Unicorns In Space

Space wasn't meant for witches. Or was it vice versa?

But there she hung inside her bubble with her unicorn beside her, gaping out at all the other witches and unicorns inside their bubbles. They glimmered like sparkly little planets in the middle of death's black field.

Below them, the shadow of Stalyn's space station glowed in the purple aura of atmosphere, and stretched across their forests, withering their world's belief in enchantment and its source of life.

All those sweet little fairies, bursting into the wrong kind of dust.

"This is it," Jill said, and her unicorn snorted. She touched his velvet neck and chanted the seven hundred and seventy seven words that would take her army to the peak of their power. As she completed the spell, light began to crawl in streaks across the universe from stars too far away to measure, and Jill watched in awe as they crisscrossed like water nymph webs and made their way to the horns inside the vessels.

She closed her eyes as the bubbles filled with energy and became too painful to behold, and then the heat intensified and she cried out the final word.

"Fine!"

The light dwindled and she squinted at the world and its shadow that were suddenly quite smaller. The force of the spell must have propelled her vessel in the opposite direction. A knot tied itself tightly inside her gut as she squinted toward the enemy. She didn't know how they'd get home. But that part didn't matter.

As the light hit the space station, a million butterflies? fairies? dragons? erupted, fluttering blue wings that were breathtaking even from this distance in their glitter and grace.

Jill gaped in disbelief.

The space station hadn't disappeared.

Then where had the butterflies come from?

Had the spell transformed the light instead? Were spaceships truly untouchable by magic? Had she and her people used all of their power to create butterflies for Stalyn to just... watch from his cushy bedside window? Slowly, Jill crumpled to the bottom of the bubble and laid her head on her unicorn's heaving flank.

She hoped it would be enough to make them believe.

She had a long time to believe in space.

___

Today's story was brought to you by International Space Day, and a love for sci-fi and fantasy that can never quite meet in the middle. For more creative space fiction, head way out here and enjoy the stars. :)