Sunset Birds

Sunset birds are magical birds that are known to bring light. In darkness they emit light and when happy they will sing sweet songs.

 

Sunset birds were discovered during the Everfree Village late era and were taken to the Frozen Empire as they proved to be very useful for light, and unlike fire, they do not pose any danger. Before the Eclipse Tower was built, they were essential to grifix that had few ways to illuminate during the long polar night. Today, they are an expensive way of illuminating, as their nutritional means are very hard to meet and only very important grifix can afford to own one and buy seeds for them to eat.

High status grifix in the Frozen Empire will often walk around with them chained on a staff as lights. They often do so even when it's bright enough outside, as a way of showing off their status. 

They are also kept around for their beautiful song. Grifix that can afford to own two of them will be blessed with their beautiful song in their house.

 

Sunset birds have a magical stone on their forehead that is believed to be in touch with their soul. Scholars noticed that strangely, when they are not around grifix settlements they do not glow in the dark, so the gem is believed to actually be a magic absorbtion device, that when it absorbs grifix magic it will cause the luminescence.

 

The grifix did not kill or eat sunset birds as they saw it as unethical to kill an animal that relies magically on a stone that is connected to their spirit, similarly to them. Therefore they coexisted for a while until some grifix cubs started to play with the bird. They provided the bird with seeds to see what would happen and the bird lit up out of delight and flapped its wings. The cubs looked in awe and ran home telling their parents, who in turn spread the word about it.

 

 

Sunset birds eat mostly seeds and fruit, but magic shrews are one of their favorite foods, being, however, the only kind of meat they consume. They can also eat pests and bugs, as well as dead/sick parts of plants, which makes them amazing for maintaining the greenhouses of the Herbalists Guild, which keeps many of them.

 

In order to mate, the male uses his song to atract a female. Babies of this species are born very small and delicate, with fluffy feathers and a shorter beak. All individuals of this speacies have a tear drop shaped gem on their forehead.

As a heavily domesticated species, there exist quite a few varieties in the Frozen Empire, as seen in the image. These varieties did not exist originally, and they have been obtained through selective breeding.

 

Creator: RubyNoble1