I really like Aonbheannach, I have to say. An earthy unicorn is an appealing concept, and her affinity for living things certainly would attract the likes of Sylia's attention.

Thanks! Yeah, I'll admit I have issues with the level of puritanism often associated with unicorns. (Puritanism: the eternal fear that somewhere, someone is having fun.) 'Purity' shouldn't necessarily mean virginity; I figure Aonbheannach here more defines it as 'being true to yourself'. Something which Alicia isn't, really, yet, but is working on.

None of my unicorn characters are particularly 'pure' in the Puritan sense. Granted, Finley the knight has a big chivalrous/romantic streak, so she's probably the closest.

Anyhow, the unicorn isn't going to show up in the next chapter of the story, but will in either the next chapter or the one after that, which will take place across the country at a different convention, the one that's local to Eithne rather than Alicia. I have plans, oh yes I have plans.

Heh. The Last Unicorn actually lampshaded that legend (unicorns appearing only to virgins) in a particularly heartrending way. You're def. preaching to the choir here.

And Aonbheannach herself is no less or more pure than Sylia. She's half-otter, half-whale, and the young end of middle-aged for a Halavahdon. And she's a member of a matriarchal people. Believe me, there's nothing virginal about her. Eithne would find a pretty open mind in Sylia. Heck, the big girl can probably help her out.

Oh lord, I remember that scene. Poor Molly. And really, when you get right down to it, Molly Grue was absolutely the wisest and most practical character in the story.

I actually saw a stage production of The Last Unicorn back in elementary school. The theatre troupe (Kaleidoscope Theatre) in question did touring shows for schools, so they tended to have really minimal productions. The butterfly that shows up early on was a guy in a black jumpsuit holding two corners of a tie-dyed sheet in his outstretched hands, capering about the stage and letting the sheet flutter behind him like a flag as he moved.

As for Sylia, yeah, they'd probably get along. That said, unlike the world of Jadestar and Skunkworks, Aonbheannach's world has no aliens known to have visited and magic is hidden, so just having Sylia show up there would be a major thing.

Eithne's priorities are pretty much: survive, have fun, encourage (responsible) magic use. 'Responsible' meaning 'don't harsh anybody else's buzz' pretty much. Part of why she's not all that fond of mages, a lot of the mages she's run into have been people more interested in trying to control spirits like her rather than learning to get along. Alicia's different, at least so far, and Eithne wants to keep it that way...

Sylia isn't a first-contact specialist, but ALL Explorers take pod classes in it in case they find themselves in that situation. Aonbheannach would be VERY curious to her, being both a nature-spirit and a farmer. So she'd be maximally nonthreatening and careful. Her belt even gives them something in common: To Skunkworks it'd be ultratech, but to Aonbheannach it would simply be magic, and that's not far from how Syl considers it, too. Bonus: In her grove, she probably could grow to Sylia's size - or shrink Sylia more to her size, so they could converse as equals. And there's no unicorn legends on Halavahworld, so just hearing Aonbheannach's story would be a treasure to her.

She's certainly be willing to put her muscles to work around the grove. I'd bet being willing to work, sans magic help, might actually win Aonbheannach's respect.

Makes sense; Sylia is going into a situation where first contacts are likely going to happen eventually, so I'd expect explorers to get at least basic training on how to handle that.

Heh. There was a comic book by Matt Howarth called "Keif Llama: Xeno-Tech", where the main character had in many ways the most difficult part of the job handling first contact situations... she was the person who showed up after the first contact happened and before the formal diplomats showed up, and her job was basically to understand how the aliens thought so that the diplomats could have something to work with. It was a job that, naturally, required very high levels of empathy as well as intelligence. She was actually one of the best at the job in the galaxy... unfortunately she was good enough at the 'empathy' part that she often ended up undermining the diplomacy part because she realized that the diplomats were trying to put one over on the newly-discovered aliens. She could handle alien thought patterns just fine, it was human bureaucracy she usually ended up in trouble with. Then there was the story where she was helping investigate a space station that had been found and was still under power, and she realized that the station had been built deliberately bland and neutral, but bland and neutral in randomly varying ways so as to make it impossible for people like her to 'read'. That was enough to deduce that the creators were probably rather paranoid, and were extremely unlikely to be showing back up while anybody else was still there...

Skunkworks has commented herself a few times on the level of similarity between your typical 'mad scientist' type and some of the more formal 'hermetic mage' or 'alchemist' types. It's that near-scientific thought process combined with finding a justification to make things work the way you think they should. Aonbheannach isn't a particularly hermetic or ritual sort of mage, she's more a 'raw power and pulling on the strings connecting you to the world' sort of person. The way things work in my head, spirits like her tend to be focused on a particular aspect, and they can do a lot of things within that aspect without much more than thought, but they're limited to that. Mages and mad scientists, on the other hand, can be a lot more general but require a lot more prep work and a lot more focus and mental justification. In terms of power, a top end mad scientist is basically 'second best at everything'; they won't measure up to a specialist in their particular aspect, but they can be at least decent in any aspect.

Aonbheannach probably wouldn't be able to tell much from the belt; it's not her field. She might be able to help pull off things like 'where did this originally come from', but on the other hand she's going to be a lot less powerful when it comes to anything off Earth. You want to get her into space, you'd need to do something like make her the caretaker of the gardens for a generation ship.