So let's say you've got a
horse, only it's not just any regular horse, it's a
magic one. No, not even just any magic one, but a
doubly magic one. For, you see, it has
wings, like the mythic
Pegasus;
and it has a
horn, like the equally mythic
unicorn. So what is it? A horned Pegasus? Or a winged unicorn?
And remember, please do, that where the unicorn is just a
type, Pegasus is the name of a single, particular mythic creature. And, get this: its
father (according to the myth) was the
God,
Poseidon. And what is it with mythic Gods parenting
horses, anyway? In
Norse myth,
Sleipnir is the offspring of
Loki, who (despite being a male God) was actually the horse's
mother. Loki accomplished this by coming down in the form of a
mare and getting boned by studly
stallion Svaðilfari. Poseidon, on the other hand, did the reproductive deed with
Medusa. But then, the horse
was born from her
neck when she experienced a cooling
decapitation at the hands of
Perseus. How a horse came out of there.... well come to think if it, it's proportionally actually not much different from the other place where
newborns come. But I digress, since Pegasus was not even born alone, but came out with a lesser known sibling
Chrysaor, the winged
boar.
So, yeah.
Now, coming back to the
unicorn, those are just running amok all over the place, going all the way back to the
Bible. Oh, sure, modern translations have omitted reference to "unicorns" and instead substituted "wild ox" for the Greek
monokeros (literally "horse with one horn coming out of the center of it's freakin'
forehead,
bitches"). But we know a unicorn when we see one.
A horse which is both winged and one-horned might be imagined to spring from the
union of Pegasus (or "a pegasus") and a unicorn. But mythology, especially the Greek variety, portends some bizarre stuff when it comes to
reproduction, though. There's no
guarantee that a
mating between these creatures would produce any kind of horse at all, instead of, who knows, a
chimera with the
body of a
lobster,
tail of a
cat, and
neck and
head of a
swan. But should the more
intuitive offspring occur, the horse with broad-
feathered wings and a single sterling twirled horn, it would properly be either a pegacorn (which, to me, sounds like a large quantity of
corn somewhere between a megacorn and a petacorn, of which you'd have to take a petabite), or a unisus. Not to be mistaken for
Unisys.
And what are the characteristics of a unisus, other than being a winged horse with a horn? There's one in the
classic Filmation cartoon spin-off,
She-Ra -- just as He-Man turns his cowardly cat
Cringer into the mighty
Battle-Cat, so does She-Ra
transform her horse,
Spirit into the unisus "Swift Wind." That one can talk as well, like
Mr. Ed or a Biblical
donkey. But seriously, it's a freakin'
winged horse with a
horn. What more can you ask of it?