It bothers me how many depictions of elves exist that are simply humans but tree-flavored. Sure, there are elves that fall more into the fae category, and those are cool, but they don’t really serve the same purpose as standard elves.
I know this mostly stems from Tolkien and D&D elves, but with how many fantasy books are coming out with super intricate magic systems and politics, you’d think authors would pay more attention to the different types of beings in their worlds.
So I decided to use this opportunity as an exercise in creative thinking, just writing down ideas that felt cool instead of approaching things through the usual specs-bio method.
For this exercise, I went with the idea of a world created by gods, who then decided to create life.
As for the elves, the goddess who created them did not initially intend to do so.
This goddess was full of life and magic. Life would grow from barren earth simply from her presence; wherever she stepped, dense forests would emerge, and the oceans she bathed in would become filled with life.
One day, tired from wandering across the world, she sat down and watched as life passively grew, mutated, and evolved from nothing in her presence. For a long time, she observed the life cycles of these little creatures before attempting to create life herself.
Thus, the goddess nurtured the soil with her own blood, and from this soil different trees grew. These trees were unlike any others, not only in appearance but also in purpose. Each of these trees bore fruit, and from those fruits came the elves.
I wanted to make the elves different from the very beginning, so they are born as fruits from the elven trees.
After the fruit hatches, the elf enters the first stage of its life. During this stage, it is completely dependent on the tree to sustain it. Its skin is made of bark, and its insides are formed from wood filled with xylem and phloem, which keep the body functioning by transporting nutrients throughout it.
These nutrients, however, cannot be gained through eating like an animal would, and the elves do not yet possess digestive organs. Instead, they must rest inside the fruit they hatched from, which tends to their bodies and channels nutrients directly from the elven tree.
The body of each elf mirrors the tree it was born from. Their skin carries the same tones as the bark, their hair matches the colors of the leaves, and even the shape of their bodies reflects the form of the tree itself.
Their first metamorphosis marks the passage from childhood into adolescence. At this stage, the elf returns to its fruit, which closes around them and becomes a cocoon. During this process, the elf can alter the general shape of their body if they wish.
This is possible because, inside the cocoon, their body “dissolves” into the excess slime of the fruit before being recondensed into a new form as the fruit itself is consumed. After this transformation, their body becomes flesh-like rather than being made of bark and wood.
The second metamorphosis is different from the first. While elven society enforces a specific timing for the first metamorphosis, the second depends exclusively on the individual feeling mature enough to reach adulthood.
Since their cocoon is long gone, this time they must burrow themselves into the trunk of their birth tree, where they enter a deep slumber as bark slowly grows over them. During this stage, they are able to reshape their body for the last time, but more importantly, it is during this phase that the elf gains a function within their forest.
Some become shamans, others become wood shapers, gardeners, seed spreaders, pruners, and many other things. Even tree cutters are born from this process, though there can only be one in each forest.
Beyond the changes to their body and role, the metamorphosis is also influenced by the seasons in which it begins and ends, shaping how the adult elf will interact with the world. Every elf chooses to enter the metamorphosis during the season that resonates with them most, but only the tree knows when they will emerge and who they will become.
An interesting consequence of their origin is that elves are born without reproductive organs, as their species does not naturally reproduce sexually. During adolescence, however, many elves leave their forests to wander the world in search of experience, purpose, and identity before undergoing their second metamorphosis.
Through these journeys, some come to form deep bonds with humans or other gendered species. As a result, certain elves choose to develop reproductive organs during their second metamorphosis, reshaping themselves in order to experience forms of intimacy and companionship that do not naturally exist within elven society.
After all this biology talk, there's still one more aspect of elves, arguably the most important, that i want to talk about. This aspect being that the elves are connected to their tree, meaning that anything that happens to the tree will affect their offspring.
If a tree is diseased, then the elves will also be affected. If a tree is dying then all of the elves will perish, same if it's cut down. However, this also means that while the tree is healthy and stable, elves can grow incredibly old without dying. An elf can still die from other causes, but their death will not reflect on their tree.
I will probably do some more posts like these for the reproduction and society of elves, since their way of life is completely affected by their biology and reproduction.