The Princess Who Married a Dream

A princess began having the same vivid dream night after night: a handsome, kind-eyed prince from a distant land, whom she spoke with, laughed with, and grew to love entirely within the dream itself, though she had never once met such a man while awake.

She refused every real suitor her father brought before her, insisting none compared to the man from her dream, until the exasperated king, fearing his daughter had lost her senses entirely, summoned wise men from across the kingdom to explain the strange affliction.

An old traveling sage finally offered a different explanation: some dreams, he said, are not fantasies invented by a sleeping mind, but true glimpses across great distance of someone real, whose own spirit reaches out in sleep just as hers did. He suggested she describe the prince in exact detail — his birthmark, his manner of speech, the particular design of a ring he wore — details later confirmed, astonishingly, to match a real prince in a kingdom she had never visited. Messengers were sent, the connection confirmed on both sides through matching dreams shared by each, and the two who had somehow found each other across the boundary of sleep were finally married in the waking world as well.