Tag: fairy tales lore

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If the wings dried out, it would be uncomfortable at the very least for the sprite. Painful, if it got bad enough. The wings are very sensitive to the air around them, so if they were dry and more brittle than normal then the poor sprite would be very sore. Of course, not being able to photosynthesize as efficiently would be a side effect, leading to fatigue and other related conditions that would make life harder for them.

As for Bowman’s fussing about his wings, he tends to go above and beyond what’s strictly needed. He might be willowy and lean, but he’s technically an athlete by their standards, so he keeps his wings stretched and fit. He preens regularly to massage the overworked joints, and he takes every opportunity to put them to use.

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( Lots of good questions, as all of them have been, in truth. However, I think we are getting a tad bit off topic, seeing as all of this sprite lore is from my original work. I think any future questions on this track should go through my writing blog, and any more questions relating to just my sprite lore without relations to Brothers Apart will be posted there. )

I sure did forget a thing. Unacceptable.

It’s also a hard question. I will stick to wood sprites for now, since my other sprites don’t necessarily fly the same way (some can’t fly at all). Wood sprites don’t have a set “style” of flying. Their wings are very bat like, so they can wheel around like bats if they want to, but they can also glide along pretty skillfully, too. They can dive like hawks or flit like sparrows.

Baby wood sprites do not become lactose intolerant after they’re weaned, but that’s not because they have a supply of the stuff in their diet. This comes back to the wood sprite metabolism question, and the fact that they can process so many things. They could digest cheese, for example, even if they’ve never had it before.

In Wellwood, they don’t eat eggs, but there are plenty of wood sprite communities out there that would happily gather eggs to eat, assuming they can sneak up without the parent birds noticing.

They’d really like cotton candy and they’d be zipping all over the place on so much unfettered sugar.

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Fruit sugars are much better for them.

(Art by the wonderfully talented @mogadeer )

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(Sassy, when this one came in, nightmares saw it first and sent me a message telling me I’d like these questions. And I do. These are the best questions.)

The answer is YES. It’s one of the skills that is so fun to consider with my little babies.

They can feel changes in the air pressure, sometimes even to the point of knowing the weather is shifting. Bowman Leafwing happens to be one of the best wood sprites out there who can utilize that acute sense to the fullest. It happens once in his canon story, Bowman of Wellwood, though I haven’t found many opportunities to slip it into the AU stuff yet that I recall. Bowman, if he’s concentrating, can feel the shifts in the air around a hand grabbing at him, and he can use those shifts to duck around a grab and avoid getting caught; it’s a tough trick considering how fast humans are, but he’s done it before.

And yes, that skill is also used for dodging around things and avoiding crashes, especially for the daring ones that fly in the dark. Bowman’s uncle, Larxe Maelstrom, also taught him how to use that in heavy wind situations, so he can still fly steadily in really strong gusts where unpracticed sprites might not be able to.

Make no mistake, despite his willowy frame, Bowman can be considered a top-tier athlete among wood sprites for his aerial acrobatics.

The wings are mostly bat-like, yes, but there’s also the leafy aspect to them (not that the leafiness changes much as far as flight goes). They extend down to about their mid backs, and most of their clothing has slits up the back to accommodate them. This is the reason for the scarf around the waist that Bowman wears. Without it, that middle flap of his shirt could wave about in the wind and it would be distracting as well as a drag to his flight speed.

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Art commissioned from QuackGhost on Deviantart.

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(Well, Sassy, at least it gives me excuses to infodump about my lore)

This is many questions, I’ll just answer ‘em right in order.

1. For really bad inclement weather, wood sprites wouldn’t go outside, no. They’d bunker down inside their homes and make the best of things … they could find a container around if that was needed.

To keep themselves warm, most of the time they will snuggle together in a group (in Brothers Asunder, young Sam most definitely did grow up knowing of these snuggle piles). Wood sprites also know a few Prayers to help them out in such weather. They can Pray for magic that brings heat through the living tree all around them, and prevent them from freezing in their li’l cuddle piles.

2. Newborns and young babies do use cloth diapers, yes.

Fun fact about baby wood spites (hey, I warned about the infodump): When they are born, their wings are not fully developed. Instead, they have little leaf buds on their backs (which I’m sure their mothers are thankful for, no one wants to birth a set of fully developed wings). These leaf buds stay curled for the first few years of the young sprite’s life, developing into full wings with the help of sunlight. When they are four or five, the buds have reached a thickness of around twice what they were born with, and they start to uncurl. At that point, all flutters break loose as the nestlings learn to deal with the very sensitive nerves that are now exposed to the air.

3.  They wash their clothes with water. No, really. Just water. Stones in the stream can be used for scrubbing if needed, but honestly they don’t often need it. Groundwater in Wellwood happens to be extra pure (for reasons), so the stream is extra A-OK to use for cleaning.

4.  Correct. Wood sprites are very lax and don’t tend to be super inventive on their own, and usually they don’t need to be. “Necessity is the mother of invention” and all that.

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Wowie. I’m just. Good grief.

I had to take a second to be intrigued/entertained by the “bathroom problem” terminology. A bathroom is not an inherent thing that all sentient people can be assumed to have. And, though we try to ignore the subject in polite conversation, organisms produce waste in natural processes. They need not be a problem for anyone.

I understand what you meant, though, so hopefully I can explain adequately without offending any sensibilities.

The wood sprites have stairs on their trees. They generally use those or simply glide down from their home branches to an area outside the main thoroughfare of the village. There, they can dig a small trench, do their business, cover it, and be on their way (a stop by the stream to wash off certainly wouldn’t be amiss, but they have water basins in their homes, too). This is not so different from what humans generally do if there’s not a bathroom available. Sadly, we haven’t always had indoor plumbing.

That’s how it’s done in Wellwood. There are some wood sprite communities out there that might keep a sort of “outhouse” structure on their home trees for households to share. It’s a bucket of dirt in a closed room that gets refreshed every so often. Five stars.

As far as potential “emergencies” go (Spirit save me), I’ll add that gastrointestinal issues among wood sprites are astronomically rare. Their metabolisms are incredibly efficient and robust, and honestly they can be like tiny living compost bins. They are able to digest many things that other mammals can’t (sugars like cellulose, which humans can’t digest), making their lives much easier in times of scarcity (they are literally surrounded by cellulose). Conveniently, it means they can control things like their regularity with greater ease. They also don’t vomit involuntarily, the lucky little guys.

Faster metabolism does mean that chemicals like alcohol and caffeine get distributed very quickly. Bowman got hyper very fast in Lich because of this. In his canon, you can see in Bowman of Wellwood that a few drinks of beer made him wobbly, much to his chagrin. Drunken sprite. They’re all lightweights.

I digress, anon.

In short, the “bathroom problem” isn’t truly a problem (and nor does it have much to do with an actual bathroom). But, I mean, kudos for thinking to ask the awkward questions. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever have to go through answering that, but one big block of uncertainty has been removed from my life. Thanks, you’re a peach.