Hummingbird

The hummingbird is a small bird found across Creation, in a variety of hues and colours. In the Southeast it is known as the Insect Bird due to its strange form of flight, whose humming sound gives the bird its name. A hummingbird flies by beating its wings rapidly to keep aloft, flitting from place to place and hovering in the air to feed on the nectar of flowers. Their high-energy flight consumes copious amounts of energy, requiring feeding on hundreds of flowers each day just to avoid starvation, and they oft have barely enough energy to survive through a night of sleep.

In appearance, hummingbirds are very small, with short wings, long sharp beaks, and iridescent feathers in varying hues, plumage coloured by their local area and the flowers they favour. They are found primarily in the Southwest of Creation and the southern islands of the West, and less commonly on the Blessed Isle, where they may have been introduced in the First Age.

Hummingbirds are closely linked with daylight, rising with the light to feed and settling into a torporous state when it fades from the sky. The birds are used in many folktales to depict worshippers of the Unconquered Sun, some holding that their humming flight is in fact made up of prayer mantras to Sol Invictus. Even some in Yu-shan wonder at this, for it is said that Thousandfold Motions Ascendant, god of hummingbirds within the Bureau of Nature, is one of only a few gods to ever play a move at the Games of Divinity.

In the art and fashion of the First Age, hummingbirds were a favoured motif due to their association with Sol Invictus, their seemingly boundless energy, and their sharp beaks emblematic for their vigor, energy, and propensity to do work along with their sharp beaks, which were depicted penetrating flower blossoms as euphemism for blades pierced through one’s enemies or masculine sexual prowess. The bird fell from high favour during the early Shogunate, but made a slow return due to its beauty and fascinating flight. Today it is considered a symbol of Descending Wood in Dynastic Fashions.