The Last Owl

Lightning lashed the earth like a crackling whip as the sound of galloping horses thudded on the thick snow like a ruthless hurricane. The thunder snarled as several faint silhouettes of men on horseback meandered through the trees, weaving through the dense woods like sharks in a kelp forest. Peering through her binoculars, Ayla pressed herself against the windowsill get a better look at the strange figures. She prayed it wasn’t what she thought it was…

Squinting hard, she spotted a small black tattoo of a hexagon and a cross on one of the horsemen’s foreheads. A wave of panic washed over her…

The Owlers were here.

The rider at the front shouted something foreign and with an abrupt stop the stallions halted and the horsemen got off. Flicking on their torches, the Owlers examined the forest thoroughly, like a assassin seeking out a wanted victim. Panic swept through her like a chilly breeze, her heart pounding. She could only hope Snowy would stay quiet and not get caught. Heavy beads of sweat dribbled down her forehead like the thick, unrelenting rain on the other side of Ayla’s bedroom window. She closed her eyes:

Everything would be alright, in just a few more minutes Snowy would have returned home from his hunt and the Owlers would have left the forest.

She waited…

And waited…

And then waited some more…

Nothing happened.

A devastating thought brewed in her mind, Ayla tried to push it away, but it kept fluttering back at her like a persistent moth. Then, slowly, tears began to form in her eyes, she sniffled quietly, then let them spill and flow over her face like a river escaping a dam. Sobs of grief and longing spilled from her wet eyes as she sat there, on her dampening bedsheet. She closed her eyes and remembered the day that she found him, cold and wet, his short, fluffy feathers drenched by the rain, but still as pure white as the snow. His desperate chirps reverberating from inside the tree trunk hollow...

It seemed imprudent to leave him like that in the cold, so helpless and alone. And she couldn’t let him perish in the cruel fate of his parents. Snatched from their comfortable lives and sent to live as TruthSeekers in the thick-carpeted palaces and high-ceilinged castles of Kaveral by the Owlers. Imprisoned in cages, forced to sit still and be quiet while people around them laughed and drank and blew cigar smoke into their eyes. She felt a hot ball of rage forming in her throat. How could they do that to them? The miracle that God had given them to be able to sense the truth was now the very reason for their doomed extinction. She swallowed back a list of words that her mother would not approve of. Especially now with owls nearly entirely extinct, a barn owl like Snowy could sell for a thousand flumells if not more. The thought burned like a fire in her chest…

Then, she heard a noise…

A hoot.

She sat dead straight and instantly stopped crying. Ayla grabbed her binoculars and bolted over to her bedroom window. She pulled the curtains open again and saw Snowy on the other side pecking desperately on the glass.

“Snowy!” she screamed joyfully, ”You’re alive!” Hastily, she pushed up her window as a massive grin spread across her face. Snowy glided weakly inside then landed on her desk, limping painfully,

“Are you alright?” She asked as her cheerful smile slowly disappeared and morphed into a more concerned, anxious expression.

“They got me” he replied feebly, unfolding his left wing to reveal a sharp arrow impaled into his rib, blood trickling down from it like a leaky tap.

“No!’ She thought.

A moth flew into her face.

Dropping to the ground, Snowy collapsed into a feathery heap next to her bin, squawking desperately, he writhed and squirmed but there was nothing to be done, the last wild owl was dying and it was all her fault. All those owl books she read, her gift of being able to speak to birds. It all meant nothing. She should have known to keep him in during a thunderstorm, her mother always said that thunder was unlucky.

But she couldn’t do anything now.

She buried her head in her hands as she sunk to the bed and began to cry…

Then, she heard a quiet ‘plop’ sound.

Arching an eyebrow, Ayla got up and cautiously moved towards the sound.

There it was again…

‘Plop’

Then she saw it.

Two large, shiny eggs sat lying next to Snowy’s body.

There was a future.

Using his last breath, he slumped to the side and reached for the golden, speckled future. Wrapping up the gleaming eggs in his uninjured wing he lifted it up and placed them both carefully in Ayla’s palm.

“Take good care of them.”

“I will.”

Then he slumped to the floor and fell into an endless slumber.

She held up the eggs to her face and inspected them.

They glimmered with hope.

To be continued...