JuniJupi

Why does Elias, "I don't have any internal organs," Ainsworth have a tongue?

Tongues are organs. They stimulate your taste. But Elias has no organs, and no brain to interpret those signals. There's a whole bit in season 2 where he talks about how he doesn't experience senses the way other creatures do.

Elias splits his whole face in half to see Chise, and the tongue was nowhere to be seen when that was happening. So it's not an essential part of his being or anything.

It's also not for talking, bc he just opens his mouth and words come out. What.

What purpose does the tongue serve?? i'm talking beyond the ..obvious.. aesthetic appeal stuff.

"oo it's for healing!" there is no WAY that the most convenient healing spell Elias has is in his saliva. Do you know how inconvenient that is? Do you how how PLOT convenient that is??

There's also no way the tongue healing thing is just something he's born with either, because his ability to form relationships isn't a natural one. Why would he have a natural ability to heal others through close contact when his entire being is so deeply rooted in destruction? He looks horrifying in his natural form. He looks insane

On that note.. Why does he even want to eat humans? Why does he crave them? That insinuates that they taste good, which means he has a tongue, but he still doesn't have a brain. Idk

Either

a: Elias does have a brain, but the only stimuli it can sense is taste for some weird reason.

b: He purposefully altered his form to have a tongue, (if this is true, when did he do this?? was it when he met Lindel, Rahab, or Chise?)

c: he just is born with a healing tongue and no other organs for some reason

d: noticed Lindel and Rahab had it and just.. automatically gave himself a tongue , without really thinking about what it does, and uses it primarily as a tool. "ooh, i can use this to apply healing to my allies! brilliant!! and totally not sexually charged at all! Plus, I'll look more human!"

Hi anon! Well now I've fallen into the leshen/leshy rabbit hole along with you! I don't watch the Witcher and I don't know that much about Slavic folklore, so I'd never heard of this legend before. I can see from Witcher fan art that there is a resemblance between Elias and the Leshen, though older images I found of Leshy don't include the skull head and antlers. And Elias has horns, not antlers.

The description of the Leshy from Wikipedia, as a deity that rules over the forest and the hunt, includes many qualities that fit Elias:

The Leshy is masculine and humanoid in shape, is able to assume any likeness and can change in size and height. In some accounts, Leshy is described as having a wife and children. He is known by some to have a propensity to lead travelers astray and abduct children, which would lead some to believe he is an evil entity. He is, however, also known to have a more neutral disposition towards humans, dependent on the attitudes and behaviours of an individual person, or local population, towards the forest. Leshy could take children who were cursed by their relatives (in particular, parents) away to the forest people. Some would therefore describe him as more of a temperamental being, like a fairy.

I can see it.

Leshy Costume design for the opera Snow Maiden by N. Rimsky-Korsakov, 1885.