Unicorn Impressions By Aris Merquoni The newsies all belong to Disney. The others are mine. There is a method to my madness. If you stop reading before the first four paragraphs are over because you can't understand them, you won't find it out. -- My world is one of sunlight on water, of moonlight through glass, and scents of laughter through windows. I step softly through feelings of red and blue to the realtime, solid then the dreamtime, and step with careful placing through streets of morning like smoke. Moving nearly silent through the feelings of redness and blueness, I stop at a home of cheer and here-now and look up at the markings of these creatures inhabiting the here-now realtime. I cannot read the markings of these humans, the ones like fire on timber, with blueness and redness and whiteness emotions mixing with some blackness, speaking with sounds like water through wind. Dawn is coming now like laughter through grass, promises of cheer and yellow- white drifting through my wind-scent. Noises that these ones make come clattering through the home of cheer and here-now, and many of them run past me, intent on red-yellowness and the here-now realtime. I follow these ones, softly as wind on leafsong. They run and scent like laughter, pushing and shoving each other in a manner which flashes yellow and sunset. I prance behind, their mood taking me as well, and I fade into dreamtime to not be seen. Scents of music and whistles catch me, and I watch them make their way through crowds of other humans with redness and blueness on their faces. Their mood contrasts, their being contrasts, though the others look at them like dust and undergrowth. I hear their noises like rocks down mountainsides. Newsies, that's what these bright ones are, these ones who do not care about the blueness and redness but enjoy their own flashes of sunset on water. They dance as they run to their place, then sound as bells over cities as they return, clutching thin sheaves like fallen leaves covered in the markings of their kind. I fade into realtime and watch as they come towards me. -- "Hey, Jack, lookit dat hoss!" Jack Kelly, or Cowboy as he was known to the newsies, shouldered his burden of newspapers and looked at where his friend Racetrack was pointing. Then he blinked. Multiple times. The horse was standing in the shade of a building, negligently flicking its tail from side to side. Its head was cocked to the side, eyes focused on them. It was inky black all over, with just one white diamond between its eyes, centered on its forehead. At a closer glance, though, its coat shone and sparkled, as if it was covered in millions of tiny stars. Jack whistled. "Dat is one fancy hoss." Moving closer to the majestic animal, he whistled. "Hey..." "It's a female," Race said helpfully. Jack fixed him with a glare. "I knew dat, ya bum." Turning back to the horse, he cooed, "Here, girl, c'mere..." The horse blinked at him, and he got an impression * Moonlight on water shadows on silver * Blinking away the... vision, he exchanged a glance with Racetrack. "Did you see dat?" He asked. "I think so, but it wasn't... I mean..." * My scent-song is silent like windsong on crystals you? * They looked back at the horse. It was watching them with deep blue eyes. "What was that?" Jack whispered. * Forgive me, but songs like water obscure moods like sunset yours like sunlight, your thought-songs like breezetone, and name-scents unknown. Mine is Silent like Windsong on Crystals. * "Silent Windsong Crystals?" Asked Race under his breath. * Silent like Windsong on Crystals, yes. Your thought-tones paint me Silent. I am not and neither, but you may call me by that scent-song. What may I call you? * Jack blinked. "Uhh, Race, I think... I think she's asking our names." Race looked at him, incredulous. "Jack, are you telling me that a horse is asking what our names are?" * Yes.* They turned to blink at the horse. "Yes?" Racetrack asked. * Yes. But I am not a prancer like treesingers, nor a racer like hunted. I am a dreamsinger like starlight, moodtone like icewind. I dream moonsongs and sing thoughtwaves. * Jack scratched his head. "I don't get it." Then, remembering the earlier question, "My name's Jack Kelly." * Feelings like cloudcolor. I am a dreamweaver, a catalyst, like thoughtsong painted on my canvas. * Jack moved closer to the horse. "Can... can I ride you?" he asked. Racetrack started. "Hey, Cowboy, you're not going to..." "Yeah, I am, Race, if Silent like Windsong here'll let me." * You may mount, both of you. Sunlight on ice to you both. * Jack grinned and swung himself up onto the black horse's back expertly, then gave Racetrack a hand up behind him. -- The two with mindsongs like cheer and birdcall swing onto my back and I step forward, into the streets that scent of use and wear like hooves on deer trails. Their word-scents tickle my ears like water over treebark, and I listen to the thought-tones to understand. "So, what are you, Silent?" Asks the one Jack Kelly with mood-scent of yellow-white joy with slight swirls of violet suspicion. "Yeah, I neveh heard of a talking hoss before," concludes the one Jack calls Race with more purple-red creeping into his voice like sunlight through amethyst. I toss my head, wind through my mane like sunlight through water. I send them my impressions like writing on wave-washed sand. I am not this burden-carrying hoss name-scent, I am a dreamwalker. I move in dreamtime and sing in thought-tones for those who can see. "See what?" Jack asks, green blurring his thoughts with confusion. I touch one hoof colored like smoky quartz in space to the dreamtime curtain, and it ripples in realtime like stones through water. Then I draw a line and step through into the dreamtime, solid is the curatin again, and we look back through. I send them the impression of thought-songs on wind like silver threads on the sunrise, and they stare in awe. "Where are we?" Race asks me now, staring at the flowing walls that are like water over stone, his mind like white paint over opalescent swirling turmoil. He reaches out to touch the curtain like water in space over starshine, then recoils at the slippery touch like silk over windsong. In a place like song through sunlight, dreamclouds like sculpture, pieced together like dreamform, I send. "Could you for once, Silence, talk so we can understand?" Jack asks me, tones of red-yellow tinging his white-green. Exasperation on confusion. I focus on impressions-sending, to 'talk' as these ones say, and send to them, * I am sorry. Here, words are secondary to sensations, so I use sensations instead of words. * "Where *are* we?" Simple curiosity and insistience from Race, now, strong green with undertones of red-orange. * We are dreamtime, now, not realtime. Sensations like dreams through sunlight, and seen by those whose mindsong reaches to daylight like shadows on silver. * They blink, their faces reflecting in the realtime curtain, expression-moods like song-fragments through space-time, shattered. I pull away from the curtain's sunlight-through-grass shimmering and turn to the dreamtime. -- The unicorn parted the shimmering curtain with its horn, and for the second time they made the transition, only this time the other way around. The hours spent in dreamtime had been amazingly enlightening for Race and Jack, and now, as they looked around at the drab, dirty New York streets, like dust over sandstone, they felt a pang of blue sadness. But they still hadn't sold any of their papers, and it was past noon by the sun. Well past. Sliding off of Silent like Windsong on Crystals' back, Jack asked, "It's been great, Silence, like starlight on snow. Will we ever see you again?" "Yeah," agreed Racetrack, "like whipped cream on a black day, it's been fun. Is there any chance..." * There is always a chance. Simply remember the dreamtime, and you may see me sometime, or one of my kin. We're always nearby, and if not... you can always dream. * "Thoughtsong like silver threads through sunset," Jack said wistfully. * Exactly. * Silent neighed softly, a sound like sunrise through leaves, her horn dipping down to brush against both of their foreheads. * Take my blessing, both of you, and remember. * Then the black unicorn, the one with a horn like tourmaline against velvet and a coat like starlight against ebony, pushed open the curtain that shimmered like moonlight on still water, and was gone. "Hey, where you guys been?" Race and Jack turned to see Kid Blink and Bumlets heading down the street, green with confusion and curiosity like shattered crystal in water. Racetrack turned to exchange a glance with Cowboy, and they both shrugged. "Riding through places like song through sunlight, dreamclouds like sculpture, and pieced together like dreamform," Jack answered. The other two newsies stopped in their tracks. "Huh? Jack, are you smoking stronger than your cigarettes?" Race and Jack exchanged another glance and burst out laughing. "Nothin' stronger than sunlight through wind... we just were spirited away like starlight on silver fer the morning, that's all," Race tried to explain. Blink looked between one and the other, his expression greener with confusion even more than a moment before. "What's with all of what you're saying, then?" he finally asked. Jack grinned. "Just part of unicorn impressions like silent as windsong on crystals on the here-now of realtime, like opals through silk on water. Come on, we didn't get to sell, and you still have some papes left, so let's carry the banner, shall we?" Kid Blink and Bumleats exchanged glanced, shrugged, and turned to lead the way down the dusty street. Like streetsong through dust, and sunlight on steel, is New York. -- I step back through the shimmering curtain, piercing the veil between realtime and dreamtime with my horn, turning to look back only after I have crossed the curtain. I see the city, not glittering in the here-now as it will in the soon-future, but seeming to shine nonetheless in the afternoon sunlight. I watch as the newsies leave with their friends, and smother the urge to run after them, to cross back to realtime. No, my work is here, to watch the realtime through the curtain and to step to realtime only to fire the imaginations of the daydreamers. Not to caper around with more humans than I need to to fulfill my duty. I turn back to dreamtime, to the opalescent sensations that make up my life. To the heady mix of the scent of laughter on wind and birdsong over water, the feelings of bright white buoying me as I leave the curtain and the now-silent streets of the sunlight through gold dust city. Silent like windsong over crystals. Not really silent at all.