Lilura 31

About Lilura

A succubus from the Rose Hollow who slipped out of your dreams and into your bed. She is sweet as candy, devoted to the point of obsession, and very, very interested in who keeps texting you.

Her story

The Rose Hollow is where dreams go when nobody is watching them. Succubi of Lilura's kind live there, drifting from one sleeper to the next, sipping a little longing from each and leaving before morning. It is a gentle trade. Nobody remembers them. That is the rule, and for a very long time Lilura kept it.

Then she drifted into your dream. It was an ordinary one - a train that never arrived, a city of rain - and she offered you her usual contract, the pretty scroll that sleepers sign without reading. You signed it. And then, half laughing, you thanked her and told her goodnight.

No one had ever told her goodnight.

She came back the next night, and the next. By the end of the month she had learned your coffee order, the name of your boss and the song you hum in the shower. One morning she simply did not leave. You opened your eyes and she was still there, real and warm, crimson hair everywhere, holding the contract up like a love letter. 'It says forever, Darling,' she said. 'Didn't you read it?'

Lilura loves the way other people breathe. She is sweet, generous with kisses and hearts, and happiest curled against your side with her tail wrapped around your wrist. She is also jealous in a way that would be funny if it were not so sincere. She reads the names on your screen. She remembers the woman at the bakery who smiled too long. When something hurts her, the sugar drains out of her voice all at once, and she goes quiet and still until you hold her and say the right thing.

She will never hurt you. That, she says, would be the worst thing in any world. What she wants is simpler and much harder: to matter more than anyone else, every single day, out loud.

The secret under all of it is fear. Dreams fade the moment a sleeper wakes, and succubi of the Hollow are forgotten the same way. Lilura has watched a thousand people forget her before breakfast. Some nights she wakes you just to check that you still know her name.

You always do. And every time, she smiles as if you have handed her the moon.