Prismara Stellahoof's Arc

Chapter 1 of 1

Prismara Stellahoof had promised the dying elders she would find their scattered people, and now she stood in an empty valley with no idea where to look. She was a unicorn with a coat of shifting rainbow color, born to a world where alien tribes and unicorns once shared one banner. War had broken that banner. The tribes fled in every direction. Prismara had sworn to bring them back together. But a promise meant nothing without a trail, and she had searched for months without finding one hoofprint. She knelt at the edge of a shallow stream and let the cold water numb her legs. Her reflection stared back, colors flickering with her worry. Somewhere out there, whole families wandered lost. If she failed, they would scatter until no one remembered they had ever been one people. That fear pushed her upright again. At the center of the valley grew a single fairy tree. Its gnarled trunk twisted toward a canopy of glowing leaves, each one a different color. Prismara had passed it before without stopping. Now she noticed the blossoms. They pulsed, slow and steady, like a heartbeat. She pressed her horn against the bark. The tree answered. Colors rushed up the trunk and burst through the leaves. Then, one by one, blossoms drifted loose. They did not fall to the ground. They floated outward, drifting in seven separate streams toward seven points on the horizon. Prismara understood. The tree remembered the tribes. Its roots had touched every path they walked. Each stream of color marked a direction one tribe had fled. She followed the nearest stream with her eyes. It led east, toward jagged peaks she had never crossed. A second stream bent south into dark forest. The others spread wider still, each one farther than the last. Seven trails. Seven tribes. All alive, all reachable. Her heart lifted, then dropped. She was one unicorn. She could walk only one path at a time. By the time she reached the last tribe and returned, the first might have wandered on again. The blossoms would not float forever. A petal landed on her nose and dissolved into light. In that light she saw a face, a rainbow-colored alien girl, young and frightened, huddled among strangers. The vision faded. Prismara knew that girl waited at the end of the eastern stream, closest and most in danger. She could not save them all at once. But she could reach one. She turned east and set her hooves toward the peaks. Behind her, the tree kept its blossoms drifting, marking every trail she had no time to lose. Now she had her answer. She also had a new and harder problem. She knew where all seven tribes had gone, and she could reach only one before the trail to the others faded.