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Bon yawns, squinting as he brings up a hand to shade his face from the early morning sun. He steps off his porch and starts trudging through the tall weeds of the front yard of his little cabin. They need to be trimmed back again…the spring rains made them explode this year, but he hasn’t had the energy.
Non-essentials tend to get left out when he doesn’t sleep well. Which is basically always.
“Since when is it summer already?” He grumbles to Ciela as he walks. He can’t see her right now, but he knows she’s there. His ever-present iridescent rainbow-hued shadow.
She materializes beside him, starting as a shimmering curtain of light and solidifying into a vaporous horse-like shape. She makes her head and neck solid enough that Bon can reach out a hand and stroke her impossibly soft rainbow mane. Her distinctive spiral horn is a broken nub, poking out from the rainbow tufts between her ears. It always gives Bon a little pang of sadness when he sees it, even after all these years. She seems to sense it, like she always does, and noses Bon in the side of the head with a little trilling sound.
“Alright, I get it,” He huffs, stroking along her nose gently as she blinks at him with dark, impassive eyes.
He starts his routine by grabbing a bucket from the little garden shed beside his house. Shack, whatever. He’s the only one that has to live in it, so he doesn’t really care much that it looks like a barn that’s been abandoned for years. Ciela is the only other living being that ever sets foot in there, and she’s incorporeal most of the time, so she doesn’t care either way. It serves him for what he needs it for, it doesn’t need to look nice.
He kneels beside the mountain spring that runs next to his shack, dipping the bucket in and filling it with freezing glacial water. Then he places it on the ground, takes a deep breath, and plunges his hands into it. Singing under his breath, he slowly brings out swirling tendrils of wild magic, with the music to guide it. Wild magic is always a little unpredictable, but eventually, with a subtle change in the tune, he convinces it to gather at his hands. Then he releases it all into the water until it sparkles under the sunlight.
“There, that should be enough,” He stands up and back up a few steps, watching as Ciela fully materializes again and dips her head into the water to drink.
He watches and waits until she’s finished before moving on. She gets upset if he leaves her, torn between sustenance and sticking to his side like glue.
He may neglect his own personal chores most of the time (the shack needs more work than just the weeds, he’s aware) but nothing short of death will keep him away from caring for his unicorn charges.
Ciela is fairly easy as far as unicorns go. She’s a rainbow variety, able to subsist on light and running water, as long as it’s suitably magical in nature. And once a week, Bon uses his magic to make an artificial rainbow in the sky for her. It takes a lot out of him, and she doesn’t really need it to live, but he knows it brings her joy, so he never skips it.
“Alright, you finished?” Bon asks as Ciela raises her dripping head from the bucket and blinks at him. With the water still sparkling with magic and reflecting off of her iridescent coat, she somehow manages to look elegant instead of silly. “We have work to do, I think the forest babies are going to start needing extra moss soon, and the trees aren’t growing in there as fast as I thought they would, so I’ll probably have to give them some extra juice, and the caves are due for another hit, too…” Bon yawns again, scrubbing a hand over his gritty eyes. He can’t remember the last time he slept more than thirty minutes without a dumb dream ripping him screaming from his blankets. It’s been a bad week.
Ciela trills and circles him, partially corporeal as she envelopes him in a rainbow unicorn version of a caress.
“Yes, yes, I know, but you know they need me, too.” He strokes the side of her face and leans into her neck, made solid just for him to rest there for a moment. “I’ll try to take a nap later, okay? Deal?”
She makes another otherworldly little noise, then straightens up and materializes fully. She stands steady and still as Bon climbs up onto her back. Riding a unicorn is a strange sensation, especially a partially immaterial one like Ciela. Sort of like being cradled by a cloud. But he knows she would never let him fall, just as she knows he would never let her starve.
He doesn’t need much in the way of supplies for his other charges, just himself and his incredible well of wild magic. The same wild magic that caused his mother endless rage and disappointment while he was growing up. The wild magic that he could never quite contain fully within himself, no matter how hard he tried under her sharp gaze and sharper knives.
This is for your own good.
She says, as she lowers the lantern flame to his oil-soaked hands.
One day, you’ll see that, and you’ll thank me…
At Ciela’s urgent trill, he snaps suddenly back to reality. He shakes his head, trying to clear it of the memory of fire and pain. He gets enough of that in his dreams, he doesn’t need to be seeing it awake, too.
His first stop is the caves. He always does them first, because he dislikes them so strongly. Confined, dark spaces were never his favourite, even when he was a child. Now, they can bring him to the verge of breaking on bad days, even with Ciela’s artificial glow lighting his way. Another fun little quirk that he can thank his mother for.
Objectively, though, the cave system he’s built here is beautiful. It opens into a wide cavern, with the ceiling almost twice the height of his own shack house. He did do that on purpose, since he was the one who designed it. Why not make it tolerable for him to enter, since the unicorns don’t care how large and wide the cave is. Cave unicorns are similar to Ciela in that their main nourishment is water and magic. But in the same way that Ciela requires sunlight, they require darkness and stone surroundings. Nothing else will do.
The magic here is stored mainly in crystal growths and other cave formations that Bon doesn’t have a name for but managed to create anyways as he pushed wave after wave of wild magic into the creation of the area. The caves had taken him weeks to make. He’d been laid up in bed for days afterwards, with Ciela hovering around him in a nervous cloud as he slowly recovered enough energy to care for himself properly again.
Now, all these caves need is a little magical maintenance every few days. He runs his hand over a few of the larger crystals, sending waves of magic into them when he feels them pull for it, singing a haunting little tune into the echoing chambers of stone.
“Hi girls,” Bon sing-songs, trying to keep the creeping edge of panic out of his voice as he reaches the deeper part of the cavern. He really hates caves. “How we doin’ today, huh?” He hops off of Ciela’s back and takes a few steps away.
He hears their telltale noises before he sees them; a strange and discordant mirror of Ciela’s bright trill. Then they’re there, pushing up against him with their smoke-and-sand bodies, nuzzling his chest and letting him caress their chins as they take care not to impale him with their horns. Cave unicorns are dark, almost pure black, their coats constantly shifting and swirling. Their black horns have an ethereal shine to them, like polished obsidian glass, and their manes resemble fine sand. Their eyes are a singular bright point, an eerie glowing orange. They’re a little hard to look at, like unnatural shadows, and their bodies are warm, like a volcanic spring, complete with a vague smell of sulphur.
Bon sighs, relaxing as he lets their heat soak into his stiff, aching joints. Heat is one of the only things that gives him momentary relief from the constant aches in his body, and he doesn’t have the energy to build himself a fire to heat bath water very often. “Yes, hello, Void. Good to see you, too, Abyss, I missed you.” His mind finally calms, safe and surrounded by strange magic smoke-horses. “Yes, I did, I’m not lying,” Bon snorts as Abyss blows a sulphurous breath into his hair. “You know how I feel about the caves, alright?”
Void makes another low, echoing sound and pushes her fully solidified body up against Bon’s hard enough to make him stumble. “Okay, okay, I get it! I love you too, but I can’t stay long! Babies get priority, they’re needy. You could always have some of your own, that’s an option too.”
Void and Abyss both make a little chorus of sounds that Bon can’t interpret. He isn’t entirely sure how much unicorns can understand, but with their intention-sensing ability it’s probably a decent amount. He laughs, and they surround him with their heated bodies again, tempting him to stay for a few more minutes.
When he finally extracts himself from the girls, Ciela lets him onto her back again, and he rides out of the cave towards the forest.
The late morning sun is warm at his back now, and the birdsongs are bright and cheerful. The comfortable, safe atmosphere coupled with Ciela’s smooth gate tempts him to rest his eyes for a little while. He doesn’t fall asleep, managing to keep himself sitting upright, but he falls into an exhausted trance for long enough that when he opens his eyes again they’re at the edge of the forest. Another area he created with magic, one of the first, for his oldest charge. Dawn the forest unicorn was the first he’d ever rescued, not counting Ciela. The first that he’d meant to rescue, on purpose.
This one hadn’t been as strenuous as the caves, since it just involved convincing plants to grow faster than normal rather than shaping and moving earth. Eventually the area should become magically self-sufficient, but it’s difficult to artificially create something like a forest ecosystem, so he still has to supplement it with magic every week or so until it can fill itself in naturally.
One day, about a month after he’d made the forest, Dawn had disappeared for a few weeks. He thought she’d left for good, finally back to wherever she’d come from, but then she’d turned up again with a partner in tow. He’d named her Moss, and a year ago they had two little children.
As he reaches the deeper circle of the forest, he hears a screech, and then a vigorous rustling sound. It’s accompanied by another, louder screech, and then a chorus of snapping twigs and thumping.
“Ah, here they come…” Bon chuckles, hopping down from Ciela just in time to catch two solid, furry unicorn bodies as they slam into him one after another.
They knock him clear to the ground, stepping on his body in various places a few times by accident in their clumsy excitement. He’s glad their hooves aren’t sharp yet.
“Yes, yes, hello to you too,” He grumbles as he sits up, patting the two wiggling unicorns. “You two’re getting a little too big for that flying leap thing, y’know?”
Forest unicorns look the most similar to regular horses out of all the varieties that Bon has seen so far, just taller and thinner. They’re shaggy, too, and they seem to be covered in a constant layer of leaves and moss. He’s not sure if it grows on them, or they just sort of collect it over time, but even the adults have it. He’s noticed a few varieties of mushrooms growing on the adults before, too, but the kids seem to be too chaotic with movement to allow them to stick yet. They’re a mottled mix of greens and browns, with short, stubby horns the colour of dull emerald. They also stay corporeal the majority of the time. He’s only seen Dawn fade out a handful of times, mostly when she’s distressed.
“Alright, take me to your parents, let’s go,” Bon says as he climbs to his feet and gives them each another affectionate pat.
The little ones take off down the path at a steady trot, fast but slow enough that Bon can still keep up if he pushes it. Ciela follows a distance behind as a cloud. She’s not overly fond of children, but Bon is happy to act as a barrier. Nothing brings him joy quite like babies or children of any species.
As he follows, the forest gets noticeably thicker. The trees above block out most of the direct light, filtering it in green and muted. The other flora is starting to get more diverse, with ferns and a few varieties of mushrooms, along with a healthy covering of moss on some of the larger trees. Bon starts singing quietly along with the birds, letting his magic flow out to where it needs to go.
Eventually, they reach the grove where Moss and Dawn live. The two forest unicorns blend in so well with the surroundings that he doesn’t notice them until they move. They trot towards him, making little noises of greeting, until he’s surrounded by the whole family of four, their fuzzy moss-covered bodies smelling of petrichor and wildflowers.
“Hi there, you two,” Bon smiles, sagging a little against Dawn’s solid side. “Your kids are so big now, guess I’ll have to think of some names for them soon, huh…”
Dawn and Moss circle him a few more times, sniffing his hair and face and tickling him with their noses. Then Dawn leans down to grab his sleeve in her mouth and tug him towards their little nest grove.
“What- hey!” Bon protests, but he doesn’t pull away. Moss comes up behind him and nudges her nose into his back to make sure he follows Dawn, and then the kids run ahead.
“What’s the deal here…” Bon grumbles, chuckling as Moss nudges him again.
Their destination turns out to be where Bon suspected – the little secluded, sheltered glade where Moss and Dawn built their home. Full of flowers, soft grass, and beams of sunlight shining in through the gaps in the trees overhead, it’s like a picture out of a children’s storybook. Bon may or may not have pumped a bit of extra magic into it to make it like this.
Once they’re firmly inside, Dawn releases him, Moss backs up, and the kids tackle him to the ground again. They land in a tangled heap on a particularly soft bed of grass, but instead of climbing around like before, they both settle down on either side of Bon and rest their heads wherever they can find space. One ends up on his chest, and the other on his stomach, effectively pinning him to the spot.
“Huh…” Bon huffs, petting both of them and smiling. “So we’re snuggling, then?” He looks up at Dawn and Moss, who are both folding up together next to them, their bodies so intertwined that Bon can’t tell where one starts and the other begins.
Ciela materializes a few moments later, surveying the scene before her with a little snort. She hesitates, but evidently she decides that the babies are tolerable in their current calm mood, because she places herself next to Bon’s legs and delicately rests her head on his thigh.
Covered in unicorns, warmed by the little patches of early afternoon sunlight coming in through the trees above, Bon feels miles away from the crushing darkness, literal and figurative, of his last few sleepless nights. He yawns widely, blinking slowly as his eyes grow heavier. He had promised Ciela he would try to take a nap today, location unspecified…
Dawn and Moss must have known, somehow. Sometimes he forgets how intelligent and perceptive unicorns can be.
He sighs, letting his eyes fall closed as his body quickly succumbs to much-needed sleep.
Bon wakes suddenly, gasping as he scrambles simultaneously to sit up and figure out where he is. The sky above him is dark, and for a second, he almost panics, until he realizes that Ciela is still beside him, her ever-present glow creating a faint little pool of light around them. The sun is long gone now, and the night sounds of the forest are echoing quietly around him.
Bon frowns and swallows against his dry throat, trying to shake off the disorienting grogginess that always clings to him after long naps. The babies are gone, as well as Moss and Dawn. He’s not sure what woke him up in such a panic, since he was too exhausted for dreams this time. But then Ciela makes an urgent little trilling noise and pokes him in the chest with her nose.
It was probably that.
“What is it…” Bon grumbles, stroking Ciela’s face and trying not to feel too annoyed at himself for wasting an entire day sleeping. He’s never going to sort out his wacky sleep schedule if he keeps this up. And now he’s starving, too. Great.
As soon as she sees that he’s properly up, Ciela poofs into a cloud and materializes on her feet. She stamps her front hoof on the ground, clearly impatient.
“Okay, okay,” Bon says gently, flipping himself up onto her back. As soon as he’s mounted, she takes off, so quickly that he has to grasp a little at her neck to keep himself from being tossed back to the ground. “Woah, alright, it’s not a race!”
Except apparently it is, because Ciela barrels through the trees at top speed, as fast as she can reasonably go without losing Bon from her back. For a moment, he swears he can see Dawn bounding ahead of them, guiding them through the forest, but it’s too dark to tell for sure. Once they clear the forest and pop out into the field, Ciela picks up a bit more speed. In the pitch dark of the moonless night, Bon can’t see anything more than about a foot in front of them, but he hears the telltale sounds of either Abyss or Void beside them.
Bon has no idea what’s going on, but it seems like Ciela knows what she’s doing, so he concentrates on hanging onto her for dear life as she runs.
Then, suddenly, after another little sound from the cave unicorns, she slows and skids to a halt.
“Okay?” Bon says to her, “We’re in the middle of the field? What am I s’posed to be seeing h-”
Ciela snorts and tosses her head, then points with her nose at the ground. Blinking through her dim glow in the dark, Bon finally sees what she’s pointing at.
A person, lying in the grass, crumpled into the fetal position.
“Oh, shit.” Bon freezes for a moment, unsure of what to do. Nobody comes here. Nobody has ever come here before, it’s too far out…So who is this? How did they get here? Did the unicorns bring them here somehow? Are they here for him? To take him back, after all these years?
But then he shakes his head and snaps out of it when Ciela arches her neck to give him a look.
He sighs as he dismounts, and then kneels beside the person, placing a gentle hand on their shoulder. “Hey…can you hear me? You alright?”
“No…” The person groans, “No, you can’t take her! You can’t-” They jerk away from Bon’s touch, and then look up at him with wild eyes and even wilder red hair. Probably a man, by the looks of him, with wide shoulders and a bare, hairy chest. His hair is a bright red colour, obvious even in the dark and underneath all the dirt in it. He’s clutching something protectively, holding it against his body between the flaps of his tattered shirt.
“Relax, I’m not taking anything,” Bon says, holding up his hands in a sign of peace. “I just wanna know why the hell you’re on my property, and how you got here.”
“I…I was…I don’t know how I got here…” The guy says, his eyebrows furrowing. He looks beat up, with scratches along his arms and smears of what looks like dirt on his face and caked in his hair. He’s also missing a shoe. “I was running…and then…I just…I kept running, and then I fell…into…” His eyes glaze over for a moment and he tips to the side, before righting himself again and renewing his grip on whatever it is he’s protecting.
Bon sighs. “Fuck, alright. I’m taking you to my place so you can rest. And you can relax, I’m not gonna take whatever the hell you got there, you have nothing I want. Don’t need money, and I got enough stupid magical shit around here to deal with as it is…”
“Oh, um…okay…” He looks torn for a moment, and then, “What…what’s your name? Mine’s Hana…”
“Bonic. Now c’mon, I don’t have all night.”