UnicornHuntersE8

Preface

Chapter One  Chapter Two  Chapter Three  Chapter Four  Chapter Five  Chapter Six  Chapter Seven  Chapter Eight NEXT

Unicorn Hunters Chapter Eight / Invisible As Breath, The Pivot Shifts

Meadow writes. She detests computers. She makes hand crafted books. The ones she is most proud of and goes furthest with, illustrating them with watercolour and fine-liner pen, are dark fayrie tales. She has a small series. One day, she explains, when she is old and has a collection, she will mass produce them. If the real book industry still exists by then. She says the world will be more ready for it by that time. It will be her retirement fund or the start of a foundation for sick-minded children. She does not show off about her gifts. I had to pry into her mysterious life to discover this much about her. 

I knock on her caravan carrying a flagon of warm spiced cider with the intention of sharing it with her before sleeping. The caravan stinks of incense and hippy. Half burned out sticks of nag champa wedged into something in a shadowy corner from which smoke coils, art nouveau serpents silver into the air. Meadow is invisible so I settle the flask on the caravan's small table where she is half way through an illustration. She has already written the words in her beautiful dreamy hand, one sentence per page to be accompanied by an illustration. I am spellbound.

'There is a legend amongst us, ancient when I was born. A tale that a unicorn can only be harmed if it is touched by one whose heart is pure as a white feather or snow free of radiation. During that moment, the unicorn for all its grandiose mystic power, is utterly vulnerable. Thus it attracts its own demise by the mere act of connecting with such purity as it seeks. Such moments must occur in utmost of secrecy.'

This is the moment when I feel the electric of the hairs rising on the back of my neck, and moments later, her fingertips caressing me softly as breath. I turn and she is smiling although her eyes are as black as the night.

For one so gentle, fragile, she has superhuman strength. She pushes me by the wrists and with such force that I land on the tye-dye cushions of the bench-chest along side the table. Then she is biting my bottom lip, her eyes wide and intense, exquisitely alien. We kiss, she has split my lip and it hurts but the blood flowing between us tangy and metallic is waking me up even as I am falling into her spell. Without speech she squats atop of me and pins me in place. I hold her elfin waist, her hips, watching my reflection in her black eyes, supernaturally wide iris and her skin porcelain. She giggles, breaking the spell, twisting her form to sit on my lap and wrap her arms around my shoulders. She weighs nothing at all. Our kiss continues until we come up for breath and she looks me square in the face.

"That was unexpected!" I say. I had not to speak the words for she already had heard them come into focus in my mind.

"Mushrooms" she replies. 

"I thought you are vegan." I pressed the side of my knuckle to my bottom lip, checking the bleeding. 

"You taste sweet." She made a cute kind of meowling sound as she encountered the flask and twisted the lid away. I could see steam rising and sucked into her nostrils. For a moment it was purple and sparkled. "You have cups?" She asked. Again she asked me without words, the whole of her being for that fraction of a second expressed her thought. There were cups in the sink and in the dim light of a clockwork LED lantern wrapped in a shawl she had hanging over the table I decided quickly that it did not matter too much if she had not washed them after preparing herself a psychedelic brew on the hotplate of a tiny wood-stove. In the time it took for me to do a brief visual check for bugs she had moved beside me in the kitchen area of her caravan. I placed them down and she poured the liquid into them both. "Hmm, more nectar." She croaked. I would do anything she asks when she uses her voice that way, husky and sweet. 

"Drink up. We have fucking to attend." She says blatantly. Her body pirouettes while her eyes remain steadily on me, even after she turns her head away, both hands cupping her drink, sipping it gently. The light is dimming because the clockwork is wearing down.

I recognize the pungent earthy scent of the mushrooms over the incense. "It's only mild. I'd just started coming up when I saw you in here."

I cannot describe how beautiful it is to make love with Meadow.

'When two bitter enemies unite a sacrifice by each must be made. One, Love and Two, Hate. By this ritual comes a power. It is the nature of energies to balance. Polarized and becoming a natural system, Love and Hate combine to create a hinge. The pivot is complicated. While it remains in the situation it is in, the polarity remains. One extremity loves the pivot, the other extremity hates the one who loves the pivot. It will be this way until something shifts - until the extremes agree upon to change the system dynamic.'

Somehow she remembered this paragraph intact and wrote it down an hour or more later. Somehow she can function while on magick mushrooms enough to do this. I actually heard the phrase spoken clearly from within my mind. Meadow explained it is the consciousness of the mushrooms, her spirit ally, that it is telepathic and because of our relationship, being one being, we both heard it together. Brain deciphers energy waves and this wave was strong. The words make less sense reading them back the next day because I no longer have connection to nor memory of whatever sourced them. Only the brilliant feeling in every cell of my body from enjoying her soul. 

“The words relate to something. A teaching. I cannot see the whole picture this morning. Lazy. Get me breakfast will ya’?”

“You have any food in here?”

“I have you.”

Her eye-liner is intact from last night, Egyptian style. Black lines surround the hyper-colour of everything. Deep-etched, engraved into the fabric through which light shines through, oil-slick.

I get light the wood-stove to cook us some tea in a metal kettle. This process takes at least half an hour or more compared with the electric and plastic kettles and is infinitely more wholesome.Meanwhile we snuggle under her multiple duvets and blankets and simply enjoy each others tender warmth and slipping in and out of dreamspace. She giggles as I place my hand on her abdomen wherin our child grows.