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Bracken smiled all day.
That really shouldn’t feel like an achievement, but for him it was. No one else thought about it, but Bracken did. It took a lot of effort to put on a smile and pretend like nothing about him was different. To pretend that he wasn’t different. To pretend he was still a unicorn.
Well, he was still a unicorn, he just didn’t feel like one much these days. With his third horn gone, he lost a lot of his sense of self. Every other unicorn had their third horn, every other unicorn was complete, was whole. Bracken had his second horn, so he wasn’t mortal, but he didn’t really feel like a unicorn.
He felt outside, other, different. Like there was some grand joke all the others knew and Bracken didn’t.
It hurt when his horn was taken away. Not physically, but mentally. Bracken always had trouble fitting in, but now the problem was ten-fold. He felt lost without his horn. A unicorn’s horn was their sense of purpose, their connection to the fairy realm and its queen, their source of power. Without his horn, how was Bracken supposed to fit in?
He wasn’t. At least, that’s how he felt, and he couldn’t tell anyone. A prince shouldn’t use others as their burden. So Bracken shouldered his emotions alone. After all, the others couldn’t really understand. They might sympathize, but they couldn’t truly understand what it was to be a hornless unicorn in the fairy world.
Bracken felt empty. Empty of purpose and of drive. What was he supposed to do now that his horn was gone? He wanted to talk to his mother about it, but again, he would be forcing her to suffer his emotional burden. And after everything that his mother had been through, Bracken wouldn’t add the weight of his problems on top of hers.
So Bracken kept smiling.