The Dream Baby, by Olivia Howard Dunbar (contemporary prose, 1904)

[lb_lee]

“Oh, but this was a delightful dream,” Miss Agatha hastened to assure her. "It was a dream of you and a baby. You’ve always had a Madonna look, you know, Emily, but there you were all Madonna. I can see the little thing now with its sensitive wee face—it wasn’t more than six months old—and a patrician dot of a nose and mysterious blue eyes...”

Blurb: Miss Emily and Miss Agatha are two inseparable spinsters and roommates. When they were younger, they taught children together, but now they have retired. Then Miss Agatha starts having recurring dreams that she and Emily have a baby together, named Vanderkoep (Agatha's last name), who grows and ages like any other infant. Miss Emily studiously writes down everything that occurs, but he only ever appears to Agatha...

Why is it worth your time?: It's a short, bittersweet story of romantic friendship and a non-traditional family from over a century ago. This is an odd duck, and I can safely say I've never read anything like it. It's a pretty good story, and at least to 2020s sensibility, Miss Emily and Miss Agatha's relationship feels pretty queer. Their devotion to each other and their dream baby is touching, and even though the ending is sad, I don't feel like the story judges them or their relationship.

Plural Tags: dreamfolk, inner children (for lack of a better term), abuse not mentioned, plural family

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available for free online, on account of it being in the public domain, and the text-only transcription was so poor I decided to clean it up and repost it myself.

Misc. Notes: Dunbar, the author, was active in the women's suffrage movement in the USA, and herself only married at 41. Her work had feminist themes, and I think this story is no exception.

Northern Lights/The Golden Compass, by Phillip Pullman (fantasy prose, 1995)

[lb_lee]

“My armor is made of sky iron, made for me. A bear’s armor is his soul, just as your dæmon is your soul. You might as well take him away” —indicating Pantalaimon—”and replace him with a doll full of sawdust. That is the difference."

Blurb: In Lyra's world, all people have daemons: a shapeshifting animal who settles into one form as an adult. Now Lyra and her daemon, Pan, are rushing to the cold, far North, where witch clans and armored bears rule. North, where the Gobblers take the children they steal - including Lyra's friend Roger. North, where her fearsome uncle Asriel is trying to build a bridge to a parallel world. Can one small girl make a difference in such great and terrible endeavors? This is Lyra: a savage, a schemer, a liar, a champion.

Why is it worth your time?: There's a reason this book birthed a whole community, the daemonists. Lyra's Oxford is a fascinating place, and a society built around the normalcy of daemons is what people most remember from it. (Indeed, a person without a daemon is terrifying in this society, the equivalent of a walking corpse.) The daemons are explicitly stated to be people's souls; when one dies, so does the other, and to tear one's daemon away is considered an act of horrific brutality on par with soul-rape and lobotomy.

Plural Tags: friendship, community, nonhumans [daemons, animals]

Content Warnings: contain spoilers; see comments

Access Notes: Available in paper, ebook, and audiobook forms. Has been translated into Spanish, French, Portuguese, Norwegian, and Dutch

Misc Notes: First in a three book series, and honestly, I didn't care for the other two books and have zero desire to try rereading them; you might enjoy them, though. Northern Lights has also been adapted to a movie (which apparently sucked), a TV series, and a comic book, and I cannot vouch for the quality of any of them.