Darn. We were giant clam blocked. But that was so cute we have a poncho for our wings qwq what saint decided to be our Fairy Godmother?
If someone wants to write up a giant clam thing, I'll be happy to include it in the form library. She did eat one and her food was getting rawer and rawer.

That still sound like it means that Exalts shouldn't have any innate physical or mental merits, except maybe exalt healing since that's part of the exaltation itself.
And The byakugan is most certainly an innate physical merit.
Let's just call bloodline abilities specialized biological artifacts. I mean, that's kind of what they're treated as in the Narutoverse: they can be stolen, require an essence commitment, and, as per 3E, even have their own associated charmtech tree.
Was Hinata taking on the negative mutations that make her eat more so that she wasn't burning through motes to transform?
Accidentally, but yes.