When the unicorns had their last fight, and shed their horns and laid down and died, the kelpies wept. They wept for their kith and their kin.

So by the cover of the deepest, moonless night, they dragged the unicorns home. No joy in watching a death, as air is sucked from lungs and eyes bulge from heads. Only tears from bone-white eyes.

Skin from bones, floated away in ribbons, and eyeless sockets watched the waves. Sitting bones and heads cocked on necks, jagged bases of horns.

The kelpies nudged and tilted. Moved their newest water herd, that ate away the loneliness that human flesh couldn’t abate. They shared their catch and joy.

They taught the skeletons the water dance. Hides once white, now sickly grey, stretched taunt and turned to bone, where fishes skirt and call their home.

On the bottom of a murky lake, the kelpies and their unicorn mates, sat and laughed as humans drowned. Hands clawed at flesh, came away with scales, eyes bugling and terrified. Dance the last dance of your life.