Veeeeery loosely based on a prompt I received from jesussavedevenme. Inspired by it. I may make this into another ficlet series and, if so, may work the actual prompt itself into the story somewhere. We'll see how this goes. (Thank you for the idea! I hope you like this!)

Bracken woke up in a sudden way, his shoulders jerking to the side and his eyes flying open. He looked around wildly, his thoughts disoriented, trying to decipher what had happened and where he was.

Ah. Right.

Prison.

His breathing gradually slowed down as he leaned back into his cot once more. He placed a hand over his eyes and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

That girl. He'd dreamt about that girl again.

He wasn't exactly sure when she'd first appeared in his dreams, but for whatever reason she'd been a reoccurring feature for the past several weeks at least. Often it was the same dream - she'd hold his hand and tell him to go back to sleep, then reassure him that she wasn't going anywhere. He would succumb to her words and calming emotions, and his dream would naturally shift to something he wouldn't remember upon waking up. But the image of her always stuck with him.

Occasionally she'd appear in a different scenario. When she did, he'd simply catch glimpses of moments - quick, passing ones - and he would catch random snippets of conversations which would blur together so badly that he often could only make out a word or two at a time. He'd seen her smiling in a beautiful garden surrounded by fairies. Witnessed her walking around with her brow furrowed, apparently worried about something. Watched her descend upon an unseen enemy with a blazing sword in her hand.

This time, she had been crying and was clearly in visible distress. She was at Wyrmroost of all places - he'd recognized Blackwell Keep in the background, the familiarity of which made this particular dream seem even more intense - and the only word he could make out was his own name being repeated over and over again with varying degrees of emotion and an overwhelming sense of sadness in accompaniment.

His arms had ached as he'd felt compelled to comfort her… but why?He didn't even know her name.

Who was she? And why had she been haunting his dreams? He was positive that he would have remembered meeting her in person. She was clearly fairykind from the aura which surrounded her in his dreams, and his mother hadn't selected a handmaiden in centuries. The previous fairykind human had been an older woman as well, with children of her own, and this girl was quite young.

No. He definitely hadn't met her before.

Prophecy, perhaps?

Bracken threw that thought out of the proverbial window. He had no horns and, even when he'd possessed all three, he'd never experienced prophetic dreams before. That was more his mother's area of expertise.

Maybe a new talent surfacing?

Again, he pushed the idea aside. He had no horns. No one had ever heard of a hornless unicorn who was able to perform such intricate magic, especially subconsciously. It wasn't a possibility.

So who was she?