Tria's Tears
Author: Lorry
lorry@fanfiction.net
Characters: Katrianna, Hagrid, Firenze
Timeline: Sorcerer's Stone.
Summary: Hagrid discovers a unicorn killed by Voldemort.
Author note: Tera Bold and I came up with this storyline (or something like it) one night while chatting on IM. I thought it might fit well for this exercise.
Category: Fantasy
Disclaimer: Hagrid and Firenze aren't mine. Neither is the unicorn, altho I did give her a name. Katrianna the spryte is my own original character, tho. Everybody else belongs to JK Rowling and Warner Bros. (At least that's what the action figure boxes say.) I'm not here to profit, only to entertain.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
"Murder."
The word hung in the air over an interesting group - a centaur, a half-giant, and a spryte. Then the wind whisked it away into the darkness, and the whole forest took up its cry. It sounded in whispers from the grasses and ground cover, roared from the depths of ancient rocks and boulders. The trees carried it gently through their boughs, for that's the way trees were... always trying to do their best to soften blows like these.
Only one set of ears could hear the rumbling whisper. Those ears belonged to Tria, the spryte. She sank low with the weight of it, as the centaur, Firenze, scraped angrily at the ground beneath his cloven hooves.
"This is not murder," he murmured. "This is sacrilege."
And all through the forest another cry began. A cry for justice.
Tria spoke it so her companions could hear.
"We must right this."
She relaxed her wings and landed near the pale gray muzzle of a dead unicorn. Reaching out to touch the beast gave Tria a start. The particular pattern of spots and freckles across this nose was not unfamiliar. She knew who owned those once-pink nostrils, now flared defiantly against death. Memories of flying like the wind while unicorn hooves sped over the turf flooded Tria's mind. Like a tiny rocket, she flew upward until she was at eye level with the half-giant.
"It's Arielli," Tria told him. "She was my friend. We use'ta run t'gether in th' unicorn meadow, 'member, Hagrid? We were here th' day she was born."
Hagrid only nodded, for at that moment he couldn't speak. Tears coursed down his cheeks, pooling along the line where his beard began to grow, then disappearing to glitter occasionally as moonlight caught them in the tangle of his hair.
Tria's heart swelled to the bursting point with love for him, and as Hagrid knelt on one knee beside Arielli, she sank toward the earth by his side.
Eyes focused fully on Hagrid, the spryte did not watch where she was headed, until her feet landed on something stiff and sticky. She looked down, right into the fatal wound that had felled her friend. Arielli's throat had been slashed, just under her jaw bone. Esophagus and jugular vein had been severed and exposed in the unicorn's fight to survive.
Tria sank to her knees on the unicorn's neck, eyes darting between the gaping wound and the massive pool of blood that surrounded Arielli's head. She curled into a ball of grief - forehead pressed against the fur she had so often stroked, back when she and Arielli had gamboled together. Back when that flesh had been warm and supple, not cold and unyielding as it was now.
The spryte began to cry. Sparkling diamond tears slid down her cheeks, dripped off her pointed chin and fell onto the unicorn's fur. More tears came to join the first, until a tiny river of them slid down Arielli's neck and mingled with her blood.
Now the tears of a spryte carry within them the gift of life, and as they melded together with the unicorn's blood, a tiny sprout began to unfurl. It went unnoticed by the giant, who stood to his feet. The centaur came to stand beside him.
"We must bury her," he said. "Before Mars aligns itself with the northern tip of Cassiopeia, or more evil will come from this."
Hagrid hefted his crossbow a little higher. "Yer right, Firenze. I'll go get started." Turning toward where the spryte hovered, he beckoned her to join him.
Tria held back. "I wanna stay here, with Arielli."
"Ya can't stay here," Hagrid muttered, wiping a sleeve across his still damp face. "Summat evil did this, Tria. I ain't leavin' ya. Not tonight. Come on. What we hav'ta do won' take too long."
"But..." Tria protested, the dull thud of the forest's cry for justice still coursing through her being. "How're we gonna right this?"
Hagrid turned on his heel and tromped back through the darkened woods, scouting for the best place to give Arielli a proper burial. Tria bent into the wind to catch up.
"It'd take powerful magic ta right this," he told her. "Summat stronger than jus' us two."
He came to a halt, set down his crossbow and pulled a frilly pink umbrella out of one of his pockets.
"Excavitus Corpus," he mumbled, rubbing a huge hand across his forehead while the earth before them rumbled. With the wand-embedded umbrella, he shaped and excavated a whole deep enough to hold the body of a full grown unicorn.
Tria took her place on his shoulder, solemnly clinging to a handful of his hair while she watched dirt move and rocks tumble. She remained there while he went back to where Firenze guarded the body, rising in flight only when Hagrid bent to pick up Arielli. That was when she spied the still unfurling sprout that her tears had generated. She dove into one of Hagrid's pocket and came up with a pink-and-yellow polka-dotted tea cup. While Hagrid and Firenze tucked the unicorn into the soil, Tria scooped up the plant growing in the drying pool of unicorn blood.
"We must right this," the forest muttered.
"We will right this," Tria replied.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Months passed. The new school year at Hogwarts grew old. The plant Tria had rescued from the forest the night Arielli died grew, until Hagrid had to replant it in his pumpkin patch. In the spring a single white flower bud appeared. Tria tended it tirelessly, weeding, watering, and pruning away the leaves as they browned and curled. She herself had emerged from the center of a maylily, so she placed great significance on the ever-swelling bud.
Hagrid told her it was nothing but a normal flower. He cautioned her against getting too excited as it grew bigger, but when it out-sized his pumpkins, even he began to look forward to the day it would open.
That day came in mid-August. The school grounds were empty and quiet, until a lightening bolt of a spryte careened through the place screaming at the top of her lungs that the unicorn bud was opening. The forest heard her cry eventually, and sent a delegation of creatures to witness the event. Firenze paced the strip of land between the pumpkin patch and the woods like a nervous father-to-be. Hagrid himself leaned on his giant-sized hoe, shuffling it from hand to hand as the petals began to unfurl. Tria sat on a nearby leaf, clinging to a stem. Spryte sparkles burst from her feet unbidden.
"We will right this!" she whispered.
Then something unexpected happened. From the depths of the forest a unicorn appeared. Then another, and another, until they formed a half circle around Hagrid's garden. They waited silently, with only the occasional twitch of a tail or toss of a head to reveal that they were just as excited as the spryte.
The flower's petals unfurled, and the lead unicorn reared and trumpeted. The others danced on dainty forelegs. The plant bent over to finally reveal its secret: a silver unicorn foal, only this one had wings.
"Wings!" Tria whispered. She flew to Hagrid's shoulder.
The lead unicorn stepped forward, along with his mate. She snuffled the new-born, urging it to stand. After a few false starts, the little one stood on wobbly feet. Like the sun setting, the unicorns melted into the forest, and were gone. The magical creatures went back to their homes. And only Tria and Hagrid were left in the garden.
Tria couldn't help herself. She flew to the flower and peered inside. Her hands traced along the waxy softness of the petals, but she flew back to Hagrid disappointed.
"It's all over, then," she said, taking her place on Hagrid's shoulder. "I tho't maybe there'd be another one. Fer me."
"Part 'a you went wi' that one. Di'n' ya see it had wings?"
Tria grinned and circled the giant's head.
"It had wings!" she shouted. Hovering in the giant's face, she stood with hands on her hips. "We made it right, didn' we, Hagrid?"
Hagrid nodded and held out his hand. Tria landed in his palm.
"You made it right, Tria. You an' Arielli."
"Reckon we'll see it again?"
The giant grunted and blew Tria out of his hand.
"Reckon you will, spryte," he assured her, moustache twitching.
"Reckon you will."
The End.