Alice

“Where have you been?" she cried. "Damn you, where have you been?" She took a few steps toward Schmendrick, but she was looking beyond him, at the unicorn.

When she tried to get by, the magician stood in her way. "You don't talk like that," he told her, still uncertain that Molly had recognized the unicorn. "Don't you know how to behave, woman? You don't curtsy, either."

But Molly pushed him aside and went up to the unicorn, scolding her as though she were a strayed milk cow. "Where have you been?" Before the whiteness and the shining horn, Molly shrank to a shrilling beetle, but this time it was the unicorn's old dark eyes that looked down.

"I am here now," she said at last.

Molly laughed with her lips flat. "And what good is it to me that you're here now? Where where you twenty years ago, ten years ago? How dare you, how dare you come to me now, when I am this?" With a flap of her hand she summed herself up: barren face, desert eyes, and yellowing heart. "I wish you had never come. Why did you come now?" The tears began to slide down the sides of her nose.

The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, "She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world."

"She would be." Molly sniffed. "It would be the last unicorn in the world to come to Molly Grue." She reached up then to lay her hand on the unicorn's cheek; but both of them flinched a little, and the touch came to rest on on the swift, shivering place under the jaw. Molly said, "It's all right. I forgive you.”
― Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn

“Perhaps it was all an elaborate charade of the sort envisioned by Miles, where the dragons were large iguanas and the knights and wizards were all supplied by Central Casting. Perhaps the dream was a sham, an imitation of what the imagination would have it truly be. Even if it were all real – if it were all as described, all as the artist had rendered it to be – still it might be less than the dream. It might be as ordinary in truth as his present life.”
― Terry Brooks, Magic Kingdom for Sale/Sold

“You're a woman,' said Ogo.

Ayndra spat, 'Ha!' and then started laughing. She turned her back on him again, and pulled an undertunic over her head. Through the wool she said, 'And what of it?'

'I . . . I thought you were a boy.'

'I never told you so.'

'No, but . . . I thought . . . there's a rule of no women in the camp.'

'No women in the camp. Is there a rule of no women in the army?”
― Alison Spedding, The Road and the Hills

“How do you like her?" Philip asked, nodding toward Meg.

"She's perfect." And she really was. "Just spirited enough to keep it interesting without being difficult to manage. And so beautiful." I patted her neck and flashed him a smile. "A gentle mare would have never been able to keep up with you."

He smiled, too, but as if at a private thought. "You are absolutely right.”
― Julianne Donaldson, Edenbrooke