Fifty years ago................................

At the bookstore.........................Peter S. Beagle's The Last Unicorn

      The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone.  She was very old, though she did not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow falling on a moonlit night.  But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a shadow on the sea.
     She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller and cloven-hoofed and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery.  Her neck was long and slender, making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back was as soft as dandelion fluff and as fine as cirrus.  She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own seashell light even in the deepest midnight.  She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs.