But they hadn't gone five more paces before something suddenly appeared before them on the path, blocking their way. A beam of light lanced through the canopy overhead, illuminating it from above. Not that it needed the illumination. It glowed from within.
Leopold blinked, as Siegfried blushed a brilliant crimson. "Siegfried, is that...?" he said, quietly, for once not a single note of mockery in his voice.
"Yes," Siegfried got out, in a strangled voice.
"A unicorn."
"Yes."
"I thought they were extinct!" Leopold exclaimed, drinking in the glorious creature with his eyes.
"Not... exactly..."
Siegfried didn't blame Leopold for being entranced. She was an exquisite creature, from the tip of her crystal, spiraling horn to the tip of her silken, leonine tail, she glowed with a pearly light that owed nothing to the sunlight she stood in. Her coat looked like the softest of plushy velvet — this mare clearly was of the same variety as in Drachenthal, which needed a thicker coat for the cold mountain winters. In his travels, Siegfried had also seen smooth-coated unicorns, with hides like satin. Her cloven hooves were a shining gold, her mane a fall of silver. Her eyes were gold to match her hooves, her tiny beardlette a dainty thing, as suited a lady unicorn. She moved like water flowing over a stream. There was nothing about her that was not perfection.
Except, perhaps, her brain.
She locked her gaze with his, radiating adoration. Siegfried groaned. Not again. Not another one...
Completely ignoring Leopold, the unicorn paced deliberately toward Siegfried, each hoof leaving an indentation in the moss that glowed for just a moment. Siegfried watched her with the look of dread of a man that sees his inescapable fate bearing down on him.
Well, at least she wasn't trying to skewer Leopold.
With a sigh, as his bewildered and bedazzled horse stood stock-still, the unicorn lifted her chin and placed it firmly in his lap.
"Hewwo," she lisped. "I'm Luna. I wove you."
With a sigh of resignation, Siegfried bowed to the inevitable and scratched her forehead around the crystal horn. "I know you do," he said, with only a touch of bitterness, waiting for the truth to dawn on Leopold. "That's all right. I love you, too, Luna. You are a beautiful girl"
When the truth finally did strike him, his friend fell off his horse, laughing. By that point, Siegfried was crimson.
They rode out of the wood with a necklace of braided unicorn hair folded in a handkerchief and stowed carefully in Leopold's pouch. It had taken this bribe to get him to stop laughing. Siegfried wasn't angry — how could he be angry? It was funny. But he was deeply, profoundly embarrassed. Someday this would all be hilarious, he was sure. Someday he would sit at the fireside and tell the story on himself.
Today was not that day.
He hadn't been able to look Leopold in the eyes since his friend started laughing at him. Not even when he'd given Leopold the necklace. The ride back had been punctuated only by Leopold's smothered sniggers.
He did not regret going into the forest with Leopold today, and he was glad that they had found his friend a gift to impress the Princess, because he had been feeling a bit guilty about those lessons in defending oneself. He just wished that it had been some other sort of gift.
As they neared the gates of the city, Leopold finally rode up next to him; he seemed to have gotten himself under control at last.
"You are a fine fellow, Siegfried," he said quietly. "Most men would have punched me in the eye for laughing at them like that. I wouldn't have blamed you for riding off and leaving me there."