Unicorns in the Attic.

        

She told me there were unicorns in the attic, but I didn't believe her. Maybe at sometime I would have, but now I just stood there with an unbelieving look on my face.Unicorns in the attic. I no longer believed in unicorns or faeries or magic. 

I couldn't image the thought of heavy hoofs bounding up the stairs in an ungraceful manner, clattering up to the attic, barely fitting in, horn colliding with the low hanging ceiling. It was like picturing a whale in a bathtub. Only whales were real. 

But she believed it anyways. She still had it. That thing that we can lose so easily. It was reflecting in her eyes and filling her up with a sort of light. I had lost my it a long time ago. It was a fragile sort of of thing, breakable, devastatingly so. An older playmate or relative could distroy it so easily and then it was simply gone.

It had crushed me when I lost it. Faith. Belief. Childhood. Suddenly everything I'd believed in was wrong, everything that was real was no longer so and all of the things that mattered to me were gone. Slowly your unicorns are only ghosts and your truths are only stories. You can never go back. 

I thought I was doing her a favor, not crushing her it. Nodding along in a believing fashion, allowing her to still believe. I thought that letting her hold on to her magic would be a good thing, but I knew I couldn't protect her. Someday her it would be undone, it was the sad truth. 

If only I had known she was the one doing me a favor. She had shared a glimpse of her hope with me, and even if I didn't know it, something that had been long dead inside of me was slowly waking up. 

My it had never really left. It was simply sleeping. Like Mary's secret garden. Even though it looked dead, it was still wick. Still alive, deep deep down in my bones it was coming to life. 

Sometimes I still wander up those creaky stairs to poke my head around the door frame. Nothing but low hanging rafters and cotton candy looking insulation in the faint light. I had always wished to see a glimmering horn or maybe just a hoof print in the thick dust. I ventured up there many times, growing more and more distressed every time. I wanted to believe in unicorns and magic. I wanted my it back.

And one hot night in august, when shards of soft moonlight streamed in through the small stainless attic window, I had began the endless flight up the stairs. When I finally reached the top and peered around the door frame, I could have sworn I saw a glimmering tall ivory horn and a sure possibility that unicorns could indeed live in the attic.