The Story of Lillia
Lillia was born from the Dreaming Tree — an ancient magical tree in Ionia's most sacred forests, connected to the realm of dreams in ways that predate recorded history. The tree had long nurtured the dreams of sleeping Ionians, collecting their aspirations and wishes in blossoms that bloomed in the dream realm. Lillia emerged from one of those blossoms: a fae fawn who carries the accumulated dreams she's collected and desperately wants to share them.
The problem is that Lillia is intensely, painfully shy. She wants connection more than anything — she is literally made of other people's wishes, and she feels the weight of those wishes pressing against her need to fulfill them. But the moment she encounters a human, her courage evaporates. She's better in the forest, better in the moments before people wake, better in the dream spaces between sleeping and waking where her nature gives her confidence.
She wanders Ionia at night, collecting dreams from those who sleep, trying to understand what people want badly enough to dream about. She's observed humanity far more than she's participated in it, which makes her simultaneously wise and naively inexperienced — she knows what people want, but not always how to navigate what people do. Her quest is to find the Great Dreamer, the being she believes is causing the nightmares that have infected Ionia's forests. Finding it requires getting over herself enough to ask for help.