I love the internet.
Me: Is your carrier Verizon?
Person: No, why?
Me: Then your bedtime story is going to have to be told in parts. I hope you don’t mind. :[
Person: Knock yourself out!! I’m excited.
Me: Sweet! So, once upon a time, there was a boy named Mortimus. His friends would have called him Morty, but he didn’t have any. He got by, though, with a little help from his pet unicorn.
The unicorn’s name was Tristy, because it was the first thing he thought of and he (sadly and very incorrectly) assumed that all unicorns must be girls.
One day, Morty took his pet unicorn out for a ride across the countryside. Normally the unicorn would have found this undignified and had no part, but Morty’s father was kind of a douchebag, so Tristy figured Morty needed all the cheering up he could get. (If he was honest with himself, Tristy thought Morty was kind of badass, but he wouldn’t ever tell him. Mainly because Morty didn’t speak unicorn.)
So anyway, Tristy let Morty ride on his back (the indignity!!) al the way to the edge of the woods, where Morty had been forbidden to go. It was then that Tristy decided that Morty needed to grow a pair and man up, because this wasn’t a damn Cinderella story and even if he had an asshole dad and a brother who, while obnoxiously handsome, was also as dumb as a brick, no prince from a far away land was gonna save him from this life. So Tristy took Morty into the woods, despite his protests (honestly, “no, girl! Bad girl!” to a unicorn? Really, dude?).
Tristy took him down a winding path where the woods became thicker and darker with each step, and Morty was afraid. He desperately wanted to turn back. Instead, Tristy took him even deeper into the woods, where the canopy was so thick Morty couldn’t see anything. Then, suddenly, it was light again. Now, Morty was no science major, but he was pretty sure an overgrown leafy canopy wasn’t exactly made for a skylight, okay, so obviously he was confused. Tristy bucked a little and then knelt (a nice way of saying “get the hell off me, boy.”) and it was only when Morty straightened that he saw her. A lady was standing at the center of the clearing, by a pool that Morty was sure hadn’t been there before. The lady smiled at him, and he found himself smiling back.
She’s pretty! He thought. Not ike, Angelina Jolie pretty, but definitely not a gremlin. I’d hit it. The lady raised an eyebrow and Tristy bit his hand, and Morty flushed and tried not to think any more incriminating thoughts.
“So, sir Tristan,” the lady said, in a voice like rippling water. “You have brought an offering?” Morty blinked, and before he could correct her she rolled her eyes. “Not you. Him,” she said, nodding at the unicorn.
“What do you want with her,” Morty asked warily, and the lady snorted in a very unladylike manner. “Is he for real?” she said to Tristy, and Tristy let out a huff of amusement.
A pause, and then-“Ah,” the lady said. “Not an offering. A good deed. How…kind,” she said, a sneer in her voice. Tristy-Tristan, Morty’s mind supplied, kicked at the dirt beneath his hooves a little. “You know this paltry deed won’t break your sentence,” she said. Morty gulped, his mind racing.
There was another long moment, the tension palpable. Then the lady tilted her head and said, “Oh, you-You just wanted to, like, give him a day off?” Morty tried desperately to follow the one-sided conversation and patted Tristy’s head absently. Tristy bowed her-his-whatever-head and let out a breath.
“Oh,” the lady said. “That’s…that’s actually kind of adorable. Okay, fair enough. One free day. You’re making up for this one, though. With interest,” she added.
Tristy huffed again and the lady laughed, a merry and wicked sound, then clapped her hands together once. There was a flash of light, and when Morty’s head stopped spinning, there was a boy before him. He was roughly his own age, but his eyes were bottomless and made Morty flinch.
Then Morty actually paused to evaluate the scene before him. And paused some more. “No. Fucking. Way,” Morty said, and blinked, just to check.
The boy Tristan shrugged. “So,” he said, his voice flat with disuse. “There’s that.”
Morty blinked at him some more, and Tristan sneered. “For fuck’s sake, you ride around on unicorn, dude. How was this ever out of the realm of possibility?”
Morty considered this. “You may have a point.” He conceded.
“You don’t say,” said Tristan. “Which reminds me-not a girl. Never been a girl. Please remember that.” Morty agreed, his cheeks pink.
After Tristan’s initial irritation, he took Morty back through the woods, and they spent the rest of the day swimming and eating and throwing frogs at Morty’s brother. Eventually, once the sun had set and they lay side by side in the field, Tristan smiled at Morty and touched his forehead, and Morty fell into a deep sleep. When he awoke, he was in his own bed, with his father’s voice bellowing at him to get his ass moving. He felt saddened and hopeless, for he thought for sure that he had been dreaming. But when he went to the field that afternoon, Tristy was there. “Hey girl,” Morty said, patting her head affectionately.
Tristy huffed indignantly and nipped his fingers. “Ow, what the hell!” Morty said, and then blinked. “Oh. Oh, okay, um. Hey-boy? Tristan?” And Tristan rolled his eyes and poked Morty in cheek with his horn.
Morty beamed, and then they lived happily ever after, because Morty grew up, got a backbone, and told his dad to shove it, becoming a self-titled knight. His first quest was to free Tristan from his curse, which turned out to be hilariously easy. Tristan then travelled with him on his quests and they became established bachelors and hetero-lifemates, and slayed ogres. And it was awesome. The end.
Person: THAT IS THE MOST EPIC BEDTIME STORY I HAVE EVER HAD TEXTED TO ME.