There are no Unicorns.
There was nothing magical about the town of Graybrook. The Sky often matched the town’s name. The buildings stood in practical shades of beige and brown, and whatever you call life… just seems to linger on. Elias, in a way, was not so different…. He was neither remarkable nor forgettable—a middle-manager at the local factory who walked with shoulders slightly hunched, as if constantly bracing against an invisible wind.
Elias’s life ran like clockwork: wake, work, return home, repeat. When people spoke of dreams and magic, Elias would offer a thin smile that never reached his eyes.
“Unicorns,” he once said during a lunch break, when his coworker Maya mentioned her daughter’s obsession with the mythical creatures, “are just horses someone glued an ice cream cone to. Fairy tales for children who haven’t learned the world has edges.”
Maya had given him a curious look. “Perhaps,” she said, stirring her coffee, “or perhaps they’re just waiting for the right person to see them.”
“Right…” Elias had scoffed, but something about her words lingered like a splinter under his skin.
That evening, as Elias walked home through Whispering Woods—a shortcut he’d taken for fifteen years without incident—a strange thick fog rolled in. The familiar path blurred before him, and for the first time in years, Elias felt lost.
“Hello?” he called, his voice swallowed by the fog. “Is anyone there?”
A sound answered—not human, but a soft whinny that seemed to vibrate through the mist. Elias froze.
“Who’s there?” he demanded, though his voice trembled slightly.
The fog parted like theater curtains, revealing a clearing he had never noticed before. In its center stood an old man with a beard that flowed like silver water down his chest. He wore robes embroidered with stars that seemed to move when Elias wasn’t looking directly at them.
“You’re lost,” the old man said. It wasn’t a question.
“I’m just trying to get home,” Elias replied, annoyed at this interruption to his routine. “I’ve walked this path a thousand times.”
The old man’s eyes crinkled at the corners. “Walking a path doesn’t mean you’ve seen what’s on it.”
Before Elias could respond with something appropriately dismissive, the old man gestured to a fallen log. “Sit. You’ve been looking for something your whole life without knowing it.”
“I haven’t been looking for anything,” Elias protested, but found himself sitting anyway. The log was surprisingly comfortable.
The old man produced a small, ornate box from within his robes. It was carved from wood so dark it seemed to absorb light, inlaid with mother-of-pearl that gleamed like captured moonlight.
“Inside this box,” the old man said, his voice taking on a rhythmic quality, “is something most people never see their entire lives.”
Despite himself, Elias leaned forward. “What is it?”
“A unicorn.”
Elias snorted and began to stand. “I don’t have time for—”
“You’ve never had time,” the old man cut in, his voice suddenly sharp as winter. “That’s precisely the problem.”
Something in the old man’s tone made Elias sink back onto the log. The forest had gone utterly still, as if holding its breath.
“Unicorns,” the old man continued, softening, “aren’t what you think they are. They’re not just creatures with spiraled horns prancing through meadows. They’re much more… and much closer than you’ve ever believed.”
He held out the box. “Open it.”
Elias hesitated, then took the box. It was lighter than it appeared, almost weightless. His fingers traced the delicate carvings—forests and mountains and stars, all flowing into one another. With a mixture of skepticism and reluctant curiosity, he lifted the lid.
The box was empty.
“There’s nothing in here,” Elias said flatly.
The old man smiled. “Look deeper.”
Annoyed but compelled, Elias peered into the box again. This time, he noticed a small mirror inlaid in the bottom, reflecting his own eye looking back at him. As he stared, something strange happened. The reflection shifted, changed, his ordinary brown eye transforming into something luminous and impossible—an eye with a universe swimming in its depths.
“What—” Elias began, but couldn’t finish. His throat had gone dry.
“The unicorn has always been inside you,” the old man said quietly. “It is the part of yourself that knows no fear, that believes in possibility, that stands tall when the world would have you shrink. Some call it confidence, others faith, still others the soul. But it has always been there, waiting for you to acknowledge it.”
Elias couldn’t look away from the mirror. “I don’t understand.”
“You’ve spent your life refusing to believe in magic because you were taught that life is about what you can see. You walk with your eyes on your feet to make sure you don’t stumble instead of the horizon to see where you can fly to. You look outside to see what might harm you when you should look inside to see what can grow you..”
The old man reached into the box, his fingers somehow passing through the mirror as if it were water, and withdrew something that glittered like condensed starlight. He placed it in Elias’s palm—a tiny, crystalline unicorn horn no bigger than his little finger.
“This is a splinter of what sleeps within you,” the old man said. “Carry it. When you doubt, hold it and remember what I’ve shown you.”
Before Elias could respond, the fog swirled in again, obscuring the old man. When it cleared seconds later, Elias was alone in the familiar part of the woods again, the crystalline splinter cool against his palm.
He almost convinced himself he’d imagined the entire encounter. Almost—except for the unicorn horn that glowed faintly in the growing darkness, and the strange lightness in his chest that hadn’t been there before.
The next day at work, when his boss announced layoffs and called Elias into his office, Elias found his hand closing around the splinter in his pocket. To his surprise, he felt none of his usual fear.
“I’d like to propose an alternative solution,” Elias heard himself say, voice steadier than it had ever been. Ideas flowed from him—restructuring plans, efficiency measures, cost-cutting alternatives. His boss listened with growing interest.
That evening, Maya caught up with him in the parking lot. “What happened in there?” she asked. “You saved half the department, and I’ve never seen you speak up like that before.”
Elias smiled—a real smile this time, one that reached his eyes. “Let’s just say I met a unicorn.”
That evening, Maya caught up with him in the parking lot. “What happened in there?” she asked. “You saved half the department, and I’ve never seen you speak up like that before.”
Elias smiled—a real smile this time, one that reached his eyes. “Let’s just say I met a unicorn.”
Maya’s eyes widened slightly, then she smiled knowingly. “They’ve always been there, haven’t they? Just waiting for us to believe in them.”
Elias nodded, feeling the weight of the crystalline splinter in his pocket—not as a magical talisman now, but as a reminder of the strength he’d found within himself. A strength that had always been there, waiting to be acknowledged.
As he walked home through Whispering Woods that evening, the world seemed more vivid somehow—colors deeper, sounds clearer. He no longer needed to search for magic in the fog. He had finally discovered what the old man had tried to show him all along.
A unicorn wasn’t something to find.
It was something to become.