Everything you need to understand or teach Julie's Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle.
Julie and Farrell are, by themselves, odd enough. They are aging, old, once-close acquaintances, who manage to pick up their relationship where they dropped it several years earlier. A bizarre marriage for Julie and even more bizarre wanderings for Farrell have intervened. Julie is an artist who earns money by doing word processing for clients, and she can work magic spells that she learned from her grandmother; she can be impulsive that way...