"Ida," Legolas called me again by name, holding out his slender hand. "Tolo."
Come, he spoke, or sang, or thought. It was inviting. Insistent. Irrefutable.
He was an Elf and a prince. And I—and all the world—were his to command. If he had asked it of them, the Trees would dance, the Sky would rip asunder and the Sea herself would go bone-dry for the sake of a single thought, a glance, a word. But I wasn't like them. I wasn't in love. I was angry. And I was afraid.
"Where have you been?" I cried. "Damn you, where have you been? Where the fuck have you been!"
He loomed over me, tall and terrible, yet his voice was warm. "Im hí."
I'm ashamed to admit I didn't speak much Sindarin then. But I didn't need to. I'd read the book. Heard the story. I knew what happened next. Molly berates the unicorn, and she responds with words of grace. His kindness was as clear as though he'd kythed it: I am here now.
"And what fucking good is that, huh?" I accused him, beating my fists against his chest like a child. "What fucking good is it that you're here now! Where were you twenty years ago, hell, even ten years ago? How dare you, how fucking dare you come to me now, when I'm like this?"
I fell, exhausted.
I turned away. Refused his helping hands. "I wish you hadn't come," I choked. "That you'd never come. Why the hell would you come now?"
Legolas said nothing.
"What do you want?" I demanded, drying my tears. "What you can possibly want with me?"
But that was a silly question. A unicorn may need you, but she will never want you. She will never want for anything, just as she cannot regret. And she would never ask you, no; a unicorn will only state, if she ever speaks at all. If you're lucky enough to have seen one, to have spoken with one, you would know the truth: when confronted with a unicorn, you could choose to serve her, or you could not. There was no other way.
It was childish, foolish, selfish even to think that he had come at my command, that my wanting or wishing him could wisp him into existence, or that he had come for me. In all of time and space I was insignificant and he was eternal. It had always happened this way. I existed because of him, because the universe knew from the exact instant of its inception that one day he would Need. I was so tiny. So irrelevant. So fucking small.
And somehow, somehow I knew. She is the last, Schemendrick said. She is the last unicorn in the world.
...He would be. It would be the last Elf left in Arda that comes to Ida Anderson.
"You're an asshole," I told him, standing. "And arrogant. And you're late, maybe too late anyways. But it's all right," I sniffled. "I forgive you."
I saw him in the sunlight, like Sam saw the Elves in Lórien. He was, and is, and will be still, and the sprawling city behind us and around us seemed no more than an anachronistic nightmare of concrete, smog, and glass. He was beautiful. And terrible. He was perfection, and he was madness. Not Aslan, no; he was not a God. But he was immortal and amoral, and in the innocence of his hands and heart he could do much that we would say was wrong. He could die, and be killed, yes; but he could not sin. And that's what made him so damned fucking dangerous. Because you could follow him—anyone would follow him—worship him, even, unquestioningly, blindly, obediently, and would take his words and his face for those of a God.
…and I nearly did.
I touched him, trembling. The tips of his white hair, the translucent skin of his face, felt the flash of his throat against my fingers as he breathed.
"You're real," I whispered. "You're really, really real." I held him, then. Felt the echo of his eternal heart in my ears, wiping streaming tears and snot against the silk of his skin and his majestic mane.
Unicorns are for beginnings, Schmendrick said, for innocence and purity, for newness. Unicorns are for young girls. But that's not true at all. I was old, ugly, I'd lost my innocence and my virginity a long, long time ago. I'd become brittle and bitter, I'd hurt the people I loved, I'd given up and given in to despair. If you believed unicorns were only for the good and virtuous, you would cease to believe in them at all. And perhaps, but only perhaps, that is why they faded and linger here no more. The truth is that unicorns are for the people who want them, and I had been waiting for a long, long time.
He wasn't Fëanáro, wasn't Alatáriel, wasn't Elu Thingol or even Thranduil. He was an Elf in exile, sundered from his time and kin, a Sinda born in the later days after Beleriand had fallen and Angband was no more, bereft of the glory and splendor of the Eldar in the Elder days, and his burning eyes had never yet beheld the light of the two trees, even encased in the Silmarils. Of all the Elves that ever were he was the least, the lowly, and the last.
But he was here. He was real. And for me, at least, he was Enough.