Great nary

Terminology

Singular: Great nary
Male: Nave
Female: Nay
Immature: Naling
Collective: Canvas [ “A canvas of great naries.”]

Physical Description

Great naries are large birds, with an average wingspan of sixteen feet; they stand at seven feet up to the shoulder when they have fully matured. They are huge, feathered birds with two-limbs, which are raptorial in build. The talons of great naries are long, retractable, and powerful, but they are not used for offensive purposes, such as killing off and eating prey, since the naries are not predators. The great naries, who dwell amongst deep jungles, inhabited by fierce creatures, use these talons to fight off enemies that attack their nest. The wings of great naries are wispy and feathery – they have an ethereal appearance, and these wings do not even seem to be real. They seem more ghost-like than anything, really. Naries have sharp, pointed beaks and small, beaded eyes. They also possess long, furry ears, like that of a jackrabbit, which gives these great birds a superior hearing ability. Males seem to be nearly identical to females – however, females possess billowy wings, moreso than males. They are also more slender than males, and have longer ears.

What is most notable about the great naries, however, are the variety of colors that they come in. Purebred naries only come in five colors – a pure shade of yellow, red, blue, white, or black. However, such birds are incredibly hard to find – and are dubbed as primary great naries. It is the secondary great naries, however, that are most remarkable; these birds have inspired bird collectors to try and collect every single color great nary in the world. Secondary great naries comes in all sorts of colors imaginable – from dark blues to light greens, to shades of purple and every color in between. These naries are the result of the rare primary naries mating with each other, and creating various vibrant shades of naries in their wake.

Temperament

The great nary is a curious bird, almost dauntlessly so. So curious are these birds that they are more often than not mistaken for stupid. While a great nary can live up to fifty years, these birds, if they are not domesticated, have an insatiable curiosity that almost always ends up getting them killed. As soon as it is born, the first role of a parent is to teach the naling what is a friend and what is a foe – if the parents fail to do this, the naling will never learn for itself how to tell an enemy from a friend, and will end up mistaking a basilisk for a friendly snake who wants to play with them. If a great nary has matured to the age of ten, than there is a less chance that it will make the mistake of eating something poisonous or attempting to befriend an animal that would rather have it for lunch that play games.

These birds, while they are large and appear to be fierce and dangerous, are pacifists by nature. They would not hurt a fly unless the fly decided to hurt him first. They possess formidable talons, and have strong, powerful bodies, which has made many the bird tamer attempt to harness the great nary’s power, but these birds will not fight for fun or pleasure, even when domesticated. The only time a great nary will fight is to protect its family, or its owner. A great nary will not fight to protect itself, interestingly enough, and would rather flee from the situation that land a strike against its enemy. These birds are very gentle by nature, and even the most determined breeders could not find a way to ignite any sort of malice or aggression into them.

Great naries are not loud creatures, but they are very excitable. Their calls are made up of what sounds like a cross between a lion’s roar, a dog’s bark, and the crow of a rooster. They make small ‘chirrup’ sounds when they are curious about something, which is almost all the time. If speaking to a great nary, they will always make sounds back at you, as if to emulate speech. It has never been proven, but there is a theory that states that great naries can actually ‘learn’ human language if they are around humans enough, and would be able to speak the human language, if they were not physically unable to do so. They have a wide array of noises they make, for they are ‘talkative’ creatures, but the most haunting of the nary noises is a nary’s roar. When angered, the roaring cry of the great nary is said to be able to sound through an entire forest. Such a sound can be heard if a member of a great nary’s family is slain, or if a great nary’s master is killed in front of its eyes.

Diet

Great naries are omnivores – but, for the most part, they feast on leafy-green plants, roots, and any other vegetation they can find in their environment. There is not a very large limit on what sorts of food the great nary will stoop to consuming, for they make quite the potent scavengers. Great naries are known for making the best of any living situation, and are able to eat and gain nutrients from the scraps of the forest. From grass, to tree leaves, and even the bark of trees if necessary – the great naries are never birds that grow hungry, because the entire forest acts as a smorgasbord for these gourmands. They will eat meat, usually in the form of insects, seeing as how the naries are not predators. Favorite insects preferred by the great naries are grasshoppers, crickets, and cicadas, mainly because they are easy prey to hunt in the dead of night. Young great naries are also found of devouring firefires – on warm summer nights, it is not uncommon to find a canvas of nalings nipping and devouring fireflies together.

Habitat

These birds are quite fond of lush, but humid climates, and have taken to living in jungles, forests, and anywhere where there is a large supply of vegetation. It is impossible to find a nary living in the desert or in the tundra – they are strictly jungle-dwellers, unless they have been domesticated, that is. Mature great naries can be found roosting in caves or dens, but families of great naries with small nalings will temporarily roost in large, old trees, where they teach their nalings how to fly. There is an old saying about the great naries, and that is – where there are naries, there is peace. This is because the great naries are known for finding peaceful roosting spots to rest their young, and seeing a great naries and its family roosting in a tree means that the area was safe enough for the nary to choose to build its home, so in turn, it must be safe for the traveller.

Primary great naries are very rare, but not impossible, to find. Secondary great naries are not as rare, but they are not as common to spot up in a tree as your average bird either. While they are not average, they are certainly findable, if you know the right places to look. Great naries also make excellent pets, and are regarded as fine companions for humans, which has made taming them and finding more great naries in the wild a goal for many wild animal tamers. However, because of their curiosity and dauntlessness, it is recommended to only make pets out of naries that are ten years old and older. Domesticating a great nary any younger than that, before it is finished learning what will probably kill it and what will not, and you find it a lot more complicated to keep as a pet.

Special Abilities

The great nary is very popular amongst painters and artisans alike, due to the quality of their feathers. If you were to pluck the feathers from a great nary (or wait until mating season, when the nary sheds many of these feathers painlessly), you would notice that they have a very fine texture to them. If you grind up the feathers of a great nary, you will find that their feathers make the most illustrious paint! Paint made from great nary feathers is an expensive and well sought after item, and people are known for shelling out oodles of cash, just to have a chance to work with such fine paints. Rumor has it that the great naries are the inventors of color itself, and that they must be protected – for if the great naries were ever to die, then this world would become colorless and bleak.

These birds also have a keen ability to detect emotion in other beings, especially humans. They are about as sensitive to human emotion as a dog is, perhaps more. There have been many stories surrounding these creatures, of great naries who came to the aid of wounded and weeping travellers. Indeed, great naries have sensed that a human was in need of help – from obvious problems, like bleeding to death, from not so obvious ones, like a human going into shock or having a fit – and bring them to safety upon their backs. A popular story told to parents (who are not the nicest or sweetest of parents), is of the majestic great nary, who will swoop down and steal your child away from you in the dead of the night if you ever cause your child harm, or cause your child to cry. Great nary are seen as the great protectors of children, and the originators of art and color, because of these enigmatic abilities.

Lifespan

Wild great naries can live up to fifty years, however, the exact number of years a domesticated great nary can life is unknown. Domesticated great naries seem to life for as long as their master lives, and when their owner dies, the nary will become ill with grief, and will normally die soon after. Because of this, some people have debated that it is cruel to tame the peaceful great nary, who will have such a fierce bond with its owner that it will follow it to the grave, but others debate that it is because of the great nary’s love for humans that it should be used to a human’s full advantage. Besides that, the lifespan of the great nary is currently unknown, but science claims that these birds are capable of living long, fruitful lives.

The eggs of great naries are always the color that the naling will turn out to be, and is usually dotted with small, white spots. These eggs are large, and are ten pounds in weight, and seem to have an almost unbreakable shell that only the beak of a great nary can pierce. This defensive mechanism is most likely to protect the egg from being eaten or stolen by predators. The naling, eventually, hatches after two or three months in the egg. After two weeks, the naling learns to walk, and it will follow its parents around the jungle, and learn what is friend and foe by harsh scolding or gentle praising. This is a long and arduous process, but after ten years, the naling is considered a mature great nary, and it leaves its nest in search of a mate.

The process of finding a mate is only difficult because finding another canvas to settle in is not an easy task. Once another canvas has been located, it is very easy for a great nary to find a mate. During mating season, male great nary shed their feathers, and fly up in the air, leaving a trail of beautiful feathers in its wake. He finds a partner in this fashion – usually, it will be a partner whose own color complements his own. The naling they have will have feathers that are a blend of his mother and father’s color, and so the cycle begins anew. Senior great naries are usually highly respected amongst the great nary community, and the other naries will usually go out of their way to take care of him, until his death. When a great nary dies, all of his feathers fall off, and they are blown in the wind, as a reminder of the life he led.

Social Structure

Great naries are extremely social creatures who live in large groups, called canvases. These groups are so large, that when a great nary leaves his nest in search of his own canvas, it normally takes him up to three years to find another one, because, while the groups are large, they are scarce and it is hard to find another one of them. These birds are gentle and, strangely enough, are very family oriented beings.

They do not have rankings, really, but have tiers of respect. The eldest great nary in a canvas, while being very old, is always the leader of the canvas, and is fiercely respected. It is unheard of for a great nary to be belligerent, and so, there has never been a documented case of a great nary going against the law of the eldest great nary. Second on this tier of respect are other old great naries, who act as guardians towards the younger of the canvas, despite their old age. Newly matured great naries, their nalings, and newcomers to the canvas are at the bottom of this tier of respect, but they are looked after carefully by their elders. The great naries are a large family who all look after each other warmly – they love each other with depth, and grieve fiercely when one of their own passes on.