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Once, in the rainbow valley across the seventh sea, there lived a unicorn named Alison.
Alison’s coat was a mellow shade of violet, her mane and tail were a vibrant blend of every colour imaginable, her eyelashes sparkled with pink glitter and her horn spiralled from her nose like a seashell filligreed in gold. Everybody in the valley knew her and all of them said she was beautiful.
She lived in a large, softly furnished stable with her best friend Norman - a devoted and amiable gnome - and every day, Norman and Alison would go for a canter in the candy coloured fields, the little gnome riding high on her back.
You might think, knowing all of this, that Alison was happy - but in fact, Alison had a deep and desperate sadness in her heart.
You would never know it to talk to her - you might say “Ho! Alison, how are you today?” and she would always reply “Oh quite well thank you!” and give you a pretty smile and you would very likely go about your day without giving her a second thought - except perhaps to appreciate how very happy Alison must be -but you would be entirely wrong. Alison was not happy at all.
Late at night, when the gleaming stars hung low over the valley, she would curl up next to Norman and cry to him.
“Oh Norman, how I do so wish that I was other than I am.”
Every night, Norman would try to reassure her.
“But Alison,” he would say, “You are so very beautiful - your violet coat, your rainbow mane, your glittering eyelashes and your gold gleaming horn! Why would you wish to be other than that?”
“I don’t know!” she would wail, “I just do!”
Now, one morning, Alison woke early and stepped out into the morning sunshine to find that a rainbow had come down from the sky and settled beside the door to her stable.
Tentatively, she reached out a hoof and tested her weight against the shimmering avenue of light. Surprisingly, the rainbow felt soft but firm enough to hold her - like the membrane of a trampoline or a particularly bouncy mattress.
Norman came out of the stable rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“Goodness me!” he said, when he saw the rainbow.
“Come on.” said Alison, kneeling so that he could mount her.
“Where are we going?” asked Norman.
“Into the sky,” she told him.
“Righto.” Norman “Just a mo’.”
He vanished and when he returned five minutes later, he was carrying a package of waxed paper tied up with string.
“What’s that?” asked Alison.
“Sandwiches.” Norman told her as he climbed onto her back and took a tight grip on her flowing prismatic mane.
"Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent pour partir; ... Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!" said Alison in French.
“Righto”, said Norman and, together, they galloped into the sky.
Soon, they were so high up that the rainbow valley dissolved into a pastel coloured smudge. They could see the way that the earth curved at the horizon. Not much longer after that, the sky darkened as they left the atmosphere and they stepped up into the shimmering void of space.
Alison looked down. Beneath her trotting hooves, the rainbow faded away until they were floating freely among the stars. Norman drifted up from her back and swooped around in front of her, grinning.
He took her front hooves in his hands and they danced a weightless waltz, the great wide earth laid out beneath them.
“Look” Alison called, pointing to a small asteroid that was overgrown with thick canes of bamboo.
“Oooh!”, said Norman.
“We must investigate!” she told him.
“Indeed” Norman agreed, turning a somersault and sculling off toward it.
Landing on the asteroid, they pushed through the thick forest of canes until they came to an ornate wooden door painted in a deep purple.
“Hello!” called Alison, “Is anyone at home?”
Norman balled his little fists and hammered on the bottom of the door.
“Hello?” came a deep, slow voice from inside, “Who is it?”
“We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re on an adventure,” said Norman.
Slowly, the door creaked open to reveal a large, furry bear with deep, dark circles around her wide, dark eyes.
“Gosh,” said Alison, “Are you a panda?”
“A sky panda. This is my den.”
The sky panda reached out to grab a bamboo pole from beside the door and took a large bite out of it, chewing ruefully.
“Help yourself to Bamboo.” she said. "I'm Cassandra."
Cassandra looked at Alison closely. She chewed.
"You're very unhappy." Casandra said, matter-of-factly.
Alison was taken aback - this was unprecedented.
“How can you tell?”, she asked.
“Oh it’s the eyes.” said Cassandra, “I can always tell from the eyes.”
Alison looked at Norman, who shrugged.
“You have very pretty eyes”, she told the sky panda, “why do you have such big black rings around them?”
“It’s because I’m a goth,” Cassandra told her, “All sky pandas are goths. We love melancholy and reading and darkness and heavy eyeliner.”
Alison was intrigued. Nobody in the rainbow valley liked any of those things. In the rainbow valley, everybody liked light-heartedness and dancing and pastels and glitter.
“Why don’t you come in?” asked Cassandra, “I was just making some strong black coffee. Strong black coffee goes very well with bamboo.”
“You can share our sandwiches if you like,”Norman told her as they squeezed through the door and into Cassandra’s living room.
Alison thought that Cassandra’s living room was absolutely wonderful. There wasn’t a pastel anywhere to be seen - no pinks or candy stripes or soft cushions - instead the walls were painted a lovely deep indigo, there was an enormous creaking bookshelf filled with heavy leather bound volumes and a large skylight above opened onto the glorious canopy of stars.
“Can I be a goth?” Alison said.
“Oh, I expect so” Cassandra told her pressing a warm mug between her hooves, “Goths are very accommodating.”
Alison and Norman spent the whole afternoon with their new friend reading romantic poetry, listening to synth music and drawing big dark rings around their eyes.
As they left, kicking off into space, Alison told Norman, “I like being a goth.”
“Hmm,” Said Norman, blinking, “I’m not sure I do. At least, not for all of the time”
Just at that moment, a shooting star came hurtling towards them.
“Quick!” yelled Alison.
“Righto!” answered Norman, and they both reached out and grabbed the star’s trail as it shot past.
Together, they flew through the inky darkness. They passed moons and planetoids, blinking satellites and fiery meteors.
Eventually they came to a small space station overlooking a swirling purple nebula, They let go of the shooting star and drifted down to open its hatch and climb inside. They were tired from the day’s adventures and were hoping to find a warm mug of cocoa and a place to sleep.
In the airlock, they met a tall, strong man in a spacesuit who bowed very deeply and gave them a swarthy grin.
“Dobry Vyecher” he said, “I am Vasily, I am a Cosmonaut.”
“All the way out here?” asked Norman, “Such a long way from home.”
“I am marooned.” shrugged Vasily, “Once I was a captain, exploring the great expanse, but my crew grew tired of me - I was a demanding captain - there was a great mutiny and they left me here alone without a ship.”
“Deary me” said Norman.
“It’s not so very bad,” Vasily smiled, opening the cargo bay doors and leading them into a snug cabin where a set of comfy berths were laid out invitingly, “Perhaps you’ll be good company for a while.”
“Oh yes.” said Alison, “We are excellent company.”
So the three of them sat down on the neatly-made bunks and ate little blini pancakes with freeze dried sour cream and a delicate green powder that tasted like the sea.
“I do so like this life of yours,” Alison told the cosmonaut, “Could I be a cosmonaut too, do you think?”
“Well, from what I can see, you are well on the way to being one already.”, he told her, kindly.
“Shall we go to bed now?”, asked a dozy Norman, lying himself down and starting to snore.
And they did.
The next morning, bright and early, they all awoke to the light of a galaxy cluster rising behind the nebula.
“We must be off,” said Norman.
“Would you like to come with us?” Alison asked, “We could all be cosmonauts together!”
“No,” said Vasily, “I must wait here. I’m sure my crew will be back to pick me up one of these years, and I would not like to miss them!”
Alison and Norman bid their goodbyes and kicked off from the side of the station. There were no more shooting stars to hitch rides with, but they enjoyed swooping leisurely through the starfield.
“I love being a cosmonaut.” Alison sang.
“It’s alright, I suppose.” said Norman.
“Look!” cried Alison, for she had seen a signpost nailed to a dwarf planet.
They read the inscription: TO THE HALL OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.
“Lovely!” exclaimed Alison, “we are going the right way!”
“Shouldn’t we think about heading home?” Norman asked, sounding a touch nervous.
“I don’t know if I shall ever go home.” said Alison, and they sculled away in the direction that the sign was pointing.
Presently, they came to a very great hall that looked like it had been carved out of the whole of one side of a planet. Great classical columns and soaring arches gave it an imposing magnificence.
“Come on”, said Alison as they alighted and tiptoed quietly through the great doorway that led into the hall.
Within, all the constellations sat around a great feasting table. Alison recognised Orion the Hunter, Aquila the Eagle, Perseus the Hero, The Great Bear and his Little Bear brother, Pegasus the winged horse and a great many others.
“Hello!” she called, loudly.
“What’s this?” bellowed Perseus.
“You’re not constellations!” boomed Aquila.
“This hall is for constellations!” roared Orion
“You’re not even made of stars!” bayed the Great Bear
“And it’s really obvious what you’re supposed to be”, barked the Little Bear, “No interpretation needed at all!”
“And you don’t have wings!” preened Pegasus, somewhat unnecessarily in the circumstances.
“Oh but I do so want to be a constellation!” cried Alison.
“IMPOSSIBLE!” shrieked several of the strange star-beings at once, “Go away!”
“But… but…”, Alison stuttered.
“Come on”, said Norman quietly, tugging at her mane.
They slouched dejectedly from the hall, Alison so very full of sadness again that she could barely contain it.
Without a word, they leapt into the air and began the long journey home.
When they arrived back at the rainbow valley, Alison felt the weight of gravity as though it were a load on her back. She slumped down in her stall and wept.
“Oh Norman!” she sobbed “I did so want to be other than I am.”
The tiny gnome sat down beside her and rested his head on her violet flank. He thought for a moment.
“What was that you said before we left?”, he asked after a while, “the french?”
“It’s Baudelaire,” Alison managed, “But the true Voyagers leave for the sake of leaving and without knowing why, they always say: let’s go! I don’t know why I said it.”
Norman thought hard again.
“Don’t you see?” He said, finally.
“What?” murmured Alison.
“That’s us. We’re not goths or cosmonauts or constellations, we’re not even beautiful unicorns or funny little gnomes, we are voyagers! True voyagers. We want to be other than we are because that is the way we are!”
Alison sighed and gazed at the stars through the open doors of the stable.
“Yes”, she said.
A rainbow burst from the earth, revealing a great wide tunnel that led down, down deep underground, spirals of colour circling it like water flowing down a drain.
Alison grinned, the remains of her heavy eyeliner smeared by her tears and her rainbow mane falling tangled and dirty across her back. There were stars in her eyes.
“Let’s go.” said Norman.
And they went.
Once, in the rainbow valley across the seventh sea, there lived a unicorn named Alison.
Alison’s coat was a mellow shade of violet, her mane and tail were a vibrant blend of every colour imaginable, her eyelashes sparkled with pink glitter and her horn spiralled from her nose like a seashell filligreed in gold. Everybody in the valley knew her and all of them said she was beautiful.
She lived in a large, softly furnished stable with her best friend Norman - a devoted and amiable gnome - and every day, Norman and Alison would go for a canter in the candy coloured fields, the little gnome riding high on her back.
You might think, knowing all of this, that Alison was happy - but in fact, Alison had a deep and desperate sadness in her heart.
You would never know it to talk to her - you might say “Ho! Alison, how are you today?” and she would always reply “Oh quite well thank you!” and give you a pretty smile and you would very likely go about your day without giving her a second thought - except perhaps to appreciate how very happy Alison must be -but you would be entirely wrong. Alison was not happy at all.
Late at night, when the gleaming stars hung low over the valley, she would curl up next to Norman and cry to him.
“Oh Norman, how I do so wish that I was other than I am.”
Every night, Norman would try to reassure her.
“But Alison,” he would say, “You are so very beautiful - your violet coat, your rainbow mane, your glittering eyelashes and your gold gleaming horn! Why would you wish to be other than that?”
“I don’t know!” she would wail, “I just do!”
Now, one morning, Alison woke early and stepped out into the morning sunshine to find that a rainbow had come down from the sky and settled beside the door to her stable.
Tentatively, she reached out a hoof and tested her weight against the shimmering avenue of light. Surprisingly, the rainbow felt soft but firm enough to hold her - like the membrane of a trampoline or a particularly bouncy mattress.
Norman came out of the stable rubbing his eyes and yawning.
“Goodness me!” he said, when he saw the rainbow.
“Come on.” said Alison, kneeling so that he could mount her.
“Where are we going?” asked Norman.
“Into the sky,” she told him.
“Righto.” Norman “Just a mo’.”
He vanished and when he returned five minutes later, he was carrying a package of waxed paper tied up with string.
“What’s that?” asked Alison.
“Sandwiches.” Norman told her as he climbed onto her back and took a tight grip on her flowing prismatic mane.
"Mais les vrais voyageurs sont ceux-là seuls qui partent pour partir; ... Et, sans savoir pourquoi, disent toujours: Allons!" said Alison in French.
“Righto”, said Norman and, together, they galloped into the sky.
Soon, they were so high up that the rainbow valley dissolved into a pastel coloured smudge. They could see the way that the earth curved at the horizon. Not much longer after that, the sky darkened as they left the atmosphere and they stepped up into the shimmering void of space.
Alison looked down. Beneath her trotting hooves, the rainbow faded away until they were floating freely among the stars. Norman drifted up from her back and swooped around in front of her, grinning.
He took her front hooves in his hands and they danced a weightless waltz, the great wide earth laid out beneath them.
“Look” Alison called, pointing to a small asteroid that was overgrown with thick canes of bamboo.
“Oooh!”, said Norman.
“We must investigate!” she told him.
“Indeed” Norman agreed, turning a somersault and sculling off toward it.
Landing on the asteroid, they pushed through the thick forest of canes until they came to an ornate wooden door painted in a deep purple.
“Hello!” called Alison, “Is anyone at home?”
Norman balled his little fists and hammered on the bottom of the door.
“Hello?” came a deep, slow voice from inside, “Who is it?”
“We’re sorry to bother you, but we’re on an adventure,” said Norman.
Slowly, the door creaked open to reveal a large, furry bear with deep, dark circles around her wide, dark eyes.
“Gosh,” said Alison, “Are you a panda?”
“A sky panda. This is my den.”
The sky panda reached out to grab a bamboo pole from beside the door and took a large bite out of it, chewing ruefully.
“Help yourself to Bamboo.” she said. "I'm Cassandra."
Cassandra looked at Alison closely. She chewed.
"You're very unhappy." Casandra said, matter-of-factly.
Alison was taken aback - this was unprecedented.
“How can you tell?”, she asked.
“Oh it’s the eyes.” said Cassandra, “I can always tell from the eyes.”
Alison looked at Norman, who shrugged.
“You have very pretty eyes”, she told the sky panda, “why do you have such big black rings around them?”
“It’s because I’m a goth,” Cassandra told her, “All sky pandas are goths. We love melancholy and reading and darkness and heavy eyeliner.”
Alison was intrigued. Nobody in the rainbow valley liked any of those things. In the rainbow valley, everybody liked light-heartedness and dancing and pastels and glitter.
“Why don’t you come in?” asked Cassandra, “I was just making some strong black coffee. Strong black coffee goes very well with bamboo.”
“You can share our sandwiches if you like,”Norman told her as they squeezed through the door and into Cassandra’s living room.
Alison thought that Cassandra’s living room was absolutely wonderful. There wasn’t a pastel anywhere to be seen - no pinks or candy stripes or soft cushions - instead the walls were painted a lovely deep indigo, there was an enormous creaking bookshelf filled with heavy leather bound volumes and a large skylight above opened onto the glorious canopy of stars.
“Can I be a goth?” Alison said.
“Oh, I expect so” Cassandra told her pressing a warm mug between her hooves, “Goths are very accommodating.”
Alison and Norman spent the whole afternoon with their new friend reading romantic poetry, listening to synth music and drawing big dark rings around their eyes.
As they left, kicking off into space, Alison told Norman, “I like being a goth.”
“Hmm,” Said Norman, blinking, “I’m not sure I do. At least, not for all of the time”
Just at that moment, a shooting star came hurtling towards them.
“Quick!” yelled Alison.
“Righto!” answered Norman, and they both reached out and grabbed the star’s trail as it shot past.
Together, they flew through the inky darkness. They passed moons and planetoids, blinking satellites and fiery meteors.
Eventually they came to a small space station overlooking a swirling purple nebula, They let go of the shooting star and drifted down to open its hatch and climb inside. They were tired from the day’s adventures and were hoping to find a warm mug of cocoa and a place to sleep.
In the airlock, they met a tall, strong man in a spacesuit who bowed very deeply and gave them a swarthy grin.
“Dobry Vyecher” he said, “I am Vasily, I am a Cosmonaut.”
“All the way out here?” asked Norman, “Such a long way from home.”
“I am marooned.” shrugged Vasily, “Once I was a captain, exploring the great expanse, but my crew grew tired of me - I was a demanding captain - there was a great mutiny and they left me here alone without a ship.”
“Deary me” said Norman.
“It’s not so very bad,” Vasily smiled, opening the cargo bay doors and leading them into a snug cabin where a set of comfy berths were laid out invitingly, “Perhaps you’ll be good company for a while.”
“Oh yes.” said Alison, “We are excellent company.”
So the three of them sat down on the neatly-made bunks and ate little blini pancakes with freeze dried sour cream and a delicate green powder that tasted like the sea.
“I do so like this life of yours,” Alison told the cosmonaut, “Could I be a cosmonaut too, do you think?”
“Well, from what I can see, you are well on the way to being one already.”, he told her, kindly.
“Shall we go to bed now?”, asked a dozy Norman, lying himself down and starting to snore.
And they did.
The next morning, bright and early, they all awoke to the light of a galaxy cluster rising behind the nebula.
“We must be off,” said Norman.
“Would you like to come with us?” Alison asked, “We could all be cosmonauts together!”
“No,” said Vasily, “I must wait here. I’m sure my crew will be back to pick me up one of these years, and I would not like to miss them!”
Alison and Norman bid their goodbyes and kicked off from the side of the station. There were no more shooting stars to hitch rides with, but they enjoyed swooping leisurely through the starfield.
“I love being a cosmonaut.” Alison sang.
“It’s alright, I suppose.” said Norman.
“Look!” cried Alison, for she had seen a signpost nailed to a dwarf planet.
They read the inscription: TO THE HALL OF THE CONSTELLATIONS.
“Lovely!” exclaimed Alison, “we are going the right way!”
“Shouldn’t we think about heading home?” Norman asked, sounding a touch nervous.
“I don’t know if I shall ever go home.” said Alison, and they sculled away in the direction that the sign was pointing.
Presently, they came to a very great hall that looked like it had been carved out of the whole of one side of a planet. Great classical columns and soaring arches gave it an imposing magnificence.
“Come on”, said Alison as they alighted and tiptoed quietly through the great doorway that led into the hall.
Within, all the constellations sat around a great feasting table. Alison recognised Orion the Hunter, Aquila the Eagle, Perseus the Hero, The Great Bear and his Little Bear brother, Pegasus the winged horse and a great many others.
“Hello!” she called, loudly.
“What’s this?” bellowed Perseus.
“You’re not constellations!” boomed Aquila.
“This hall is for constellations!” roared Orion
“You’re not even made of stars!” bayed the Great Bear
“And it’s really obvious what you’re supposed to be”, barked the Little Bear, “No interpretation needed at all!”
“And you don’t have wings!” preened Pegasus, somewhat unnecessarily in the circumstances.
“Oh but I do so want to be a constellation!” cried Alison.
“IMPOSSIBLE!” shrieked several of the strange star-beings at once, “Go away!”
“But… but…”, Alison stuttered.
“Come on”, said Norman quietly, tugging at her mane.
They slouched dejectedly from the hall, Alison so very full of sadness again that she could barely contain it.
Without a word, they leapt into the air and began the long journey home.
When they arrived back at the rainbow valley, Alison felt the weight of gravity as though it were a load on her back. She slumped down in her stall and wept.
“Oh Norman!” she sobbed “I did so want to be other than I am.”
The tiny gnome sat down beside her and rested his head on her violet flank. He thought for a moment.
“What was that you said before we left?”, he asked after a while, “the french?”
“It’s Baudelaire,” Alison managed, “But the true Voyagers leave for the sake of leaving and without knowing why, they always say: let’s go! I don’t know why I said it.”
Norman thought hard again.
“Don’t you see?” He said, finally.
“What?” murmured Alison.
“That’s us. We’re not goths or cosmonauts or constellations, we’re not even beautiful unicorns or funny little gnomes, we are voyagers! True voyagers. We want to be other than we are because that is the way we are!”
Alison sighed and gazed at the stars through the open doors of the stable.
“Yes”, she said.
A rainbow burst from the earth, revealing a great wide tunnel that led down, down deep underground, spirals of colour circling it like water flowing down a drain.
Alison grinned, the remains of her heavy eyeliner smeared by her tears and her rainbow mane falling tangled and dirty across her back. There were stars in her eyes.
“Let’s go.” said Norman.
And they went.
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