Alice

“The man blinked in the sudden light of the lantern, his mouth slightly open. His skin, hued with an almost reddish tint, marked him from Gurla, while his pudgy face and a body flabby around the middle and soft like a woman's betrayed that he had been castrated sometime before puberty. His head was shaved and he had no facial hair whatsoever.”
― Brian McClellan, Promise of Blood

“Her series features relaxed into a wide smile. She possessed the teeth of a tiny horse--white and square except for two pairs of pathetic canines.”
― Grace Draven, Radiance

“I am a soldier, I enjoy swordplay, I want that kind of life. But not just for – for fighting anything, or for show. I want to fight –"

"What needs fighting?" suggested the Kuakgan.

Paks looked at him and nodded. "I think that's what I mean. Bad things. Like the robbers in Aarenis that killed my friends, or Siniava – he was evil. Or that – whatever that held the elf lord. Only I don't think I have the powers for that. But I want to fight where I'm sure it's right – not just to show that I'm big and strong. It's the same as Tavern brawling, it seems to me – even if it's armies and lords –”
― Elizabeth Moon, Divided Allegiance

“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