The day Ralsei grew his horns

All of Ralsei's mornings were the same.

He crept out from under the covers. He put a tally mark on the piece of paper he used as a calendar. He washed himself with the bucket of water he had filled from the well the night before. He dried himself. He put on his robes, and his hat. And then he made breakfast.

He liked the consistency. This way everything was automatic. His body went through the motions, freeing up his mind for other things. He got a lot of thinking done during that time.

But this morning, as he was washing his head, he found something unfamiliar. His hand scraped across a hard lump. He thought it was a stubborn piece of dirt at first, but scrubbing didn't make it go away, and he found another one on the other side.

Very curious.

After he was dry he visited the mirror. He had to bow forward and spread his fur apart to see it, but there were indeed two small, pinkish nubs poking through his skin. He had never seen anything like it before. It was coming from inside his body.

He'd be sure there was something wrong with him if there weren't two of them. It was so symmetric that it had to be natural. What was going on?

He fetched his anatomy book. It was just about humans, not about Darkners, but it was still very informative. There were a lot of similarities between him and a human - the same number of eyes, for one. He had read it a lot of times, but maybe there was something he missed. Couldn't hurt to check again.

There was nothing in the book like what was happening to his head. So he tried another book, a story, to see if it mentioned anything. And another. And another.

He liked this one. The text was sparse, but it had a lot of pictures. The pictures showed him the sky, and grass, and wooden fences, and plants. If he concentrated hard, he thought he could almost smell it.

But most of all, the book had a lot of animals. It had one on every page. He didn't know a lot about what humans and monsters and animals looked like, and least of all other Darkners. The anatomy book, the legend, the picture book, and his own body formed the sum of his knowledge.

When he saw the cow on the very last page, it clicked.

It had things growing from its head. He always thought they were a weird set of extra ears, but they looked way too stiff for that. But now he knew.

They were horns.

He had read the word before, but he never really understood what they were. Now he could put them into context. Cows had horns on their heads, and he was growing horns too.

He touched the nubs again. He hoped they would be pretty.

There was just one thing left to do. He got his sewing kit, and got to work on his hat.