The Eternal Flight

Since the very beginning I have watched over your world with my wide seeing eyes. My wings had allowed me to fly over your dust covered world and see the time as it flowed like the endless Seas. I watched as the dust covered ember collided with another. I watched as a moon formed around the world and seas formed in all the holes and crevices of the world.

I watched as massive insects filled the skies and oceans and began to crawl around the surface. I saw the age of fish with armored plates and watched as mammals and reptiles struggled for dominance on the small pebble floating through the depths of space.

Life on earth pressed the reset button several times but every time the smallest of chances would prevail. The smallest of fish or mammals or insects would crawl out and refill the void. A burning fire could cover the world and a single fish would crawl from the sea and start again. The air could choke and feel heavy to the lungs and the small insect would come from under a rock and take to the skies. The earth could crack and the hairiest of rodents would crawl out and scamper across the seas.

I thought that life had reached its zenith when the great reptiles had achieved dominance. They were called tyrant lizards but there was nothing tyrannical about them. They were filled with a variety from scampering critters to lumbering giants as tall as the sky and boastful predators with ferocious bite. Armored beast never before seen and fast beast with bellows heard from afar.

But alas earth once again did not agree. With a single moment the moon got out of the way and allowed a grain to slip through and crack the surface of the green world. A trifecta of disaster enacted on the world. The volcanoes that followed choked the skies with ash and choked the light from the seas. The grain forced the shell to crack and shake the ground violently. The swing in temperatures caused life on earth to experience the blazing heat of life and the freezing cold of death. When the two came so close that I thought my wings would grow lonely from a lack of friends in the sky.

Luckily I once more was mistaken and life found a way. Birds not too much unlike myself took to the sky and the land. I watched as they scoured across the world until the age of mammals began. I found a species with large canine fangs that chased them into the seas and large blubber-like creatures swam in the ocean. I watched as fellows like me came in a variety of shades. I watched as some as white as snow and as dark as the night filled void took flight. My speckled tan feathers were a sharp contrast to theirs. Eventually a two legged ape like creature would come forth and they named me twice. Once as a symbol of wisdom and another as a reference towards one of their designs. They named me Athena and that as a barn.

This species I thought could finally fix what earth had broken and at first it was as thought. They brought creation from fire and laughter from silence. They learned balance and dreamt of the stars which only lonely I had ever reached. They in a place called Greece seeked my wisdom but could not understand my tongue.

The beauty of their world was filled in their hearts when they took to the sea and ventured beyond their tiny homes. They found new lands and built works of art that reached higher and higher. But once there was no more land left to explore and no more love to be found to fill the hearts of man they turned to the sweet alcoholic greed that chipped away at the love.

It corrupted the mind and soul until the love had all but vanished from the world. Humanity built factories to harness their greed more efficiently than ejected columns of ash into the sky. Bombed each other with balls of the sun and drowned themselves in pity as they caused the sea to reclaim the land. The ocean they filled with glass as drop by drop was drained away and poisoned the air to breathe with hopes of what they had destroyed.

Now as the clock approached its zenith humanity bit by bit opened their eyes and saw the greed for the short fill it provided. They began to see the destruction that it had caused to their worlds and as my feathers fell they remembered the wisdom and art they had seeked. The flowers that filled the hills and the stars they had yearned to reach and join me. They saw my weakened form and the vastness of my eyes began to cloud. I Athena, the barn owl, the keeper of wisdom have grown weak as greed has finally grabbed at my wings.

Now as I watch the earth's skies turn gray, the seas turn black and the land swept away in a sea of glass, I had a thought that my wisdom could not answer. Could a species responsible for so much destruction return creation? Could a heart so filled with greed find the love? Would a Species which had enabled death become a tool of life? Could everything be returned to what it was? Could laughter return from the Silence?