ng_moonmoth

This was inspired by a prompt by

ysabetwordsmith for the January 2018

crowdfunding Creative Jam.

WARNING: This poem contains some disturbing scenes. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. Those scenes include dark magic; depiction of animals that have been gruesomely killed; humans being terrorized, kidnapped, driven mad, killed, or eaten. If these are touchy topics for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

The Black Unicorns

It is sometimes said
That the dark elves are gathering
Herds of black unicorns
Which they intend to use
In the name of a New Magickal Order
To impose their dominance upon our world.

The few who truly know
Of their existence and morphology
Can only hint at their true nature,
Lest they be captured and borne off
To the native land of the black unicorns,
Or slaughtered and eaten.

Those who ridicule
Black unicorns soon find
That the idea takes on a life of its own
And silently pursues them
Through the darkness
Until they drop from exhaustion.

The black unicorns
Do not behave at all like horses
Or even ordinary unicorns --
More like sentient aliens
Who will often turn and face each other
As though they were exchanging thoughts.

Some who tell of places where
They found horses with their organs or blood missing,
Hold that mechanical, not biological, or magickal,
Black unicorns were sent there:
Either to investigate the causes,
Or to actually perform the deed.

The dark elves are rumored to guard their secrets
By trapping those who would expose their plans
In recursive webs of dreams,
Until they can no longer escape
The nightmare lands that have spawned
The black unicorns.
----------

Black helicopters and cattle mutilation are two popular conspiracy theories. (Please be aware that the linked-to site has a fairly strong satirical bent.)

Dark elves are mentioned in the early second-millenium Icelandic eddas, which were codified and written down in the 13th century. The source eddas are short on information about their alignment, which has led to a wide range of interpretation and speculation.

I respectfully acknowledge the influence of Charles Stross and his Laundry Universe (scroll down to the Laundry FIles section here for details), specifically his novella "Equoid" (read it here!), and novel The Nightmare Stacks (spoilers here!), on this work. Charlie has explicitly said that's OK.