Julia Jorgensen

To Love A Winged Thing

Fred had never known a person to love owls the way Alice did. He knew women sometimes seemed to pluck an arbitrary animal out of the pool of nondescript interests to serve as a placeholder for any actual personality, and he had always found it rather trite. But Alice loved owls, really loved them, loved birds of all kinds, actually. Alice had an owl as a pet growing up, a massive gray Boreal female, creatively christened Hoot. A peculiar choice in childhood companions, but foundational nonetheless. Pet was perhaps not an entirely apt description, as the owl was free to roam where it pleased, but Alice insisted that it had always returned to her eventually. Fred withheld his ironic remark when she had told him that particular anecdote, because Alice was so much the same; always flitting off to another time or place or even train of thought, leaving him behind. But she returned, every time, and that was what mattered, in the end. He thought he rather understood her thing about owls- there was some kind of careful pride in being the force that made the wild bend, in being shown that you were strong enough to overpower nature itself. Of course in the end, he learned he had been wrong about pretty much everything, but unfortunately, that epiphany is one we all must have before we can start to get anything right.