong here." I repeated.

The Unicorn let out a scream and dug one of her large silver hoofs
into the soft ground. "I don't have the power to go! Your connection
is too strong! It has to be severed!" The Unicorn rears up on her
hind legs and lets out a pealing winny. She makes a couple hops
forward and lands into a dead run. Towards me.

The thunder and colors in my head suddenly stop. A total dark silence
envelops me. I feel as though I am floating through the air in slow
motion. Then, a light whiter than any amount of bleach could hope to
attain streaks throug every blood vessle in my body and then someone
hits me in the stomach with a baseball bat.

~~~Time marches on~~~
<flash forward a few days>

Looking back at my reflection I see someone who has matured and yet
gotten younger than the last time I saw her. Cassandra is telling me
that there were no remains of the Unicorn to be found, only a slight
wilting of foliage around the area where she stood when the
transformation took place. Julian was unconsolably drunk in the bar
and it was rumored that Gerty and Flaps were nesting. The pillow
burrowing owl came out of her cushion den and hopped up to the
dressing table and took the Ray Bans in her beak. She flew up to my
shoulder and pondered my reflection as well as I took the sunglasses
from her. I look at the large, completly dark orbs in my eyesockets.
I chuckle to myself, "The eyes are but a window to the soul".

~Jen