I've been wanting a new ref for Aja lately. His old one is great, but it's not.. "cute".
This one? HHHhhh my heart. I wanna snuggle and kiss him and sleep in his tail fluff.

Aja is a spirit originating from a forest. He's kind and playful, but he has an.. odd sense of morals. He sees people as part of the food chain, but still respects them. So if he's hungry and he sees someone, he'll ask them if he can eat them.
Typically, they'll say "No thank you", perhaps a bit more forcefully/fearful/confused than that though. At this point, Aja will typically resort to trying to trick them into giving consent. He'll never outright lie, but he'll use deceptive wording, such as "I can take you to a warm place to stay the night, if you'd like."
If he manages to get "consent", that's that. He'll devour them without mercy, as he doesn't believe in take-backsies.
Once he's digested their body, he'll keep their soul and ask them if he can digest that too. If they say "No", he'll simply send them to his personal pocket dimension for safe keeping.. it's nice enough, there. A beautiful forest, representing Aja himself. Aja is aware of all that goes on in it and is effectively omnipotent, but he can't read the minds of the people inside or control them, just the environment. He can even choose to appear inside it if he wishes. He usually uses this ability to keep his prey company, idly whittling down their sense of self preservation until they agree to let him digest them completely.
Once he gets consent again, he'll begin digesting their soul, but typically tries to fool their senses into believing they're still in the forest as a mercy. For better or worse, this doesn't work perfectly. The more the soul is digested, the harder it is for Aja to keep their senses fooled. The dreamy forest seems to burn away as the soul's vision flicks between what Aja wants it to see, and the grim reality it is in until finally settling into the latter.
See a 3 part series about it here!

Amazing, adorable art by  muky-cuddly!

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