aldersprig | January By the Numbers Sixteen: Underneath umbrellas, unicorns unite*

January by the numbers continues (now three days off, meeps~)!
From kelkyag's prompt "Underneath umbrellas, unicorns unite;" a ficlet, or maybe a start of a ficlet.

In the same setting as the Aardvark story (here) and maybe the Fall story (here), which may just be my overarching Space Colony setting.

🦄

The sun was far too bright. The sun was always too bright. On Feshgarrun IV, the land was rich, fertile, and wonderful - but only within [geographic thing] of the equator. The land belted that equator in a series of archipelagos and small continents; there was land near the poles as well, but it was covered in ice, and much much less-populously colonized.

So the land was good, the work was easy, and the leisure time was warm.
Far too warm.

The colonists on Feshgarrun IV - and they were still colonists; it was still a newly-discovered planet and the Company still owned everything from the mine equipment to the houses to the umbrella store - worked steadily, even if the work was easy. And in their leisure time, they would walk along the long beaches, covered with wide umbrellas that reflected the sun back up to the sky.

Colonists - especially the first-instance colonists, the ones that often moved on to colony after colony - were a strange lot. They had Aardvarks, they had Giants. They had Butterflies.

And they had Unicorns, those rare people who by genetics or gengineering were perfect for any particular colony.

On Feshgarrun IV, “perfect” was a matter of some debate. Even the Unicorns wore wide-brimmed hats and sunglasses; even the Unicorns preferred dusk and dawn to noon.

And the Unicorns came together on the beaches, tucked underneath umbrellas, plotting the future of a colony they were designed to work for, not to run.

🦄