Hopeful Hooves: A Unicorn Friendship Tale

CHAPTER FOURTEEN: PRISON

Aurora's grandmother was so amazing! She didn't seem to care that Charity and Melody we different. She just liked the fact that her granddaughter made new friends. 

Grandmother had lots of crops stored, including the juiciest fruit, and the sugarcane that was sweeter and refreshing than anything all of them add.

"When you are thirsty," she had said, "bite off a piece and chew it. Suck the sweet nectar and enjoy it. But eat it sparingly, like when there is no water available."

She also loved storytelling. "When I was your age, my best friends were an antelope, a deer and a rhino! We had fun playing together, writing stories, and exploring outside. By the way,  later will take you outside so you can see the beautiful world of the Maker of the Universe. But you had better come back at dusk, to avoid tigers and leopards."

Grandmother was very active and loved to stretch. She would often try to stretch Charity's forelegs to help it develop strength.

The outside world was the best. The snowy mountains, lakes, rivers, and rainforest had all been beautifully made, and it exceeded their wildest imagination. Neither Charity nor Melody had ever seen any rainforests, but they loved the warmth and humidity. The singing birds, the peacocks' amazing color, and the most beautiful flowers, they were the best. Charity had never seen anything this beautiful before on Unicorn Island, but with the qualities of the paper, she could bring it back.

As the sunset, marking the end of the week, Charity declared, "I wish I could stay here forever."

"I wish so too, but we must find our parents. They need us!" Melody exclaimed.

"But you should stay here to be protected from any Kiang that wants to hurt you," Aurora stated. "That's why my parents sent us here. Because it is safe."

Little did the Unicorn Kiang know that danger was lurking in the jungles where they often took walks.

Grandmother had said that she knew what the Cirque de Foets was, because they often went into the rainforests to steal tigers, leopards, and elephants. "Do not ever try to find the people of the circus," she had told Melody earlier, "for they will find you again and steal you. But some elephants had been released back to their home, so if you find them, ask them if they know where your mother is."(Just so you know, Charity first objected because Elephants are bigger than rhinoceroses, but Grandmother said that not everything big is vicious. As she had said earlier, she had a rhinoceros as a best friend, and she knew many rhinos to be nice. She added that elephants are very gentle animals who will only attack when provoked.)

Charity and Melody were walking into the rainforest when, all of a sudden, a group of giant unicorns pounced on them. Melody turned a neon red color, hoping to scare them off from an attack, but neither of them backed off.

Charity had read an old book about these unicorns, the Monoceros, but she was surprised to see them for the first time in her life when they showed up. They appeared quite hideous to her. Monoceros appear to be partly horse and partly antelope, but are about the size of a rhinocerous. Their white body stands in contrast to their dark red or purple head, with their blue eyes that seem to glow whenever a light is shining towards them. Their horn is white at the base, black at the middle, and red at the tip. They have cloven hooves and a lion's tail. 

"Those are the foreigners! Take them!" ordered the ringleader of this gang. "They are from Unicorn Island, and they have come to bring great trouble on this land!"

"We are not troublemakers," Charity said softly. "We are only here because we are looking for..."

The ringleader interrupted her. "They are lying!" he said. "Take these two unicorns and throw them into prison!"

The gang grabbed the two unicorns and threw them into prison. It was smelly, filthy, and very cramped.

"I wish I could be out of here!" Melody wailed, running around in her cage with neon pink stripes. "It feels like I am back at that circus, oh how bad!"]

"I guess we will stay here forever," said Charity, a tear dripping out of her eye. "I have just gotten out of the frying pan and into the fire."