text: > The Stranger's Story
  "My name is Jerran, and I was a groom in a noble house in the hills south of here." He gives the name of a family which means nothing to you, and neither do the long list of titles preceding it. "My task was caring for the horses of the lord of the house and his hunting companions, and those of his wife and his daughters and any notable visitors, and I did this faithfully since the time I was apprenticed as a young lad."
  
  Jerran sighs, twisting his much-abused hat in his hands as he speaks. "The family was always kind to me and I was happy enough. I suppose some would say I should have been grateful and remembered my place. But you see...I fell in love, and it's brought me no end of trouble."
  
  "I don't know much of how humans love," you say, when he falls silent a moment. "But once a traveling minstrel spent a summer wandering the woods, plucking a lute and singing his songs for the trees and birds, and from those I gather love must be a sad and sorrowful thing indeed. I cannot recall a single one of his stories ending happily."
  
  Jerran gave a little snort. "Some tragic fool rejected by his lover, no doubt. Yet I would be in bliss with my Quinnara, and she with me, if it did not seem the will of the world to keep us apart."
  
  "How is it that you are not with her now?"
  
  He chuckles bitterly. "Perhaps you will not understand, being a free creature of the forest, but you see, Quinnara is the eldest daughter of my lord. Though she returns my affections, and we have been fast friends since childhood, her father will not hear of such a match. And when it became clear Quinnara would marry no other, he devised a cruel plot, and had me accused of letting thieves in through the stables to plunder the family house." Jerran's face reddens, and he looks as though he might wrench the hat he holds in half. "Unicorn, though you do not know me, I swear that I have never stolen in my life, and never kept the company of thieves. I am an honorable man."
  
  Humans are strange creatures indeed. You briefly rub your muzzle against your foreleg, pondering. "Is this the custom among your kind? That one disgraces himself in the sight of the Heavens, to disgrace another in the sight of men? But fear not; I believe you. For you drank of the pool when you arrived here. The water flows over the tip of my horn every morning as I bend my head to quench my thirst, and so after many years it has learned to heal, and to draw out venom, as I do, but it causes great harm to those who are not pure of heart."
  
  The man's fingers cease their agitated twisting and he blinks and gapes first at you, than at the pool, as one realizing he had trod unaware right past a venomous snake or a steep drop off in the night. Your words seem to have had an impact, and it's only after a long moment that he finds his again. "Though I am no thief, like anyone, I could be a better man. Perhaps I will do something that shames me. Perhaps...perhaps even this very hour. But there is nothing purer in this world than my love for Quinnara, that much is true. Though I'd wager I've met one or two who would not survive tasting a single drop." His gaze hardens momentarily as he watches the crystal water splashing into the pool.
  
  "After being falsely accused I was confined to the dungeon, and Quinnara's father swore to hang me on the first day of Summer. My love was overcome with sorrow, and of course did everything she could to change his mind. She would send messages to me through her serving maid in secret, and as Spring drew to a close she despaired and grew desperate. In the last message I received, she said she intended to dress her finest and ride out hunting with her father and his men as she had in the old days, and when he seemed in a cheerful mood she would promise to wed whatever suitor pleased him the most, and as soon as he liked, if he would only spare my life and give me my freedom again."
  
  Jerran paused, his brow furrowed. "Well, I was...conflicted to hear that plan, as you may imagine, but what a different tale this would be if it had come to pass. But no...instead, something far stranger, and quite dreadful occurred." He seemed to be searching for words a moment, and drew a long breath.
  
  "Her father missed a shot at his prey, and in a hawthorn tree nearby a raven laughed at him. Some of his companions' young sons started to thrown stones and told it to fly along, and it dodged from branch to branch, and then began to speak. They say it mocked them all by name, and called him the spawn of swine herds and beggars. As well as other, worse things. Well, naturally he was wroth, and he sent an arrow that wounded the bird's wing. But when it fell to the earth it was revealed to be a witch in disguise. The lord drew his sword and ran her through, and she gave a cry that brought blood from their ears, and a thick black smoke poured from her lips, even as her body crumbled to ash."
  
  The man shivers. "I have no love for Quinnara's father. He is a cruel, hard-hearted man, to cause his daughter such sorrow and to seek to end my life, when I served him faithfully all my years. But it was a very different man who told me all this, weak and white-haired and broken. He breathed in the smoke--him and all those standing closest to him, his brothers and cousins and dearest friends, though he breathed in the most--and it struck them with a sickness on the spot, so that their limbs shook and they had not even the strength to climb back on their horses. But even that wasn't the worst of it, for a wild-eyed, raving man none of them had ever seen before rode in among them on a black horse, wearing a tattered black cloak and iron crown. He dismounted to gather up the witch's ashes, then seized my poor, terrifed Quinnara and dragged her up onto his horse. 'Curs! Cowards and curs!' he cried out to them all, lashing at them with a whip and then pointing at the weakened lord. 'As you have slain my eldest daughter this day, so I and her four sisters will slay yours, thirteen days hence when the moon is fat and full. Her blood shall mingle with these ashes, and then we shall see what new thing is born of the night.' And at those parting words he spurred his horse, and disappeared into the thick of the woods. And not a man among them was strong enough to even lift a weapon, let alone pursue."
  
  You have been listening carefully, but now you interrupt. "The wild-eyed man...do you speak of the wizard Olagar, the Ragged King of Castle Verayn?"
  
  Jerran nods grimly. "Yes, curse his name. Of course it didn't take long after they managed to stagger back home to summon up the sages, and they knew who we were dealing with, all right. It was those wise old fellows too who are responsible for my freedom. 'All of you are ill and weak, but young Jerran in the dungeon still has his strength. He was loyal to you once; promise him the hand of she he desires if he will only bring her home safely, and end this curse upon the rest of you.' And the Lord Above be praised, that bitter old man was finally moved to listen."
  
  You consider that a moment, pawing the ground a bit and tilting your head back and forth as you size the man up. "So you are out to overcome the Ragged King and take back your beloved. That is a task that few would dare to even think upon. You are very brave."
  
  "I am very desperate," he corrects you. "And even then I would feel I embarked on a hopeless task, if not for a secret the sages whispered to me."
  
  "And that is?" you ask, when for a time he remains silent and doesn't continue.
  
  Slowly he rises to his feet, then in a sudden motion he jerks his crossbow up to aim at your heart. "Why, they told me that...that the one sure thing that can defeat Olagar, is the horn of a unicorn!"
  
  > say "Foolish man..."
  "Foolish man," you snort, with a disdainful toss of your mane. "You have fallen victim to a lie!"
  
  This was obviously not the reaction Jerran expected, and he seems to hesitate, though the crossbow's aim doesn't waver.
  
  "Worse that a lie; a half-truth. Those will lead you further astray than a full lie, every time."
  
  "What do you mean?" he demands. "Speak plainly, or I fire."
  
  "A unicorn may put an end to one such as Olagar, but our horns apart from us do nothing. Whatever trickster first spread that falsehood has done much harm to us, but far more to your kind, who in olden days we oft helped of our own desire, before men's greed and lust for power prevented it."
  
  Jerran lowers the weapon back to his side, his shoulders slumping. He doesn't question your answer, so at least men have not become so backwards they could imagine a unicorn able to tell lies the same way they do. "What am I to do then? And if you can stop that wizard, why haven't you? His castle is not far from this wood, and if you have heard of him then surely you've heard of the evil he does."
  
  Now it's your turn to hesitate. The truth is, though you've at times heard dark whispers of goings on outside the forest, such has always been the way of the world. This enchanted green realm is your home, you are safe here and have had little desire to borrow trouble from outside it. But it's uncertain how a man so wrapped in his own troubles would take such an explanation.
  
  "We of the forest keep to the forest. We meddle not in the ways of men, for time and again it has only brought us sorrow. And Olagar was a king of men once, whatever he may be now," you finally say.
  
  A frustrated breath bursts from his chest. "So you'll do nothing? Just idly browse the flowers of the wood while innocents suffer right outside it? If there is nothing sacred in a dead horn, and no will to do good in a living unicorn, then how am one such as I to defeat Olagar? I am no king, and no wizard, but only a servant." His voice trembles on the edge of despair, then hardens with his gaze as you remain silent. "Well, I will find a way to save my Quinnara. I was always taught unicorns were holy creatures, and wholly good, but I see now that is just another myth." A shudder passes through him and he turns bitterly on his heels, beginning to stride away. "But what need have I of magic? My love for her will be enough."
  
  > His problems are not yours, and he nearly killed you, after all.
  Jerran pulls his cloak tight around himself as if warding off the cold, and disappears between the trees. You have dismissed the man and his troubles from your thoughts almost before the sounds of his footsteps and the snapping of twigs from his passage fades. Humans come and go, and each think the world revolves around them. It has always been thus.
  
  Yet life in the forest always continues unchanged but for the cycle of the seasons. You hear nothing of Olagar, of Jerran, of Quinnara, nor wonder at their fate.
  
  However, as one year fades into another, the turning of cart wheels and the ring of axes begins to be heard further and further into the forest. Cold iron bites deep into the wood, and the fae folk are restless and uneasy.
  
  You learn from a spirit who mingled with farm wives in the form of a cat that the humans nearby have prospered greatly, after a hero slew a wizard and married a noble's daughter to rule over the land. Traders come to and fro, and villages devour the ancient timbers to grow into towns and fields.
  
  The new lord, it is said, has no reverence for the fae, and is oft heard to repeat, 'What need have we for magic? I slew Olagar and saved my beloved without it, did I not? Whatever creatures there be in the wood, sacred or wicked, they sit idle and are not to be feared.'
  
  This news troubles you, but the forest is so ancient and so massive, surely the humans will soon have all they need? Surely in the long run, they are no threat?
  
  When you relate your thoughts to the little spirit it only laughs at you. 'I will be a fat tabby drinking milk from a saucer in this very spot, before the children born today of the men with the axes are old enough to swing axes of their own.'
  
  You huff your dismissive response to thin air, for the creature has already danced away. Still, it was only jesting. It must have been. Surely?