Can Unicorns Fly?

We here at Wilftonville – yes, we’ve gone back to calling ourselves a collective – were up all last night. We were literally not tossing or turning at all. We lay on our backs and looked up at the ceiling. But while looking at the ceiling, we all looked right past the ceiling and through to the sky above. We had questions that burned into our mind.

Uh… minds. Our minds. We have a lot to think about all the time, and it’s a tough call to be us. We realise that unicorns exist, but there are certain aspects of the unicorn origin story that we cannot accept. The idea, specifically, the unicorns have their roots in nature. The traditional view of unicorns is as glorified horses, creatures who are shiny and made from glitter and have a single horn on the top of their head. This is what, if you ask the general public, they will tell you to expect of a unicorn. In post-J K Rowling times, they might even go so far as to say that unicorns have blood that can heal all wounds, and if you eat them you become immortal.

Immortals don’t exist. Even highlanders get killed eventually. So firstly, let’s get rid of the idea that Unicorns have magical blood – they don’t. Magical blood? If that existed, then surely it would be impossible to kill a Unicorn and thus find out that their blood is magical and immortal in the first place. Also, the World would be entirely populated by ravenous, thistle-bearing Unicorns by now, who would enslave mankind to accommodate their horsey needs. This idea can be thrown out right now.

Unicorns could very well have some sort of relationship to horses, though, and as we sat in our bed and considered this thought, it honestly seemed quite likely. But there is one thing that irked us – with Unicorns being a step above horses in terms of evolution, why have horses become dominant and Unicorns forced to live in the shadows of society…? This can be answered, eventually. The simple answer is that Unicorns are not similar to horses.

They are horses.

Horses who have undergone plastic surgery in order to accessorise. Glam horses, who wear their fabulousness like an old woman wears their bra – loose. You didn’t need to hear that metaphor, I’m sorry, I’m sorry, that was a step too far. Ignore that metaphor. Or simile, depending on which of the two that was. Horses, anywho, seem to have done all of this in order to become special. It’s not that odd or surprising, when you think about it.

This was good. We had confirmed the likelihood that Unicorns could exist in a way that made logical sense to us all, and only a few people dissented and threw up hurdles. This allowed us to continue on to the real meat of what we wanted to work out: could Unicorns fly?

Pegasus can fly, but he is a creature the Greeks made up because they are terrified of the existence of gravity. Still are. And also, the links between Pegasus and horses is harder to settle than that of Unicorns and horses – a horn, yes, but two wings that work? If that was possible, we’d all be flying around together in perfect harmony, blogging from the skies. Besides, plastic surgery didn’t exist then, so shut up. The likely solution to the Unicorn flying problem would be that they can’t, because there is nothing about a horse anatomy that suggests an ability to fly – but then again, there is nothing about a horse anatomy that suggests an ability to steal our hearts, and Unicorns all have that ability. No, the real answer here is that Unicorns can do whatever they want. Because they are Unicorns.

There is nothing logical about the fact that Unicorns can fly, because there is nothing logical about Unicorns in the first place. They are able to fly only because they’re powered by imagination. Much like fairies, who live or die based on the words that humans say (I believe in fairies! I believe in fairies!), Unicorns appear to be quite dependant on what humans think about them. It is because we believe – and by we, Wilftonville means… I – that Unicorns can fly, that they are able to majestically soar across the pink clouds of rainbow town.


Um, so Unicorns can fly. That’s the whole point of today’s 'wacky' post on Wilftonville.

Yes.