Ashira

An ashira has spindly limbs and a wild mop of black curls that sometimes twist about on their own. In daylight it can barely keep still, always swaying, fidgeting with its arms, waggling its fingers. After dark it slows to a lazy sway with heavy, dreamy eyes. Most of the year it wears scraps and rags, but when its trees blossom and bear fruit it dresses in elaborate garments woven from leaves, vines and flowers.

Ashira loathe violence and run from any fight that does not endanger their trees. When the orchard itself is at risk, though, they become ferocious, even bloodthirsty. Old stories say they once required a yearly blood offering to keep the harvest rich, which sits oddly with their gentle manner today.

Often they sidestep a fight by casting charm person or mammal, which they can do at will, though they would much rather earn friendship honestly.

An ashira is not tied to one tree the way a dryad is. It belongs to an entire orchard or grove tended by one caretaker, and every ashira there answers a threat to any part of it. Any tree in the orchard serves as a doorway in or out, working like pass plant or plant door cast at 8th level.

Cut off from home, or when its kin are in danger, an ashira scratches with thorny nails and hands, dealing 1d6 damage per attack. Even then it will never finish off a helpless or wounded foe. It would sooner nurse the enemy back to health and let it go somewhere far from the grove.

Ashira are intensely social and turn sullen and moody if left alone. A group is almost always touching: holding hands, braiding one another's curls, dressing and rubbing each other's aches, singing and dancing close together. Decisions are made together through argument and votes until everyone agrees, or until the majority bullies the rest into line.

Half of their home is the orchard; the other half is a faerie realm hidden inside the trees. They rarely come out of it except on irresistible days of sun and soft wind when no people are about. Passersby at night sometimes hear them singing and dancing in the branches.

Ashira can live on sap and fruit, but usually they drink in sunlight by day and turn it into nourishment overnight. The stored light gives the orchard a faint, ghostly glow visible only on moonless nights, which helps explain local tales of faerie-haunted groves.

They live in palms, citrus, fig, plum, pomegranate, banana and other cultivated trees, and they depend on people to tend, protect and usually plant those trees. Growers who care for them become close friends. The ashira sing and dance for them at harvest and do them favors such as minding children and livestock. They get on well with winged serpents and with orchard creatures generally, birds, monkeys and hive insects especially, and like to keep pets together in their branches.