Trinket (Reverse Harem)

Broken Heart or Broken Faith

 After all this, I felt like we were going back to the mainland empty-handed.

I didn't think of it as going home, because Haven wasn't my home. Nor was the hippocamp city. None of was my home. My home hadn't even been real. Or it hadn't been real for a long time.

So where was I supposed to go? And what was I supposed to do when I got there? I needed to try to find the Hippocamp princess, but how the hell did I even start?

The Priestess invited me up to the very top floor of the temple after the official audience. We stood under a valance that blocked out the brutal sunlight. The sun shone off the waves and the ocean was blinding and loud as it smashed into the rocks below. Some Pantere in cat-form lounged nearby. She had said they were acolytes and learning.

"You have what you came for," she said.

I nodded.

"I'm sorry, I know I was cruel."

I still felt like I was made of shards of bones and glue wrapped in skin. "Is it true unicorns die of broken hearts?"

"As far as I know, yes. Should I ask where your trinket is, or can I deduce from your missing hippocamp?"

I sighed. How was I supposed to even explain any of it?

She didn't need me to talk, apparently, because she said, "For you, what's a passing thought or dream easily discarded as merely wit-wandering seems frighteningly real. As I said, for you, you have lost your dream-skin. You have been flayed and laid bare. You understand that a tiny grain of sand of Asund, for a brief instant, contemplating playing with me, was not something he would do, nor even something he was capable of? These are things that our minds do to try on possibilities to test our limits, without actually testing our limits."

"I wish it was just that." It wasn't that for the briefest instant Asund might have thought about playing with her. I had told him to do what he wanted.

"Is it that you believe he'd actually do it?" she asked. "I know it seemed very real in your mind, because for you, it was real because of what's been done to you to alter how you dream. For you, there is little distinction between the umbral realms and this world. I think you were flayed so that you'd accept your life in the umbral realm as a typical mortal life. Remember, you were taken there. So even your young child's mind knew the difference between a dream and waking."

"I do appreciate the help," I said softly. "But it's not that. It's that I don't think I can trust them. Not really, and I know that what happened was just a grain of sand, but that's not the only thing. A lot of grains of sand make up a beach. The trinkets are a lie. They aren't what everyone thinks they are. They promise your ideal love, but..."

"You don't think your consorts are ideal?"

"You don't have a trinket."

"No, Priestesses never go to the Churn. But in every dream where I've seen a consort, there seemed to have been ideal love. Not perfection, but ideal."

"Ormiss might love me, but he still tried to make it so I wouldn't leave the Hippocamp queendom and would be obligated to stay. Korr, Ethat, and Itek just want to figure out what I am so they can use me. Asund is only with me because his brother shamed him into following me. He wants to go back to his life of being Captain. I'm a puzzle for them to solve. I'm a unicorn. I feel like I should just change my name to The Unicorn. They don't even realize what they're doing. They just do it because of how they're made. And it's not like any of them can just stop being what they are. Like Ormiss can't just refuse to be Lord-Regent or King. His people need him. Korr and Itek can't just give up being Ambassadors. They're trying to figure out why the world is dying and make alliances with the other species to try to fix things. Asund and Ethat maybe have more flexibility, but the other three? They're always going to have those duties, and I want them to do them, because they're good at it. I don't want to stop them."