So this one needs a little explaining. I was playing truth or dare with some friends three days ago and I picked dare.

This was the dare.

Also this is dedicated to the first born Fallis

Poseidon was riding the clouds.

Not the Ancient Greek god Poseidon, but the unicorn Poseidon.

His fur was a deep sea blue. His mane was green, and his horn white as sea foam. It was the only good choice. His joints were still as smooth as a licked marshmallow. As he sailed through the air, birds got out of his way. He had been the mount of Robert E. Lee in the Civil War. Rain fell behind him.

His friend, Pearl, sailed up.

“Hi Poseidon,” she said.

Her pearly white fur and mane sailed in the air, but the pearly aura that was always around her shimmered, drawing in light instead of reflecting it, so Poseidon knew she was in a bad mood.

A streak of black light flew from her horn and vaporized a bird. Now Poseidon knew she was in a bad mood.

“Parents annoying you again?” he asked.

“They’re just like, ‘No, an immortal beast like you doesn’t quit school after just 738 years! Get going!'”

Poseidon sighed. “I know. It’s been so long.”

“Well, we got a break for the Civil War. You were awesome, freeing the slaves.”

“Thanks.”

“And then we got a break for WWI and WWII. I wish I could meet the guy who stabbed the nasty German dude!”

“Hitler?”

“Yeah him. So silly how humans think that he took poison.”

“I know! How stupid would that be, right?”

Pearl sighed. “And then after that…I dunno, it just seemed no-one needed unicorns anymore. There was the Six-Day War-“

“We shot down the Syrian planes, but no-one noticed!”

“And before that was Communism and the Cold War….Did you know that my dad pushed the American rocket to the moon? The humans didn’t even thank him!”

Poseidon slowed down. “I actually have a theory that no human thinks we exist except six-year-old girls and that small plastic figures of us are sold in supermarkets!”

Pearl screeched to a halt. “WHAT!??!” she shouted. “PLASTIC FIGURINES!?!?!?!??!”

She could be a bit excitable sometimes.

Poseidon whinnied. “You sure fell for that one. But it is weird, isn’t it. I wonder why no-one calls us. We just gallop above the clouds. It’s so uniform.”

“Plus there’s no cloud cover, so the sun is really hot.”

Pearl smiled. “What do you say after school, we check down there.”

Poseidon considered. Then he grinned too. “Why not?”

***

“Okay,” said Pearl, skimming to a halt. “If I’m correct, this should lead us straight into Gettysburg.”

Poseidon and Pearl had invited their usual after-school gang: Lancelot, a stark steely gray unicorn with a horn as long and sharp as a sword. He often used it when they played hornball. There was also Robin and Emerald. Robin was a shiny cherry red, with a horn so low on his face that it looked like a beak. Emerald looked like she was made out of glass, and was a deep jade green.

“Everyone ready?” asked Pearl.

“Wait,” said Lancelot. “Why Gettysburg? Why not something like New York? Or somewhere not in America, such as Paris?”

“Poseidon won a battle with Robert E. Lee on his back there,” said Pearl. “It’s the only place one of us knows personally.”

“Okay then,” yelled Robin. “Let’s go! Yeeeeeehhaaaaaa!”

Pearl stopped him. “We don’t know what it’s like.” Everyone turned to Poseidon.

His throat felt dry. “Last time I was there, it was around six thousand acres with some log houses, a big bare battlefield…” Everyone was staring at him. “Look, it was 140 years ago!” he said.

Robin’s eyes were raised. “Okay. Let’s go! YEEEEEEEEEEEEEET!!!” He did a backflip and sailed under the clouds. Poseidon shrugged at Pearl and dove as well.

***

One thought ran through his head.

This was not how he remembered Gettysburg.

The atmosphere was full of black smoke. Robin fell past him yelling “Too much progress!!”

Was this the future?

Pearl flew up, dragging Robin, Lancelot below him, Emerald hovering nervously around them.

“Poseidon! Run! Go back up!” cried Pearl.

Then “LOOK OUT!!”

Poseidon barely had time to notice the large white bird with no feathers flying toward him before it hit him. There was a howl as he fell to the ground.

Strange. Night was coming already.

***

He woke up in a soft bed to see a girl-maybe thirteen years old-pacing back and forth in front of him and muttering.

“This is bad, this is bad, this is very very bad.”

She had bouncy hair that was dark brown at the roots and dark blond at the end. She wore skinny jeans and a loose red shirt. She turned around again and saw him looking at her.

“Chizzmunks!!” she shrieked.

Poseidon looked at her. “Uh…okay?”

“Charlie Chizzmunk and Vernon Vamoose, you’re alive!”

“Well…yeah.”

“And you’re talking to me. A unicorn is in my room talking to me. Okay.”

She breathed out slowly and patted her neck. “Keep it together. Keep it together.”

“What’s your name?” offered Poseidon.

“Zion Rachael Finch,” she replied. “And don’t change the subject! How the hel-no swearing-how the heck were you able to survive that?”

“I’m a unicorn.”

“You were hit by a passenger plane and fell 30,000 feet,” she responded. “A dragon would die from that.”

“But I’m a unicorn.”

She sighed. “Right. Healing powers.” She looked at him again. “Why do you look so-um-different from the traditional unicorn. You know.” She started singing. “Pink fluffy unicorns/Dancing on rainbows.”

Poseidon sighed. “That is an offensive stereotype. Every unicorn is born differently, and then we’re named according to how we look. My friend Lancelot looks like a unicorn statue if he holds his breath. I’m called Poseidon.”

“I can see why,” replied Zion. “I also saw Lancelot.”

Poseidon frowned. “Wait. How did you see him? You said we were 30,000 feet up. How did you see Lancelot?”

She smiled. “I have a telescope.”

“Oh.”

There was silence.

“Why don’t you guys come down more often?” asked Zion.

“We do!” replied Poseidon. “We always show up when humans need us most. My friend Pearl’s dad pushed the American rocket to the moon. It would have crashed otherwise. I was used as Robert E. Lee’s war steed.”

“That was 200 years ago.”

Poseidon shrugged. “We’re immortal, which means that we have to spend the first eon of our life in school.”

“How old are you?”

“383, 904 years next Tuesday.”

Zion raised her eyebrows “Almost halfway.”

Poseidon shrugged again. “It helps that a year is around a month. But it’s still a long time. We get breaks whenever humans need us, but ever since WWII, humans don’t seem to need unicorns. It’s like we’re fantastical creatures believed in by six-year old girls and sold as small purple figurines at supermarkets. But I’ve always believed you guys have existed”

Zion winced. “That is actually what happens.”

“WHAT!!!”

“This is changing the subject, but how can you shrug?”

Poseidon shrugged. “I don’t know. Magic, I guess. If only six-year olds believe in us, how come you always have?”

“The world is a whole lot more fun if you believe in impossible things. Like magic. Who says magic isn’t real and there isn’t a school like in Harry Potter?”

“That book discriminates against unicorns.”

“Who cares?”

“Unicorns, obviously.”

“My point is that no matter how impossible something sounds, you should always believe in it.”

Poseidon winced. “Yeesh, I’m a teenager. Make it sound less like one of those positive posters in school.”

“Fine. If you believe in that, you won’t be laughed at if you find out it’s true.”

“That’s better.”

“Maybe you guys should come back.”

“We couldn’t. The atmosphere is too dirty. We’d die.”

“You could clean it up. I know you could.”

Poseidon thought about that. “I’ll have to heal first.”

“You have healing powers!”

“The Powers That Be would never go for a unicorn healing himself. I’ll have to wait.”

Six days later.

“I’ll miss you,” said Zion. “I’ll always be looking out of my window for when you return.”

“I’ll come back,” Poseidon promised. “I swear it by heaven and by earth.”

They say you should not swear by heaven, for it is God’s throne, and not by the Earth, for it is his footstool.

Poseidon was mistaken for a missile and was shot down over Kansas. He never got back to the clouds.

Zion waited in vain, but the unicorns never came back. She grew older, but now matter what age of maturity level, she would always shoot upstairs to her telescope for a meteor shower, knowing any one of them could be her friend.

War ravaged the Earth, and the maps filled with blood. Just as Zion was on her deathbed, she looked up in the clouds and saw pink, green, blue, and red. Unicorns.

But they never came down.

They were mistaken for alien spacecraft and shot down. They crashed near to where Poseidon’s bones were buried.

Zion’s granddaughter looked at the clouds from a world where chaos reigned. Her grandmother had told her of the unicorns, and she knew that no matter what happened, there would always be a pink fluffy unicorn, dancing on rainbows.