Page 76 of The Knights of Gaia

Her eyes narrowed.

“They’re really tasty. I promise.”

She swooshed her tail.

“Here.” I tossed one of the cookies at her feet. “Taste for yourself.”

She lowered her head and gave the cookie a tentative sniff.

“Yum,” I told her, making a big show of rubbing my tummy.

She opened her mouth and scooped it up. Then came lots of chewing, along with lots of happy unicorn noises. When she was done eating the cookie, she lifted her head and gave me an expectant look.

“First, give me a strand of your hair,” I countered. “Then you can have the rest of the cookies.”

She thumped one of her hooves against the ground.

“That’s the deal. Take it or leave it. Throwing a tantrum won’t get you more cookies.”

She took a step toward me. Then another. And another. She was right in front of me now, so close that I could have reached out and touched her.

“Do we have a deal?”

She flicked her head.

“I’ll take that as a yes.” I kept my left hand out, showing her the cookies, as I used my right to pluck a hair from her mane.

I’d no sooner taken the hair than her tongue brushed across my open palm, scooping up the rest of the cookies like a vacuum cleaner.

“How did you do that?” one of the other customers asked.

Everyone was staring at me.

“No one has ever been able to get a hair off that stubborn horse’s head.”

“You just have to know how to talk to her.” I gave Sweet Escape an affectionate pat.

Now that she wasn’t trying to bowl me over, she really was a sweet unicorn.

She nudged my hand.

“Sorry, I don’t have any more cookies. But I’ll bring some the next time I come around.”

She winked at me.

“You have a gift.”

I turned toward the voice. A woman stood on the other side of the fence, watching me. She looked young, not more than a few years older than I was. But she held herself with a regal grace far beyond her years. And her queenly attire certainly didn’t hurt either. She wore a jewel-encrusted riding jacket and knee-high leather boots over skin-tight leggings. And she had the prettiest pair of gloves I’d ever seen; they glowed like they’d been woven from magic.

“A gift?” I shrugged, walking toward her. “Not really. I just tried to figure out what she wanted.”

“That is the gift, young one.” She swung open the gate for me. “Most people don’t even try to listen. They don’t respect other intelligent creatures. They don’t care about what they want. They care only for what they themselves want. What they can take.” She gestured toward the customers still struggling to get their unicorn hairs. “And that is why they failed where you succeeded.”

“Mostly I succeeded because Sweet Escape is a sweetheart.”

The young unicorn whinnied from the other side of the gate.

I blew her a kiss, then snapped my attention back to the mysterious woman. “Unicorns seem like reasonable creatures.”

---