The girls and I decided to venture down the street for a winter walk not intending to find hidden treasures, just wanting some fresh air and long overdue dose/overdose of vitamin D.

When we reached an open space, the girls ran ahead and I stayed back with Chloe while she explored things like her laces, the rubber tip of her boot and wrestled with her gloves that as tough as she is, could not tear from the string connecting them from behind the sleeves of her coat.

I heard Hanna shout while examining something on the ground, “Hey! A bottle of perfume with lots of perfume still in it!”

I was quick to shout, “Don’t touch it!” before she got as close as possible with her face so as not to touch it, arms behind her back to illustrate her point. She might have nudged it with her nose and/or licked it, but she was not going to touch it–at least not with her hands.

Ellie suggested a unicorn may have dropped it there but soon remembered unicorns only live in Australia so that would be absurd.

Chloe was eager to move in on the find. She wanted a close inspection, a feel, a taste, a full examination of the unicorn’s perfume bottle.

Based on our geography, I knew odds were against the object being a unicorn’s perfume bottle but the wonderment in the girl’s eyes certainly had me wanting to believe. Why wouldn’t a unicorn want to store his/her perfume in this particular spot at this particular time. This patch is as good as any.

Of course I didn’t want to explain to the girls based on the pile of cigarette butts surrounding the magical object, while yes it did still have fluid and it was a translucent blue with an interesting looking nozel on the top, ideal for unicorn hooves to use as a mister, what they were actually looking at was a junkie’s blue lighter with a human girl’s DNA in the form of a nose print smeared all over it.