Chapter Text
Most children (even korrigan children) do not remember their dreams at a year old. However, most children, even korrigans, don’t usually have prophetic dreams.
And, as you’d have it, prophetic dreams tend to be remembered.
Kassandra could recall snippets of the dream - images of her with bright blue hair and a big, toothy smile. The gills on the side of her neck were in the open, something she didn’t currently do. She wore a black dress with a kaleidoscope of colors, and she looked happy. The man she had bumped into was brown haired with colored tips, and he brought her happiness and comfort and safety, and the finality of belonging.
(Of course, at a year old, she didn’t notice all of this. She just knew the feelings the dream emanated safety and happiness, and she wanted more of it.)
Kassandra didn’t have much time to dwell on the dream, the first time she had it. The next morning, she had sung her siren song, and her parents had quickly realized their biological child had been switched with a korrigan - a species that was a mixture of changelings and sirens - and contacted the closest magical academy that dealt with creatures like her.
Within a week, Kassandra had gone from a home with parents, to a sprawling campus of teachers, students, and a sentient academy that only seemed to listen to her. The next decade of her life entailed befriending students and sucking up to teachers, exploring the academy with a light touch that made it known she respected the walls and the magic within them.
Kass grew up loved by teachers as their adopted daughter, by students as their little sister, and by the academy as it’s child. It was at first considered that the academy would employ her as at first a teacher’s assistant, and then as a staff member later on - but then she whispered her dreams to the rocks of her secret hiding place, and suddenly the headmistress knew, and all the teachers knew, and she had a million adults who shoved books into her arms and told her, “we have a job for you.”
The books detailed abilities of things she knew as instinct, suddenly laid into words - predictions and visions and prophecy, siren song and charmspeak, shapeshifting and how korrigans’ appearances fall away to red eyes and white hair when they use their powers.
She was suddenly allowed to attend history and magic classes and classes catered to educate about changelings and sirens (and korrigans, once that subject was added, at her pleading), and then came her first winter solstice; the head mistress sat her down and showed her a book of Oracles, and of the omens they spoke of - of disasters brought and foiled because the heroes heard the prophecies. Kassandra was told that her affinity for prophecies made her special, and then the head mistress revealed the most wonderful outfit, full of jewels and gold and shininess, and Kass was too hurried in putting it on to hear the grim reminder that accepting gold would mean that she was in a magical contract with the academy.
But, of course, Kassandra was ten years old, and frankly didn’t give a shit. The academy was her home, and it’s inhabitants were her family, and if she was connected to it in yet another way through a magical contract - fantastic.
That night, after the exhausting winter solstice, Kass had the dream once more, and it was no longer an unfamiliar dream. But this time, it was more vivid than ever before, as if being in the academy walls, and connected to it in an official, magical way, gave her strength.
(The open window with moonlight streaming in on her sleeping body may have also helped quite a bit.)
She saw the color of his eyes - red like the rubies that had been on the Oracle wear. She could hear how his feet landed on the stone bricks below, how his eyes lit up with mischief as soon as he saw her, how he looked around 17 or 18 (I’ll meet him when he’s new to the academy, she thought with a grin. I can teach him about the school!) and the sound of his voice when he said, “Sorry Kass, I tripped! Who could have seen that coming?”
Kassandra woke with a lightness in her heart and a pep in her step. She wore a smile all day, which led to teachers and students scrambling as soon as she passed, wondering what prank she had pulled today.
It was another few months before she noticed anything meaningful in the recurring dream, this time after a solar eclipse festival, and she had fallen asleep before she had even taken off her Oracle wear. Her hair had gone pure white and her eyes had gone red when she had predicted a prophecy that evening, and it had taken a lot out of her, especially having to charmspeak the entire crowd and create illusions of what the prophecy foretold. She’d collapsed on stage, barely awakening as her favorite teacher brought her up to her bed, and fallen back asleep to be greeted by the sight of Kaiden.
The next morning, she spent the entire day in the lake, gathering rejuvenating energy from the water; now that she knew his name, she knew, somewhere inside, that she’d see him soon.
Kass no longer was allowed to leave school grounds, with her magical contract to the school, and so she asked one of the beauty-inclined angels to aid her in cutting her hair, having had it grown during prophecy-telling. The angel was more than willing, cutting it from just beyond her thighs to the middle of her back.
She tied it up in big pigtails, and with a concentrated focus, turned them bright blue - just like she had seen in her dream. They grew a little bit, with the use of her shapeshifting, and she had to wait a few minutes before her eyes turned back to green and her skin gained its color back, but with a twirl in front of the mirror, she knew that today was the day.
The sun was out and shining, and Kass watched from the window as Orientation Day banners waved, student leaders helping out the new students, people socializing and meeting new people - it was only when she noticed her eyes slowly turning red in the window’s reflection that she knew it was almost time.
The Academy aided her as she jumped down bannisters and weaved through secret hallways, slamming a button with her palm to open up a wall, and sliding out just in time to hear footsteps.
This is it.
Other students were in the hall, but only the new ones paid her any notice, and she paid them none; all she could focus on was the footsteps she could faintly hear.
10.
Her second dream she had of him, she realized he was wearing an academy uniform, haplessly tugged over a white collared undershirt.
9.
In her fifth dream, she had noticed her bright blue hair in pigtails, which bounced as she talked to him in words she couldn’t quite hear.
8.
Her sixth dream of the encounter, she figured out the exact place they had met, and led the interior designers on exactly where to place what.
7.
The ninth time she woke up from the dream, she had realized it would be years before they met, and she had begun to sob, filled with a loneliness she could barely bear.
6.
After noticing she was down, the head mistress called her into the office, and unlocked a cabinet (that, for as long as Kass could remember, had always been locked). Inside the cabinet were drawings upon drawings of the man in her dream, and scribbled journal entries of a child who could barely write. The next few days, it gave Kass something to do, going through all the drawings and writings and redrawing and rewriting, creating an updated memory of the man in her dream. She’d never forget the dream, but it was nice having reminders of it to hang in her room.
5.
It’s funny. Despite hundreds of the same dream, she never got tired of it. Every time she awoke from the dream, she felt like she remembered it a little bit better than the last time, and that made her incredibly happy.
4.
Life in the academy had never quite been lonely, per se, with all the teachers practically being foster parents, with all the students (or, a lot of them) willing to tolerate and talk to her, with the academy always helping her safely explore - she was never alone or afraid, always safe and loved, but somehow, she knew, that once the dream had come true - things would be better. Her life would be better. She’d be happier.
3.
Despite having the dream hundreds of times, and knowing exactly how the encounter would go, Kass was terrified. It was like a script only she knew, and she was terrified of forgetting it, of messing up.
2.
What if Kaiden hated her? What if he thought she was an annoying little girl?
1.
Her heart beat loudly in her chest, and the burn of tears behind her eyes began, about to bring on tears when…
He appeared.
Kaiden stumbled as he landed in front of her. His eyes were the same ruby red as hers, but their skin wasn’t turning white, their hair not losing color - she met eyes with him and realized, fuck, yeah, that was who she’d always been waiting for. Not in a romantic way, but in a familial way- this was her other half that she’d been missing.
She moved in the same way she had moved in her dream, tilting her head as she looked up at him. He rubbed his head, nervously grinning.
“Sorry Kass,” She could almost mouth along with him to this internal script of theirs, this encounter that they had both known about for over a decade, “I tripped! Who would have seen this coming?”
At the implication of their powers, as well as the little gesture of sticking his tongue out at her, she lost it. Doubled over laughing, Kass could feel all of her nausea and worry swept away with gratitude and glee, filling her up with the same feeling she felt after a swim in the lake and a night under the moon - rejuvenated, powerful, safe. “Looks like you need to be more careful, Kaiden!” She barely managed to get out, finally looking back up to him, still giggling. Saying his name was wonderful. “Can’t have you embarrassing yourself in front of the newcomers!”
It was everything she could have hoped for, and even more than that.
(Later, Kaiden showed her how to turn into their animal form - and in a split second, she stood on all fours, with glowing red eyes and dyed blue ears, the color having passed over from her humanoid form’s hair. She took one look at the golden retriever that was Kaiden, and they spent the next hour playing and running around the grounds together, and then the rest of the day, the students wondered why a wolf was following the new Korrigan student around.
When Kass went to bed that night, she was tuckered out...but as the academy walls quietly sang to her in that way only she could understand (and Kaiden eventually would as well), she fell asleep with giddiness that filled her mind. While she dreamed of a bright future where she finally felt like she had a home with someone, Kass knew, without a doubt, that Kaiden was her brother, in everything but blood.)