The Hopeless Owl

The sun rises over the forest village, and the enormous trees allow light rays to flow through their leaves, painting the forest floor in dappled shadows. Lilith, an eighteen-year-old with a gentle voice and light brown hair, grew up in a little forest town named Vihnlox with her father and other ordinary villagers until she met Deon, and everything changed ever since.

Lilith enjoys long walks in the forest because she considers serenity and nature to be magnificent and calm. She walks around the lake, reminiscing and daydreaming about her aspirations and ambitions. On a misty day, while out on a walk, she hears footsteps on dry leaves and turns around... My, how she is astounded by what she sees. Her eyes lit up as she stares deeply into his eyes. She quietly murmurs, "hey there, stranger," and receives no reply from Deon, who just gazes at her. Lilith can't hide or avoid this feeling inside her, and her delicate cheeks turn bright pink...

On her way back, she thinks to herself, "What an unusual guy... what a strange emotion within me."

She marvels at why the person she just encountered was so frigid yet so warm... so odd, yet she was captivated by him.

Time passes, and each day in the village, there are brief moments when they get lost in each other's gaze. She is unaware that they have this chemistry, that each day she falls in love with him a little more, with his soft-looking skin and dark black hair, like a knight in the dark, while he falls in love with her but distances himself instead.

When he looks at Lilith, his eyes fill with this immaculate, unique spark.

Lilith's father gradually discovers the connection between them, but although nothing has genuinely transpired between them, he rages at Deon and seeks out a strange outsider witch to curse his daughter's lover. Deon abruptly vanishes one morning. Lilith is on a never-ending quest for him, sobbing uncontrollably as she waits for him to return.

She hopes that he’ll be out there waiting for her when she wakes up in the morning and sees the sunlight. As she starts to clear her eyes, her heart skips a beat. She can imagine the splendor and beauty in just about everything she sees. She smells the odor of sap flowing from a tree.

When the sun goes down and the darkness comes, the whole world is lit by the light of the moon.

She watches the day pass and the setting of the sun as she goes deep into the realms of sleep, continuously desiring for him to reappear the next day.

Years have passed, and he seems not to mind disappearing. What a sequence of lonesome days and nights. Lilith becomes more despondent and hopeless. When another night is gleaned over by the moon, an owl approaches Lilith's cottage. Lilith walks outside for fresh air the same night and discovers the owl. They can't help but stare at one another.

There's something familiar about this creature's eyes... that gleam.

Lilith's father, who is very observant and protective of her, summons her, and she returns inside.

Time doesn't seem to ease the agony, so one day, Lilith decides she can't live another day without Deon and sets out to gather natural herbs from the village and run away, only to get lost in the dark forest.

As she walks, she thinks to herself how unfortunate it is that her love of life has simply vanished and they never got the chance to truly get to know each other.

Her sorrow is unbearable. She realizes that she's never been in so much misery before. As Lilith searches for a solution, a magical road where she may escape and forget about her worries, she discovers she can prepare a potion with the ingredients she has, so she makes a poison with village herbs.

She appears to be being followed by the same owl she spotted the other night. She feels safe whenever she knows the owl is nearby; strangely, she treasures the feeling of knowing "he's" there, but she avoids the owl as she travels further and further away from the village, and she ultimately weakens and becomes more hopeless.

Lilith realizes that she has no option but to consume the poison miserably.

As she takes her last steps before her death, she comes across a peculiar, horrifying witch house that she's never seen before. She decides to examine it and goes inside.

After encountering and speaking with a strange witch, the witch reveals that a poor girl of charm and misfortune has been cursed since her lover was turned into an owl.

It slams through Lilith like a wild gust of wind, and she recognizes that it's too late.

Before her final teardrops, the poison takes effect, as she collapses on the floor and looks into her lover's eyes for the final time: the owl- Dion. Those same eyes as the boy she was once irrevocably and unconditionally in love with... what a tragedy. The miserable, cursed girl's story comes to an end with that. The doomed one wasn't really Dion, but rather, Lilith herself. The sorrowful girl who waited years for her hero to reappear only to die of the poison she consumed with her own will.

In the end, Lilith has no idea that Dion was the sorcerer's secret son and could see the future. He didn't want to talk to Lilith because he knew he'd be transformed into an owl, and he didn't want to offer her the illusion of a hopeless romance that wouldn't last, so he buried his sadness and wrath deep within him for years, since there was nothing he could do.

His fate was written in the stars, and he had no choice but to see his lover's body collapse in front of his eyes once and for all.

Birds shrieking, insects buzzing…

Finally, he opens his eyes. The real barn owl's dream is gone in an instant. The owl's long sleep comes to an end when his deluded female figure, Lilith, exhales her final breath and falls to the floor, and the owl awakens to fly around the wide forest and search for food for his owlet brood.