Vital questions

[mrissa]

What do you think elves smell like? The full-sized Sidhe or Alfar or Tolkien kind, not the wee faaaaairies.

Comments

[barondave.livejournal.com]

Actinic rainfall.

[zalena.livejournal.com]

Faintly metallic.

[voidmonster.livejournal.com]

Sidhe smell like lapsang souchong drifting in through the window from the bazaar a few miles down the road, mixed with the lilac and a dead skunk.

Tolkien elves smell like wax.

[zunger.livejournal.com]

The lighter-skinned elves smell mostly like very clean and washed Men, but with a scent of the small white flowers that grow beneath their homes; not cloyingly sweet, but vaguely reminiscent of orange blossoms, and vaguely of bread baking. The sylvan varieties smell of rain and leaves in autumn. The elves of the countryside, of fresh earth and dew. The ones who live in far realms have more exotic scents still; for instance, the ones who live on the high mountaintops near the edge of the world, where the stars are often visible even during the day, smell faintly of rare metals, and have a second scent which is said to not resemble anything which humans have encountered.

I think, overall, they absorb faintly the scents of the things most characteristic of their home countries -- or at least, what would be most characteristic of it to Elven eyes.

[loup_noir]

Sidhe would smell of moss or peat. The Tolkein elves would be of water or woods.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Where does skin color fall into your taxonomy?

[songwind.livejournal.com]

Depends on the context. Probably exotic perfumes, the making of which are not within mortal ken.

[madmanatw.livejournal.com]

Agreed. Tolkein/forest dwelling elves/aelfs would smell of the scent of a breeze blowing through a healthy forest after a rainfall. Sidhe would be pleasant scents of the earth and underground.

Wee faeries of course smell like flowers.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

People smell a lot like what they eat. Indians smell like curry to us, and I'm told that westerners smell like butter to those outside our culture. So what do your elves eat? Bread? Nuts and berries? Spicy curries? Meat?

[zunger.livejournal.com]

Hmm... I'm not quite certain. I think it's mostly a matter of elves from various environments tend towards some particular colorations or features in their "normal" state. Of course, the normal state for elves is wearing so many glamours that it's kind of hard to tell what they would look like without them, so that's a bit ambiguous.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

No, what do your elves eat.

I know what I think elves smell like.

[khriskin]

They smell like an echo of a flower, faint and nebulous, half-here half-gone, a hint of something without the substance.

Or of wolves... it all depends on the elves. ^_~

[columbina.livejournal.com]

Wood elves smell like the dusty stuff on the bark of some kinds of trees, like crepe myrtles or real magnolias (not these silly-ass northern trees sometimes called "magnolias"), that rubs off on your hands and clothes when you climb the trees. I can't describe it any better than that, but it's a very specific smell.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I think they probably smell mostly like people, but bathe more often. The ones that eat a lot of lembas bread smell like lembas bread. Probably they smell like alcohol after 5 PM. They are outside a lot, so probably they have that fresh air smell in their hair. I imagine an elf that has been busy fighting or running around shooting people with his bow and arrow or skidding around skateboard style on bits of flotsam could get kind of rank. I'll bet they smell really bad after a bean burrito. ;-)

My pets always have a different smell when they sleep. Maybe elves have a "sleepy elf" smell, just like dogs have a "sleepy doggy" smell and kitties have a "sleepy kitty smell". (Wait, scratch that last. Kitties are *always* sleepy.

[ellameena.livejournal.com]

I just sniffed my cat, and she smells like freshly cut grass.

[jry.livejournal.com]

Smell is not a significant part of my personal sensorium, but my brain settled on the smell of cold clear water fresh off the glacier when it heard your question.

[dichroic.livejournal.com]

Spring.

[sculpin.livejournal.com]

Depends on the elf. The terrifying ones -- I'm thinking of Pratchett's Lords and Ladies, I think -- smell a little like cloves.

[merriehaskell.livejournal.com]

I think they smell like liminal things--equinoxes and shorelines. Leaf-mold for autumn, budding ferns for spring... the saltier ones smell like tidal pools and the wild young ones like watercress and riverweed.

[pabba.livejournal.com]

Eternal BO?

Or trees!

[zunger.livejournal.com]

...And on rescanning this post, I misread it as "what do you think elves taste like?" Which, I assume, a troll would be better-suited to answer. But I'd bet they would be sweeter than Men.

[adrian-turtle.livejournal.com]

Hot, dry, slate. When you're in the damp forest in early spring and you smell a faint whiff of hot stone where there can't possibly be such a thing, there's probably an elf around somewhere.

Last week, I heard someone mention 2-dimethyl-horse-mackeral-peat. My colleague asked how you synthethize it, but the speaker didn't know. He saw in passing, in an article about something else. I wanted to know what it smelled like, but we were all sort of afraid to think about it too closely.

[von-krag.livejournal.com]

As a omnivore & predator I should think Elves have a nutral scent. It's hard to sneak up on something if they can smell you.

[avrelia.livejournal.com]

leaves- fresh or dry, depending. and a little bit of musk

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

Pine forests, or trees just after a rainstorm, but with a hint of musk and something indefinable spicy. Pleasant, reminiscent of nature, but just off enough to remind your hindbrain that they are in no way human. I bet sweaty elf is just as stinky as sweaty human after a long active day, mind you.