…Dr. Thaddeus O’Sion, Comparative Biology department head at the University of Mystic and Arcane Knowledges, noted that unicorns are subject to these fragile, yet manageable principles.
In his seminal work, The Consecrated Glean: Harvesting the Unicorn & Extracting Its Magical Properties, Dr. O’Sion concludes:
…and with that, we learned that something inside of [the unicorn] dies when they’re inside of a fence.
The heart then becomes like a flame that fades even when more and more kindling is tossed on top of it. Their suffering creates a hauntingly beautiful contradiction. Yes, the beast is totally safe, in theory, but it is in more danger of dying than it has ever been in the wild. Once the will to live goes, there is no amount of intervention that can be done to save them from this fate once it realizes that it is stuck in captivity.
It is a uniquely human trait that a cage can bleed into normality. Since we adapt to it, why wouldn’t we have assumed that we can impart that survival skill on the world around us and the creatures that inhabit it? Most men live in prisons of their own making, the kind with invisible walls of personal design that follows them in tow. Some would even fight to the death to keep those imposed structures standing.
But, for the unicorn, the only boundary the creature is willing to accept is the thickness of their own hides.
That boundary that protects their innards from predators, the elements, and in most cases, weapons. It has served them well over the centuries, especially since a unicorn cannot just simply be attacked head-on. Their hides are thick, but the truest issue is that they’re far too clever for a direct attack. The beast is too aware that they’re being chased after and too focused on their own sense of place in the world to let it be taken away from them.
In essence, the unicorn has known that it is a subject of focus. Whether that is a simple look of majesty and awe that covets the beast’s inherent magic. Or it is aware that eyes are on it with more nefarious machinations and intentions.
Our distant ancestors, the first witnesses of the unicorn, learned those lessons the hard way. But their past missteps are our current learnings. Without their failures, we could have never known these concepts that have become colloquial truisms. You cannot fault a primitive being for being primitive. Without those early natural exercises, they would have never gained the opportunity to learn and evolve. The act of imparting modern logic on past feelings is an exercise meaninglessness as it anchors a ship in waters that it was never meant to sail. It is best to let idea and the thinker wander so they can eventually grow to what their world needs them to be.
The same could be said for the unicorn. It needed to learn as we did, it needed to wander its way through its own ecosystem.
Again, the unicorn knows it is to be hunted. It knew this before the magical properties of their heart were known and eventually harvested from them. The simple truth was the horse has no horn while the unicorn does. Surely, that distinction must have meant something.
Even our primitive ancestors could have put that hypothesis together. And thus, curiosity brought us here.
Hence, the need to move swiftly is always paramount.
As Dr. O’Sion notes, there are inherent logistical challenges to tracking, containing and, ultimately, harvesting from the beast. To repeat Dr. O’Sion’s concluding thought in the cited passage, expediency is key.
This is due to the fact that, much like the delicacy of foie gras or the poaching of a lobster, the heart of the unicorn needs to be removed while the host is still alive. It is the only way to ensure the magical properties of the heart remain intact before the creature perishes or if the feelings of captivity begin to take.
The latter renders the whole enterprise of catching the beast moot. As Dr. O’Sion famously stated:
For we know now that once the beast dies, the magic dies with it.
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