Mothmothers

Mothmothers are a type of creature that many species, including other fey, will avoid. Their presence is a death sentence, though not in a physical sense. Grotesque and somber, no one knows how they came to be.   From a distance, mothmothers look like tall, willowy women dressed in luminescent silk. Their heads are cocked at odd angles, as if they're listening to something far away. Their forms shift and pulsate, fracturing into swarms of ghostly moths when approached. They're a living illusion that's struggling to maintain itself. If seen, a mothmother's eyes are wide and white like the moon. Their wings, if they choose to have them, are paper-thin and marked with the runes of a forgotten language.   They wander the least stable lands of the Feywild, such as places where the plane folds over itself or where paths stretch everywhere and nowhere. They don't consume the flesh of living creatures but feast on their memories instead. Every step they take erases the memory of something or someone in their presence. They can erase the memories of places they've walked, making fields forget that they were ever green and rivers that reflected starlight flow dark forever after they pass by.   No one willingly seeks a mothmother. Encounters happen accidentally when someone follows a strange light through the fog or hears the hum of her swarming body. They collect lost things, including children and thoughts, which they tuck into their living robes to keep safe. In rare instances, they'll claim lost souls, adding them to their hoards. Mothmothers are neither kind nor cruel. They're apathetic to the affairs of others and keep to themselves. They're mostly solitary creatures and are drawn to bright auras.   Even powerful beings, like archfey, fear mothmothers. A single meeting could cost them their sense of self. A mothmother's presence shatters identities and unravels the threads of what was. It's not an intentional act of harm; it's merely a consequence of their existence. While they'll eat any memory they can reach, they crave the memories that others can't bear to forget.   Some suspect that mothmothers were once mortal witches who sought occult knowledge that they couldn't comprehend. Their minds splintered and witnessed too many threads of the universe's tapestry at once. Their bodies died in the process, but their souls were scattered across these threads, cursing them to live with their madness for an eternity. Others believe that mothmothers were simply fey who lost their memories and now hunger for what isn't theirs to fill the void.   In old Seelie texts, mothmothers are known as umbral lepidarae, suggesting that they were prevalent enough to warrant research. Their numbers have dwindled for a multitude of reasons, including being killed by the Wild Hunt.