>>5878783>>5878788Taking the cue to move on, you ask after another matter which has been on your mind—another notable distinction between your father’s people and your mother’s, and one which—you hope—Venphrya is in a unique position to answer.
“Speaking of complicated,” you note, “I, ah… Was wondering. About the wiuligar?”
The Elder seems to take no offence to this line of inquiry, which is good, but a matter of some interest in and of itself. As a young boy, you had encountered these elves of course, but you’d never really had cause to ask after them—had actually never given the ‘third gender’ much thought, any more than you had the first or second. It was just a fact of life, and only when you’d left to live among the human race in Hawksong that you’d realized that such a concept was far from universal. Among the men of the Northwest, even the non-standard sexual preferences were rarely spoken of, while the concept of any sex or gender outside the strictly male and female barely even registered as a COCNEPT outside of jokes about the relative femininity of male elves (ugh) or apparent masculinity of female half-orcs and the like.
“Of course that would be so,” the Elder patient explains when you have finishes telling them of this. “It is the way of their gods, the Gods of Law, to make it so. Even among their race, though, something like the wiuligar exist… But rarely. Rarer than among our race.”
“I know,” you acknowledge, thinking of Logan Pearce—your best friend since you were young. “I have a, ah, companion who is a man, but fond of…”
(Of you, personally, the poor fellow…)
“Other males,” you finish lamely.
“That is not what a wiuligar is,” the Elder quickly corrects you. “Nor are we, ah… What is the human term? ‘Transvestite?’ We are not elfman, not elfmaids. We are both, and neither. We are born this way, by the grace of the Gods of Freedom, and as a male and female have their roles and duties, we have ours. We are caretakers, lore-keepers, supervisors, teachers, intermediaries. It is found throughout nature—in full bloom, in its beauty and diversity, across plants and animals of all sorts. The Bonum Legale… It is they who curtail it among the Race of Man, who ‘correct’ it to maintain their curated order.”
The wiuligar pauses for a moment in their increasingly-impassioned explanation, and adds: “Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Whatever works for them is, of course, up to their gods and their people. It obviously doesn’t impede their ability to spread and expand their empires…”
From there, the conversation turns towards lighter matters, at least in part because your mother gracefully guides it there and the Elder seems eager to move onto explanations of various ceremonies and festivals, and the foodstuffs, flower-crowns, and dances and songs which accompany each.
