Turns out some incubi or succubi do just as well - if not better - on platonic love than sexual.
Cue making covert bargains with children - the ‘cubi take the form of a stuffed toy, often creeping into the toy pile before the child can even walk, and become a beloved item. In return they keep the child safe from any other creepy crawlies that might be lurking. Some take up residence in nurseries and schools, the softest, best calm-down toys ever.
Most never reveal that they can move or talk, let alone their other forms and nature. They simply leave quietly once their child no longer needs or feeds them and are dismissed as one more lost toy.
[AN: What most people don’t know about ‘cubi is that succubi and incubi are two sides of the same… supernatural entity. The succubi steals from a penis-having human to become and incubi and thus curse the uterus-owners. I’m a writer. I research this shit for fun.]
Ze called hirself Muffin, ever since hir assignment to corrupt a pre-pubescent child had ended in a pleasant surprise. There was more to pseudo life than stealing souls. There was… love. Muffin never forgot hir first child. Max had woken that night in tears and terror, before Muffin could ever get to him, and grabbed the first soft thing his blindly groping hands could find.
Max had grabbed Muffin, who was masquerading as a velveteen dog at the time. Ze had been shocked at hir first contact with love. It was like… being drenched in a warmth that was completely unlike the familiar fires of hades.
It was so…
Gentle.
And yet it burned the hell right out of hir.
And Muffin whispered the words that would serve hir well for the rest of eternity.
“I’ll protect you from the things that bump in the night, until you no longer need me.”
Initially, Muffin allowed hirself to be passed along, but the wear and tear of love on a plush body meant years hidden away in storage. Years in hunger… waiting… and fighting the temptation to resume hir older ways.
Those were not good years.
So Muffin de-corporealised and went roaming. There were always new children. They were always afraid of the dark.
Ze always took the form of a toy dog. Always a little bit loved, but not dirty or beaten. Always overlooked, in the hands of hir new, infant charge. And if ze was noticed by the adults, the conversation went a little like this:
“Where did we get that stuffed dog toy?”
“I forget, really. But [CHILD] loves it so much.”
And, once in a great long while, Muffin would protect hir children from the real dangers in the world. The people who, like fleshy ‘cubi, lived to shatter the innocence of a child and called it love. Muffin could sniff them out. Warn her charges in a voice only they could hear.
And one night… ze attacked. Bit off the offending hand. Gouged out the lusting eyes. Removed the offending genetalia.
That child’s name was Twyla.
They found her, hiding in the closet, with her best toy, Muffin. Crying, still. And they couldn’t get any more information out of her about what happened to her ‘bad uncle’.
All she would say was, “Uncle Paul came to do the bad touch and Muffin turneded into a real live wolf and ripped him up. But Muffin’s a good dog. She pertecks me.”
Hardly anyone noticed that Muffin’s muzzle and paws were stained with the bad uncle’s blood.
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