Unity Kinkaid
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Unity Kinkaid is a fictional character from Neil Gaiman's comic book series, The Sandman.
Unity first appears as one of the victims of the sleepy sickness that follows Morpheus' capture in the first collection of issues in the series, Preludes and Nocturnes. Following his capture, she sleeps until he escapes. While asleep, she becomes pregnant and gives birth to a daughter, known as Miranda Walker. It later transpires that the father of this child was Desire. Unity was supposed to be a 'vortex of Dream', a special entity that appears only very rarely, with the ability to connect the dreams of other beings, a dangerously destructive ability. The only time Morpheus is allowed to take a human life is to kill a vortex. Desire's intervention confuses the issue, and eventually Unity's granddaughter, Rose Walker, becomes the vortex. Desire does this so that Dream will be forced to kill a person of family blood, thus bringing down the vengeance of the Furies on him. Just before Morpheus can kill her, Unity appears as she is dying, explaining that she should have been the vortex, and asks for Rose's heart. The heart is a glass one, an important symbol in the series (particularly in the second collection, The Doll's House). Unity becomes the vortex, and dies.
Unity is of medium height, with reddish-brown hair that she wears long and loose in the self-image she uses in the final dream-meeting between herself, Rose and Morpheus; as the old woman we meet at the start of The Doll's House, she has grey hair and wears a curiously old-fashioned dress. She seems kind, and smiles a lot.