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The unicorn, the Fool thinks, is a profoundly idiotic beast.
You look at the parts of it, lay it out to be studied, and there's nothing magical about it at all. It's a horse with a fucked up growth, is all it is. Everyone has seen horses, they're tedious animals and they smell like shit.
What can a horse do with a horn? Ram things? It can't even see what the horn is aimed at. Even if it could, it'd wipe out and shatter all it's delicate fucking legs on impact.
No. The unicorn is so legendary, the Fool knows, because it judges you. It's not a horse with a horn, it's a symbol. A shining beacon of resplendence that filthy hands like hers can never mar. That her lecherous eyes can never look upon.
And there's one in the garden.
She can look at it, though she dares not approach. If she approaches it might run away, and she can't let it run away, because the only thought in her idiot head while she looks is that the Queen would so love to see it.
So she hurries off, jingling down the halls as fast as her feet can carry her. Her Majesty will be delighted, she knows. Something like this, a hundred, a thousand jokes could never make her so happy. Make her happy enough that maybe, just maybe-
She darts into a room, and finds the Queen and-
-and the Knight.
She freezes in place, and the two watch her expectantly as she withers and dies inside.
The Knight is glaring at her, already tired of whatever she might say.
"What brings you here, laughter in my heart?" The Queen asks her, and it is so, so much worse than the Knight's outright disdain.
"There's, um-" She mumbles, mouth dry. "The garden. Come look."
She leads them back, hurried but no longer excited.
"Oh my-" The Queen gasps, eyes wide. "My fool, my wonderful fool, thank you for showing me this."
Even the Knight seems awed by the beast, no longer tensed and waiting for the sting of the Fool's barbed tongue.
The Queen looks like she doesn't know what to do, her eyes darting from the unicorn to the Fool to the Knight. Her hands trembling with nervous anticipation.
"Should I, do you think it will let me..?" She asks, and her knight nods.
The Queen walks out into the garden, and the Knight follows her, maybe a bit further back than she usually does.
The Fool remains rooted in place.
She watches, she watches the Queen approach the creature, she watches it cautiously regard the two of them, she watches her reach out-
And she wrenches her eyes away, and flees down the halls, until she finds somewhere dark and solitary to cry her feelings out. Covers her mouth to stifle the choked, quiet sobs that she can no longer hold inside.
It's a beautiful moment, to be sure. The kind of thing they put in storybook romances. But she's not a part of it.
People like her can look at unicorns, but they can never touch them.
