A. K. Yearling didn't pray as she looked from her class to the laptop containing her lecture notes to the overhead projector. She did, however, silently remind a few deities that they owed her. And when she turned on the projector, it worked exactly as she'd hoped, just as it had for the last two weeks.
That was the easy part. Next was dealing with five rows of disinterested undergrads who were getting their humanities credits out of the way (and, to be fair, A. K. herself was doing the absolute minimum of actual teaching necessary to keep her position.) She thanked whoever was involved, god or registrar, for keeping the class free of Daring Do fans.
"Alright, class, next topic for Introduction to Folklore is the Green Rider." She moved through a few slides as she lectured, working through a wide variety of relics depicting a long-haired, green-skinned woman on a red or golden unicorn. "For whatever reason, the Rider is a recurring visual theme in many cultures throughout the Eastern Hemisphere."
Click. A marble statue, with children gathered around the gentle-looking mare, the Rider smiling. Even with the paint long since worn away, the Rider's bushy hair and the broken stump of the unicorn's horn made her identity undeniable. "Sometimes she was seen as a healer, a granter of blessings, or a guide."
Click. A 14th-century illuminated manuscript, with a warped hag astride a nightmare on hooves, made all the worse by the monk who had drawn it never having heard of a vanishing point. "Sometimes she was remembered as a witch, a monster, or even a lost soul beguiled by the demon she rode."
A few snickers came from the back of the room. A. K. ignored them.
Click. An 19th-century ukiyo-e drawing, the unicorn's mane and Rider's hair streaming behind them like clouds as they galloped to the horizon. "Sometimes she simply was. A mysterious phenomenon just passing through.
"Comparing stories that have survived to the modern day shows some consistencies between the various iterations. The Rider generally responded in kind; kindness was met with kindness, cruelty was met with cruelty. And you did not mess with her unicorn."
Click. Most of the class winced at the resulting mosaic. Two in the back exchanged a fistbump.
A. K. didn't roll her eyes. That was unacceptably unprofessional. "The consistencies suggest she has some roots in actual history, warped across time, different cultures, and oral tradition. Still, given the earliest documented examples, the actual Green Rider would have had to have lived millennia ago. It would be an impressive bit of remembrance if we really kept the same story going for that long, but it's likely that she's been forgotten and rediscovered several times since the first records, the same regions possibly even creating her multiple times as they were inspired by tales earlier cultures inspired in turn."
Click. The 11th-century tapestry showed a variation on the theme, a redhead with sword in hand, astride a green horse with leaves for a mane and tail. "This may explain her counterpart, the Red Rider. Less common, but still a recurring theme across the centuries. It's easy to see how the details can slip and change, though details like the horse having some thematic connection to nature is consistent in its own right.
"It could even be that there's something intrinsic to the human imagination that finds the image of a woman on a horse appealing or indicative of some subconscious truth, but now we're getting outside of my field. Any questions?"
A good half of the class was probably using their laptops to browse MyStable rather than take notes, but if they wanted to tank their GPAs, A. K. certainly wasn't going to stop them. A few hands did rise. One of them was one of the back-row troublemakers. Despite herself, A. K. smiled. She never could resist a good nemesis. "Yes, Sunset?"
The girl leaned back, a crap-eating grin on her face "So, if the Green Rider was real, would the Malt Whinny Company owe her royalties for the movie and all the merch?"
Her girlfriend Wallflower snorted and punched her shoulder. "Stop!"
"Law is also outside of my field. Any serious questions?" Honestly, A. K. thought to herself, they weren't even being subtle...