Starfire knew not what she was doing. Where was this quest taking her? For fifteen days, she walked towards the great mountain, three miles high from base to peak. Nothing but black rock of ancient times. One side a sheer cliff and the rest suitable only for goats. But on she plodded - no possibility of water or food.

She had been frolicking among the sedrack on her third birthday. Sedrack is quite like corn stocks in height, width, and color but suppler, they flow in the wind like the golden wheat of the plain. The fruit of the sedrack, called a klisk, has been likened to the taste of Apple and carrot. It is bell shaped flaring to about four inches at the base and averages about eight inches in length. Klicks come in a wide variety of colors, red, blue, yellow, and seemingly all hues in between. Sedrack fields are stunning in mid spring but soon die off to be reborn after snowmelt. Horses and unicorns just love it.

She was tiny as unicorns go, four feet at the withers - but odd withers they were. The other unicorns called her hunchback, of course not to her face. Unicorns are polite.

Her coat was salt and pepper, the salt looked like marble, shiny but lush. Why it seemed so, no one could say, but it appeared able to deflect the sharpest and swiftest arrow - it could deflect anything as one glance made clear.

While grazing alone one day in the northernmost sedrack of the realm, a numruck began to hover in front of her eyes.

A numruck is an odd creature, roundish about the size of a softball. Its stubby bumblebee wings make a thunderous buzzing sound. It weighs about one pound. It looks of green and gold blotches about one inch across. Not dangerous but clearly annoying. It eats only sedrack stalks as far as anyone knows.

It has this most peculiar habit. It lays in wait, low on a sedrack stalk. As an unwitting creature, trundles by be it unicorn, horse, goat, or pig, it leaps in the air with thunderous wings. It goes from zero to forty miles per hour in less than ten feet. More like a loosed arrow than anything else. It rams its head directly into the rear hind quarter of the beast. Then the numruck starts spinning in a circle emitting an almost laughing like screech.

This little stunt always works on horses, pigs, and goats. But the unicorn is far brighter. In fact, they have a contest on how far a numruck can be kicked with the hind hoof. The record is 150' before the numruck gets back into controlled flight. Numrucks only surprise a baby unicorn once. This is considered a rite of passage and a source of entertainment for older unicorns. There are no lessons on numrucks until after the first head butt.

The hovering numruck put Starfire in the deepest trance, she followed it for forty-three hours with no awareness of the outside world. The numruck just crumbled from exhaustion, nothing left but dust floating in air. Starfire was again in charge of her senses, but no matter, her fate had been set and on she trundled.

It was twelve days to the mountain, each step excruciating pain, but she could not stop. She would have cried if she thought it might help. Unicorns cry often but only from sympathetic pain from the hurt of others. There was so much to cry about on earth, some stopped visiting. Even unicorns have their limits.

What laid between the skin and bone was nearly undetectable. On she staggered one grueling step after another. The vultures began to circle above looking down upon this decaying unicorn. Starfire felt a pang of joy when she saw the vultures.

With almost her dying breath, she made it to the top. Starfire looked over the edge of the cliff and shook with terror. She was forced to the edge by all-consuming force. She staggered back and her body began to shake, at first gently but very soon violently. She began to turn at first to the left then right. The shaking and turning became horrific. Her shoulders began to itch painfully beyond prior torment. There was nowhere to scratch. Her head was thrashing about in a vain effort to scratch her shoulders with her horn. She began to neigh as if to cry - the sound was pathetic. Never had a unicorn cried because of its own plight.

But somehow, she began to feel alive, more so than she had ever felt - is this what it feels like to die? Was she dead already? She reared up on her hind legs, and clawed at the sky. When her front legs came down, she collapsed. Completely still the vultures spiraled down. A flick of her tail, then silence. The vultures landed but did not approach, they stood at attention, heads bowed in two rows perpendicular to the cliff with Starfire dead center.

Starfire's head snapped up from the rock, body now writhing in agony. Hooves crawling with no purchase. A crack, she popped to her feet. All signs of fatigue gone. She raced towards the cliff only to recoil, a false charge, no fear. Her features transformed, no longer a starving wreck. The power of her stature was breath taking.

She galloped as far from the cliff as possible. And then she reared up on her hind legs and made a sound, a glorious sound, one that could be heard throughout the heavens. A lion's roar might approximate, but it shook the very foundation of the mountain. The vultures looked up but did not move. Two soon lofted into the air and landed on Starfire's back just above her front legs and dug their talons deep - a sharp quiver from Starfire.

Starfire bolted straight for the cliff down the road of vultures with rage of determination. Just before the cliff, the vultures opened their wings. The resistance of the wings against the air stopped the vultures in midair as Starfire barreled over the cliff. The vulture's talons held a piece to meat dripping crimson blood, one feet wide, two feet long and three inches deep. Just as Starfire cleared the edge she turned her head to offer a nod of approval.

Starfire's front legs conformed perfectly to her body with hind legs straight back. This reenergized mass of muscle shot like an arrow straight downward. The ripped hide spewed a fine mist of bright pink blood, when the blood cleared, such magnificent wings. They were pure white but included all the colors of the rainbow. You could see the color of every person on earth in harmony together.

Starfire rolled counterclockwise in a deep dive. She pulled her wings up but just accelerated the spin. Backing off she extended her starboard wing that again accelerated the spin. Then she extended her port wing and the spin slowed to a stop. She pulled up her wings just before smashing into the jagged rocks below.

She gave her wings a flap surging forward. She appeared as a bird underwater. Each flap gained more speed and altitude. Then she began rolling uncontrollably. Extending the correct wing as before just made the spin go faster. She extended the wrong wing and the roll stopped. Starfire shuttered uncontrollably. Instinctually, she dove hard for speed. Everything became calm and quiet. Her wings now undulated like the flanks of a stingray.

While Starfire was peaceful and calm, the ground below erupted in a swath of shattered glass and a boom the likes never heard. Her mother once told her that her father's name was Pegasus, could that be ...