Transformation and Tailing

(Continued from Unicorn in New York)

10 minutes and a veggie sandwich later, Sebastian pulled over the car just outside the city. He walked behind some short evergreen bushes, modest even in front of a cat, and took off his clothes (revealing for the first time the pure white lion tail that had been wrapped around him under his clothing), and folded them neatly in a pile behind a tree.

Then he began to youthen, going backwards through his human form’s lifecycle at about a year every ten seconds. The first twenty seconds or so were relatively uneventful. His face changed, slowly losing it’s hard edges and becoming more rounded. After about thirty seconds his scraggly facial hair withered back into his chin from whence it came. His hair grew shorter. After forty seconds Sebastian reached puberty in reverse and shrunk rapidly, disappearing from view over the top of the bush. He firmly held a picture in his head of his goal. He had learned not to lose concentration while shifting through his childhood years. It was too easy to lose track of where he was going, to forget what he was doing. Today though, Sebastian bridged the gap without any problems. After slightly over three minutes, Sebastian crossed over from newborn human to ancient unicorn.

His arms and legs instantly twisted and sprouted, his neck and face lengthened, his organs twisted themselves into their appropriate shapes. As he lay on the brush and dead leaves of winter, his mane sprouted lion-like all around his face and down his neck, think, curly, and cloud-like. His fingers and toes grew together and his baby’s fingernail spread and thickened over them. Feathery hair grew around his new cloven hooves. Patterns of scales drew themselves intricately over his pale skin, then were quite suddenly real, shining more brilliantly white than any snow. He didn’t look like the traditional unicorn from European faerie tales, at least not at the moment. His face was too thin, nose too pointed, and cheek bones protruded too much. With the addition of iridescent scales, his face was almost dragon-like, except for the long spiral horn protruding from the forehead. When he had lived in China, he had been called Qilin in this form.

He waited another minute or so, until his joints stopped aching, and got gracefully to his feet, merging from behind the bush and shaking his mane. It was time to go find the mutant internment camp. He wouldn’t follow the group from the park so much as show up in the same place at the same time. He’d rather that they didn’t notice he was even there if possible, and he wasn’t exactly camouflaged, so truly tailing them would be difficult. The plan was to watch and only intervene if it was necessary to keep the hot heads from getting killed.

It was very likely going to be a lonely wait. He knickered to the cat and pawed the ground, his head down low. Are you coming? Sebastian liked cats. Cats and horses traditionally got along well together, cats and unicorns doubly so, in Sebastian’s humble opinion.