Bird shifter

**Bird shifters** are a kind of shifter who can change into birds. The most common bird shifters in *the Fae Tales Verse* are swan shifters.

## Physical Description

There are many different species of bird shifters, with different appearances, though most in canon have wings of some kind, or otherwise seem to have feathers even in their fully human-forms. Gulvi Dubna Vajat and Julvia Dubna Vajat typically wander around in their hybrid-forms, so that their wings are at their backs, though Julvia has changed into her fully human-form, where her swan wings were removable. The Raven Prince has raven feathers as/in his hair. At least some bird shifters can appear in their animal forms.

According to Augus Each Uisge, bird shifters 'did not often smile at anyone with anything but their eyes.'

## Abilities

Seabird shifters have weather shifting abilities. Swan-maidens can control wind currents, as well as fly.

Swan shifters - or at least swan maidens - can give their hearts to those they deeply care for. This can cause an upswell in power for the swan shifter in question, even when the act is not fully complete. It also makes leaving the presence of the person with the swan shifter's heart incredibly painful for the swan shifter, and the swan shifter will mourn, even if the one they've given their heart to still lives. A swan shifter doesn't have to be romantically in love and/or physically intimate with the person they give their heart to, but it appears that they must still give their heart to someone.

If someone obtains the feather of a swan shifter, the swan shifter must fulfill one of their wishes - one for each feather.

Bird shifters are seemingly weaker to compulsions than other fae.

Bird shifters have 'fast metabolisms, they exuded heat.'

## Characteristics (culture, habits)

Bird shifters can be of either alignment, and even bird shifters of the same species, such as swans and possibly ravens, can be either alignment.

Bird shifters appear to value family greatly. They seem to generally live together, judging by the Dubna family, Olivette's family, and Anika the Sparrow-Girl's family. Large families appear relatively common, given the Dubna family had seven daughters, Olivette had five children, and the Raven Prince had at least six brothers. They also have proper etiquette for their forms, and the Raven Prince's family was displeased when he once appeared at the dinner table in his bird-form.

Bird shifters have a 'love of wide open spaces, [and] the sky.' They dislike the ground and the wet and 'did not sully their feathers in mud'.

The Council of Lammergeiers is a group of assassins, typically made up of lammergeier shifters, though they trained Gulvi to be an assassin.

Bird shifters have held a variety of jobs in the canon, including milking fairy cows and/or serving as caretakers, nobility, politicians, soldiers, assassins, and possibly bounty hunters. According to Julvia, eagles 'are good merchants, apparently. They travel all over the world. But pelicans are the very best.'

Raven shifters have their own names for the constellations, including the First Moult and the 'White Jack, the first trickster, who wore a jaunty hat and knew every song before it had ever been played, except for his own, which he searches for still.'

## Quotations

* Gulvi to Gwyn ap Nudd: 'Ask a fucking bird for a quill, you’ll get a feather.'
* To Mosk Manytrees: 'I no longer crave death,’ the Raven Prince said. ‘But I am only a bird, and I fear what comes next.'

## Trivia

* The Nightingale is not a shifter, though he is similar to a nightingale shifter. He can turn into hundreds or thousands of nightingales, which is not a shifter trait.
* Anika is from a family of sparrow shifters.
* Although King Oengus Og transformed into a swan for some time to be with Caer Ibormeith while she was cursed, he is not actually a swan shifter, or a bird shifter at all. He just used his magic to transform himself.
* Augus ran into another unnamed raven shifter while tracking Gwyn.
* Harpies are possibly a kind of or related to bird shifters, or simply share similar capabilities since both typically can fly.
* The Great Anqa might be a kind of bird shifter, and although they only appeared in human-form, even had bird feathers the color of flame and a notably beaky mouth while in that form. Though they also might not be a shifter, and more akin to waterhorses, whom Pia has stated on their Not-Poignant tumblr are not horse shifters.
* Pia stated on their Not-Poignant tumblr that the Council of Lammergeiers is an 'elite, esoteric cult of Unseelie assassins and hitmen, who value body art and inking, as well as really fucking hard initiation rituals'.

## Folklore/Mythology

Magical birds appear across folklore and mythology, whether as transformed beings, symbols of magical creatures, or omens.

'As a talking bird, the raven also represents prophecy and insight. Ravens in stories often act as psychopomps, connecting the material world with the world of spirits.

. . . In Irish mythology, ravens are associated with warfare and the battleground in the figures of Badb and Morrígan. The goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn's shoulder in the form of a raven after his death. Ravens were also associated with the Welsh god Bran the Blessed (the brother of Branwen), whose name translates to "raven." According to the *Mabinogion*, Bran's head was buried in the White Hill of London as a talisman against invasion. He is depicted as a giant and the King of the Britons in a tale known as the Second Branch of the *Mabinogi*. Several other characters in Welsh mythology share his name, and ravens figure prominently in the 12th or 13th-century text *The Dream of Rhonabwy*, as the army of King Arthur's knight Owain.'

A version of the *Knight of the Swan* tale was included in 'Johannes de Alta Silva's *Dolopathos sive de Rege et Septem Sapientibus* (ca. 1190), a Latin version of the *Seven Sages of Rome.* In the tale, a human lord 'becomes lost in the hunt for a white stag and wanders into an enchanted forest where he encounters a mysterious woman (clearly a swan maiden or fairy) in the act of bathing, while clutching a gold necklace. They fall instantly for each other and consummate their love. The young lord brings her to his castle, and the maiden . . . gives birth to a septuplet, six boys and a girl, with golden chains about their necks. But her evil mother-in-law swaps the newborn with seven puppies. The servant with orders to kill the children in the forest . . . abandons them under a tree. The young lord is told by his . . . mother that his bride gave birth to a litter of pups, and he punishes [the bride] by burying her up to the neck for seven years. Some time later, the young lord while hunting encounters the children in the forest, and the wicked mother's lie starts to unravel. The servant is sent out to search [for] them, and find the boys bathing in the form of swans, with their sister guarding their gold chains. The servant steals the boys' chains, preventing them from changing back to human form, and the chains are taken to a goldsmith to be melted down to make a goblet. The swan-boys land in the young lord's pond, and their sister, who can still transform back and forth into human shape by the magic of her chain, goes to the castle to obtain bread to her brothers. Eventually the young lord asks her story so the truth comes out. The goldsmith was actually unable to melt down the chains, and had kept them for himself. These are now restored back to the six boys, and they regain their powers, except one, whose chain the smith had damaged in the attempt. So he alone is stuck in swan form. The work goes on to . . . obliquely hint that this is the swan in the Swan Knight tale, more precisely, that this was the swan “*quod cathena aurea militem in navicula trahat armatum* (that tugged by a gold chain an armed knight in a boat).'

'The story of the Knight of the Swan, or Swan Knight, is a medieval tale about a mysterious rescuer who comes in a swan-drawn boat to defend a damsel, his only condition being that he must never be asked his name.'

'The Six Swans (German: *Die sechs Schwäne*) is a German fairy tale collected by the Brothers Grimm in *Grimm's Fairy Tales* in 1812.' It was provided by Henriette Dorothea Wild. In the tale, a 'King gets lost in a forest, and an old woman helps him, on the condition that he marry her beautiful daughter. The King . . . accepts . . . He has six sons and a daughter from his first marriage, however, and fears that the children will be targeted by his new wife; so he sends them away and visits them in secret.

The new queen and now stepmother, who has learned witchcraft from her mother, finds out about her six stepsons and decides to get them out of her way. She sews six magical shirts and goes to the hidden castle where the children are hidden for safety, then tosses the shirts over the boys and transforms them into swans.

*Swan Lake*, a ballet by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky that premiered in 1877, tells the story of Odette, a princess turned into a swan by an evil sorcerer's curse. Prince Siegfried goes on a hunt and nearly kills Odette in swan form before she transforms back into a human, and explains her curse, which can only be broken by someone who hasn't yet loved another, or sworn to. Siegfried promises to help. The sorcerer Rothbart tricks Siegfried into announcing he will marry Rothbart's daughter Odile, instead. Siegfried realizes his mistake and goes to apologize to Odette, but the mistake cannot be undone: she and her sisters will remain cursed forever. In despair, Odette decides to die, and Siegfried jumps with her to their deaths. It's theorized that the ballet might have been inspired by the 1858 Russian fairy tale *The White Duck*, about a newly-wed Queen who is tricked by a witch and turned into a duck. The King discovered her mourning over her murdered children, and when he caught her himself, she returned to her original shape, and restored her children to life.

## Image Gallery

Fanart of the Raven Prince by Suis0u https://suis0u.tumblr.com/post/187284321553/this-guy-was-far-more-difficult-as-i-thought-and-iFanart of Gulvi Dubna Vajat by djingin https://djingin.tumblr.com/post/48737747500/lady-chaos-djinngindeviantartcom-forFanart of Ondine and Julvia Dubna Vajat by intheendlessbluewine https://intheendlessbluewine.tumblr.com/post/179665503029/ondine-and-julvia-confirmed-ill-just-be-over-hereFanart of Anika the Sparrow-Girl by Kaza999 https://kaza999.tumblr.com/post/108227093329/ok-so-for-like-the-past-month-my-brain-has-been
## References

1. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 9 January 2020. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959874/chapters/52978921. Chapter 23: The Sea of Sculptures.
2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 not\_poignant. "A Broken Feather, Straightened.” *The Fae Tales Verse - canon extras. Archive of Our Own,* 20 September 2013. https://archiveofourown.org/works/973180.
3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 18 June 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/4283271. Chapter 4: Suspicions.
4. ↑ not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 21 March 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2808781. Chapter 46: King.
5. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 28 August 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/10665527. Chapter 58: Hope.
6. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 3 - The Ice Plague.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 3 September 2020. https://archiveofourown.org/works/26266345/chapters/63940123. Chapter 1: The Ice and the Dryad.
7. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 31 October 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/5651081. Chapter 16: Death.
8. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 12 September 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/5045072. Chapter 9: Amends.
9. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 3 March 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/7625663. Chapter 33: Confession.
10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 27 October 2017. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036105/chapters/28495692. Chapter 6: The Court of Five Thrones.
11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 31 January 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2363349. Chapter 39: Alone.
12. ↑ not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 28 February 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2571883. Chapter 43: Homecoming.
13. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 27 September 2019. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959874/chapters/49401356. Chapter 15: Own Yourself.
14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 not\_poignant. “Unwound.” *The Fae Tales Verse - canon extras. Archive of Our Own,* 31 July 2016. https://archiveofourown.org/works/7562599/chapters/17386390. Chapter 4: IV.
15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 not\_poignant. "There Are Flowers." *The Fae Tales Verse - canon extras. Archive of Our Own,* 12 January 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/3166064.
16. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 19 July 2019. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959874/chapters/47044390. Chapter 10: Veils.
17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 2 - The Seething Seas.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 24 October 2019. https://archiveofourown.org/works/17959874/chapters/50374646. Chapter 17: Just Like You.
18. ↑ not\_poignant. “Game Theory.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 7 March 2014. https://archiveofourown.org/works/915296/chapters/2655808. Chapter 44: Consultation.
19. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Ice Plague: Book 1 - The Forest of Fire.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 13 April 2018. https://archiveofourown.org/works/12036105/chapters/33001740. Chapter 19: Stronger Than Love.
20. ↑ not\_poignant. “The Court of Five Thrones.” *The Fae Tales Verse. Archive of Our Own,* 14 August 2015. https://archiveofourown.org/works/1749290/chapters/10409742. Chapter 56: Islands.
21. ↑ Not-Poignant. "do fish-based merfolk in your stories have mammary ..." *Actually A Little Bit Poignant.* 19 Feb 2014, 7:25 PM. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/not-poignant/77223271037?source=share.
22. ↑ Not-Poignant. "the council of the lamb hawks?? THE COUNCIL OF THE LAMB..." *Actually A Little Bit Poignant.* 15 Nov 2013, 12:05 AM. https://www.tumblr.com/blog/view/not-poignant/67034097026?source=share.
23. ↑ 23.0 23.1 "Cultural depictions of ravens". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural\_depictions\_of\_ravens. Wikipedia. Accessed 15 May 2021.
24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 "Knight of the Swan, Dolopathos". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knight\_of\_the\_Swan#Dolopathos. Accessed 3 May 2021.
25. ↑ "The Six Swans". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_Six\_Swans. Accessed 3 May 2021.
26. ↑ "Swan Lake". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swan\_Lake. Accessed 20 May 2021.
27. ↑ "The White Duck". Wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The\_White\_Duck. Accessed 20 May 2021.