Letters to the Unknown

by Golden Scribe

Chapter 2: Henry's Notes

2015

“Got the case wrapped up?” Abe asked as Henry came through the door.

Henry nodded, tugging off his gloves. “Fairly straightforward, all things considered. A wife murdered her husband because of his infidelity, then tried to blame it on his mistress.”

Abe clucked. “Some things never change. Lust, jealousy, deflecting blame…I guess that’s just human nature.”

“Humans are complex, for better or for worse,” Henry answered, sniffing the air, “What are you cooking? It smells fantastic.”

“I’m trying something new. It’s a spiced chicken served with peaches and pineapple. I have no idea how it’s going to turn out, if I’m honest.”

“Knowing you, it will be marvelous, if not exactly what you expected. Call me when it’s ready, I have some writing to do.”

Abe nodded. “But I expect you to come up as soon as I call. None of this ‘just five more minutes’ nonsense, you hear me?”

Henry chuckled, having given similar lectures when Abe was a boy. “You have my word.”

Heading downstairs, he sat down at his desk, rooting around the drawers until he finally located his journal, a 200 page book with a black leather cover and a dark red ribbon serving as a bookmark. He opened it to the first blank page, noting that he was nearing the end of the book; he’d have to get a new one soon. Hopefully he’d be able to find a nice one in one of the bookstores and not have to rely on that godawful Amazon site again. How he’d gone looking for a journal only to accidentally purchase three copies of a dreadful romance novel still baffled him.

Picking up his pen, he hovered over the page for a moment, getting his thoughts in order. Finally, he wrote;

They say that the universal constants are death and taxes. I believe, however, that that’s far too grim an outlook on life. For all of us, whether or not we fully realize it, love is also a universal constant. And even if that love sometimes manifests in unhealthy ways, most of the time we would be wise to embrace that love for as long as we can.

“Henry! Dinner!”

“Coming!” Henry said, shutting the journal and tucking it away. Then he rose and headed upstairs, not wanting to keep Abe waiting. It would go against what he’d just written, after all.

Henry wasn’t sure when it had started. Sometime after his escape from prison, it had occurred to him to start, for lack of a better word, experimenting on himself to figure out the cause of his immortality. It was inevitable that he’d wind up taking notes on the process; the causes of death, how long it took to die, the temperature of the water when he came back, and the like. While doing so, he’d started adding little editorial comments about the nature of death. Some had been bitter, but most of them had been thoughtful (when one is immortal, becoming philosophical seems to become a requirement). Eventually, he had given these musings their own separate journals, as something comforting for him to read over when his curse weighed particularly heavy on him. At this point, he’d nearly filled up seven journals on the subject, and kept his older journals carefully preserved to keep the thoughts from fading. His production of notes had seemed to increase as of late, especially now that he was working with Detective Martinez on Homicide cases. He supposed that puzzling out the motives behind a homicide helped throw death into sharper relief.

Shaking his head, Henry snapped out of reflective mode. He didn’t need to bring morbidity to the dinner table. Not unless Abe broached the subject, anyway.

“Right on time,” Abe said, grinning as Henry entered the kitchen, “I’m just pouring on the sauce.”

Henry smiled back and sat down at the table. “I wouldn’t miss this for the world.”
***

The next few weeks turned out to be incredibly busy for Henry. The gradual return of warm weather was leading to an increase of bodies in the morgue. Some were from people being careless, but there were certainly a fair share of homicides, which left Jo and Detective Hansen run ragged and Henry with a lot of food for thought. The journal filled up even faster than he expected, and he started visiting bookstores on his lunch breaks, looking for a replacement.

He still hadn’t found one by the time he reached the last page of his current journal. Resigning himself to writing on notebook paper and having to confront the internet again, he uncapped the pen and wrote;

To some people, death is more than just an inevitability; it is a source of inspiration. Mystery stories, peace treaties, and especially religious faith would be nothing without death to provide the backdrop. While no one enjoys the idea of confronting death personally, knowing it’s there allows people to open their minds and explore various possibilities. It’s not always the most cheerful of exercises, but it is also the most illuminating one.

He had just put down the final period when the room was filled with a blinding light. Henry dropped the pen and threw his hand over his eyes, trying to figure out what had happened. A power outage? A faulty gas or electricity line exploding somewhere nearby? He was still alive, so at least whatever it was wasn’t life threatening. Blinking to remove the spots from his eyes, Henry looked around to try to determine the source, only to freeze in his chair, gaping at the sight in front of him.

A horse was standing in the middle of the room, looking at him with what he could only call a beatific smile. No, not a horse, he realized, as he looked closer; there were a pair of wings folded at its side, and a long horn growing out of its head. Then he remembered the symbol from the gas station during the case with the old college friends. An alicorn, then.

This particular alicorn seemed to glow white, though Henry thought he could detect a faint pinkness in its coat. There was also the matter of its mane, which rippled and flowed like the Aurora Borealis, and bore many of the same colors to boot. It was a beautiful, striking figure, which didn’t diminish the fact that a supposedly fictional creature was now standing in his workshop. Henry blinked at it, unsure what to make of it or what to do.

The choice was made for him as the alicorn inclined its head at him, before saying, in a warm, feminine voice,

“Greetings, Doctor Morgan. Forgive my rather abrupt entrance, but I believe, at long last, the time is right for us to meet. My name is Princess Celestia, and I’ve come to speak to you about the matter of your immortality.”

Author's Note:

As I said in the story summary, here's where the plot branches off into two endings. The "serious" ending is Chapter 3; the "cracky" ending is Chapter 4. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure.

And yes, there was a canonical mention of alicorns in the show. I laughed so hard when I first heard it.

Comments

[RedvsBlue327]

Alicorn's aren't exactly an MLP exclusive/original thing. The terms been around likewise with horses with horns/flying horses.

I've actually heard alicorn is the name of the material the supposed unicorn horn is made of. Now whether that is MLP exclusive I'm not so sure.