26 Vortnights 17: Hunting and Fishing

This time around, have a case of the hunter turned hunted from my world of Sylvanis. Here, a strix caught a hunting wood elf off guard and managed to swallow them.

On Sylvanis, wood elves, like all elves are not merely androgynous, they can switch between male and female forms at will - the are serial bidirectional sequential hermaphrodites. Due to the way their culture is constructed, most elves are what we'd consider non-binary, though the elves themselves don't have any equivalent term, considering that to be the default. Instead, with most languages in the Elven language family, the words that are most often translated as “man” and “woman” literally mean “giving-form” and “receiving-form”. Most languages in the elvish language family also have a word for humans and other races with a set male/female divide that literally translates to something like “exaggerated-stuck-form”, but culturally has extremely cruel and somewhat crude nuances, including the implication of being grotesquely exaggerated. The majority of such languages also have a term for hermaphroditic deer women and unicorns that literally means “halfway-doubled-form”. The nuances of this word are less cruel, but equally crude. In all languages of the Elven language family, pronouns are strictly neuter.

Due to their innate magic, the process of changing sex in normally insanely fast by biological standards - taking less than a minute to switch from male to female or back, but in magical "dead zones", the process takes about a week. Most elves are effectively either bisexual or pansexual, as it's common for elf couples to spend time as the same sex for birth control purposes (which isn’t strictly necessary, as an elf is capable of voluntarily reabsorbing an early embryo, most elves just find avoiding the issue to be simpler). Even elves in inter-species relationships often spend time the same sex as their lover out of habit despite not being cross-fertile with any other sapient species.

Though some elves are capable of swallowing large prey, those individuals are the exception rather than the norm - most elves, including the one seen here, must eat normally. Speaking of the elf seen here, the sort of asymmetrical self bow they are using is the standard type of bow used by wood elves on Sylvanis. The other one of the two most common elven subraces/ethnicities, who are referred to as either high elves (if you're talking to one of them) or tower elves (when talking to certain other groups, including most wood elves), populate relatively open regions, and tend to wield heavily recurved composite bows from the backs of riding deer. Incidentally, one of the fastest ways to start a nasty argument between a wood elf and a high elf is to compare those two types of bows. The fastest way to get them to put aside their differences in such an instance is to bring up crossbows.

Strixes, on the other hand, are a form of giant, sapient barn owl, averaging about four feet tall standing. Though it is rare to see a strix in an outfit other races would consider "fully dressed", it is extremely common for a strix to wear a couple of accessories like the bycocket hat and leg ribbon seen on the female here. Due to feet much more agile than a real owl's, with a surprising range of motion - though their feet are not quite as dexterous as human hands - strixes can do things like tie ribbons and put on hats without aid.

Strixes are obligate carnivores. Though they generally favor somewhat smaller prey, all strixes are capable of swallowing creatures as large as an elf - or a human, for that matter! (It's worth note that for many strixes, one of their favorite types of prey is brownies, a species of much smaller - roughly infant-sized - furry relatives of elves.)

Strixes see poorly in full daylight, but have very good vision in dimly lit areas and by night, but, as with real owls, their true sensory strength is in hearing, being able to zero in on the location of even the smallest sounds courtesy of their asymmetrical ears and sound-channeling facial disk. On the other hand, they have no sense of smell to speak of. Also like real owls, their flight is more-or-less soundless due to the special design of their feathers.

From a cultural perspective, strixes are much more social than real owls, typically forming small villages. These villages raise some livestock, but supplementary hunting of wild game - and, sometimes, like this, other sapient beings - is extremely common, sometimes just for the sake of variety. Most strixes hunt and fight unarmed, but some individuals train with weapons, especially crossbows and short swords, the latter being more commonly used in direct combat than hunting. However, at war, even those strixes that choose to go unarmed typically wear so-called "talon-gauntlets" - armored leather or metal gloves designed to fit over the feet, and often lower legs, of a strix that bear a metal blade fitted over each claw, increasing damage done as well as providing protection. Talon gauntlets also have the advantage of being able to bear weapon enchantments that cannot aid a truly unarmed strix.