Thursday, 21 February 2013

Attempts to Capture and Tame a Unicorn: (3) Getting Started, Part Three: The Waiting Game

I went every weekend and spent hours in various enchanted-looking spots.  I saw fairies and gnomes and elves.  Small trolls and creepily large caterpillars.  Bowtruckles and clabberts and a flobberworm.  Pixies and imps too.  And foxes and badgers and capercaillies - all sorts of creatures.  Even a centaur and (I think!) an acromantula, although at some distance both.  I was probably wrong.  I was waiting for very long periods of time. 

Sat in my shelter, the most girly, flower-covered tent I could find (wearing a mac to match) and doing my best to blend in, I felt like an ornithologist on a nature reserve waiting for the rarest and most beautiful of birds - The Bird.  One all seek but rarely see.  Like, I dunno, a phoenix or something.  A bizarre way to put it, I know, but over the months of waiting that’s how I began to think: as if unicorns didn’t even exist and I was just wasting my time horribly. 

Once started, though, I knew I had to finish - to keep trying new sites, going deeper into the forest and trying every clearing and dense patch alike, crossing off each square on my map until I was able to circle one.

Then the day came.  A clearing like no other - full of snowdrops and daisies and dandelions.  A circular breeze stirring the air and filling it with the latter’s seeds.  A certain sweetness in the air, dew still fresh on the flowers and few tufts of grass springing up between them.  The sun lighting the scene and brightening its colours, it was a warm and sunny summer’s day. 

All the better (a day) for seeing a unicorn for the first time.

No comments:

Post a Comment