some type of adult girl

— Molly Grue, The Last Unicorn

Besides Lord of the Rings, if I had to pick other books that have defined my life because they saved it, Peter S. Beagle’s The Last Unicorn would be one of them.  Specifically for the character of Molly Grue.

This particular scene, in both the book and the film, never ceases to make me sob like the 5-year-old I was when I first saw it.  When Molly first meets the titular unicorn, she is angry.  So angry that she is a bitter, cynical, jaded old battleaxe by the time she finally gets to meet a unicorn instead of “one of those beautiful young maidens they always come to.”  And the unicorn’s only real way to comfort her is to say “I’m here now.”

What this scene taught me, though I would not learn the full value of the lesson until I was something vaguely close to Molly’s age, mentally if not physically, is that dreams and good fortune are not the sole property of the young and beautiful, and that being older does not mean you’re less deserving of having good things happen to you.

Unicorns come to people who are beautiful, period.  Be they young, shining maidens or bitter, cynical, jaded old battleaxes.  If a unicorn comes to you, there’s a reason for it.  And that reason is that you are beautiful, in ways the unicorn can see even if you can’t.  And of course, that you still believe in unicorns at all.

That’s the hardest part, really.  To keep believing unicorns even exist, nevermind that they would come to the likes of you.  So that when one does come to you, you don’t mistake her for a white mare.

I’m still waiting on mine.  And like Molly, I’ll forgive her if she ever shows up.  It’s not her fault it took so long to find me.  That she finds me at all is what matters.

(via omfgitsagundam)

What really struck me about this was that Molly says how dare you come to me when I am this? She thinks she’s old, she thinks she’s ugly. She’s a bandit’s cook and she’s done shit she’s ashamed of and she’s not the kid she used to be before the dirt and sorrow got caked on, and she thinks that makes her unworthy. But she’s staunch and tough and kind, and she cooks in a mad king’s castle and makes friends with soldiers and cats and nails Shmendric’s feet back to the ground. 

The last unicorn in the world didn’t need some sweet and clean young innocent. The last unicorn needed Molly Grue. 

(via bowiesnippleantennae)