The Return of the Night Owl

Glistening beneath golden straw and dirt, the white feathers stood out like a boat on the horizon. Just out of reach on the second floor of the rotting barn. At first, he’d thought it was snow that had fallen in from the collapsed roof. As he got closer, he could clearly see the white feathers speckled with little flecks of gray. Oleander, or Ollie as his family referred to him, stood still in the moonlight, trying to figure out what the creature above was. It looked like an owl, and he hadn’t seen any doves in the area in a–well ever. Though he hadn’t seen many owls either. Maybe one a year.

He carefully maneuvered around askew boards along the floor while looking for something that would help him get up there. But there was nothing. So he went outside and looked along the outer walls of the barn. He’d been taught as a young child that most things you need in a barn will always be close by. After pulling aside old scraps of metal and worn tarps, he found a rusted metal ladder stashed away. He dragged it inside the barn and set it up against the rickety wood, shifting it until it felt most steady.

Testing it out, he pressed his body against it, then stepped carefully on the bottom rung and put his whole weight on it to ensure it would remain upright. As he went up another step he felt the second floor shift almost imperceptibly. He stopped, listening to the quiet air of the barn. Not a sound. He went up another step. This shift was entirely perceptible as the ladder fell forward and the second floor tilted in a way it most definitely shouldn’t. He stepped back down, but it was too late. Like dominoes, he’d caused the entire building to come apart. One board fell, then another and before he had time to react, the roof shifted, opening up to the starry sky above. Suddenly, he was lifted into the brisk night air above the barn, looking below as it tumbled to the ground.

With his heartbeat thumping like a toll bell in his ears he gathered the strength to look above him at what was holding him a hundred feet above the remains of his family’s ancient barn. The white feathers were now outlined with the silver light of the moon as the tiny creature stared back at him with wide golden eyes. It held on to his coveralls with just one tiny clawed foot.

“How?” he croaked out.

The creature twisted its head, then Ollie’s heart dropped to his stomach. He no longer heard his heart beating but instead heard nothing at all as the owl swooped towards Earth. As they drew closer Ollie brought his hands up to cover his face, as if that would do any good dropping from this height.

He let out some sort of glass-shattering screech as they landed with a graceful plop on the grass. He didn't even tumble or fall over from the sudden gravity beneath him. Instead he was on his knees, staring up at the sky through his trembling fingers.

“How?” he finally spit out again, unable to say anything else.

His eyes then went to the snowy ground and shrubbery around him, searching for the small white owl. It took him a moment, but he finally saw its wings flapping wildly by a bush. He lifted himself to his feet with trepidation but then hurried to the animal’s side as red spread down one of its wings. He tried to reach out for it, but the flapping made it impossible to touch.

“Will you please stop?” he asked, his hands moving for it again.

A few seconds later, it did. Once again, looking at him and turning its head. It stepped closer to Ollie and spread its wings. It was an impressive span, around three feet Ollie guessed. In the creature’s left wing there was a stick lodged in the skin between the feathers. The owl waggled it’s wing impatiently.

“I can’t pull it out,” Ollie said. “It will just bleed more. We need…supplies or something. I need something to stop the bleeding.”

He sighed, remembering the handkerchief his father had insisted he keep in his pocket when working on the farm. He checked his pockets in his coveralls first, but no luck. Then he remembered the sneaky, almost invisible pocket on the inside of the coveralls and found the old red handkerchief there. He pulled it out and waved it at the owl.

“Okay, I’m going to pull it out, then cover it with this. We may have to use the stick to make a tourniquet if it’s bad.”

He wasn’t sure why he was explaining this to the bird. It tilted its head at him again, as if wondering the same thing and he was pretty sure it rolled its saucer eyes at him. He moved towards the creature again, carefully reaching out his hands to the injured wing.

“You ready?” he asked the owl before grabbing the stick firmly with one hand.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” the owl said with a deep masculine voice.

He pulled the stick out without thought as he stared blankly at the owl, now screeching in pain.

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Ollie said, trying to calm himself down enough to reach out and grab the owl’s wing to put pressure on the wound with the handkerchief. But the owl was freaking out, too. “Did you… did you really…” He shook his head, there was no way it could have. That was impossible. “No.”

The owl looked at him pointedly and said out of its tiny beak, “Put the handkerchief over it, boy.”

The owl flapped its wings slower, eventually stopping altogether, leaving them outstretched. It nodded pointedly at Ollie, so he reached forward and held the wing tightly with one hand while pressing the handkerchief against the bloody wound. The owl stepped closer to him.

“Do the tourniquet, I’ll be down for the night any who,” the owl said.

Ollie failed to pull himself from his intrusive thoughts questioning his sanity and the possibility of this being real. It would mean this creature was some sort of science experiment gone wrong like from a superhero movie or… or it was magical. But magic wasn’t real.

“Hello,” the owl said, waving its good wing in front of Ollie’s face.

“Am I dead?”

“No.” The owl looked at him once again with a tilted head and raised a feathery eyebrow. “I saved you from certain death, do you not remember?”

“I do,” Ollie said, getting to his feet and turning away from the talking creature. How could it be talking? “How is this possible? Animals don’t talk. Owls can’t talk. They certainly can’t lift ten times their body weight. This can’t be real.”

“Trust me, the things I’ve seen in my very long life… you wouldn’t believe most of them at this moment. This is only the beginning,” the owl said, walking–er, waddling, to Ollie. “Are you ready for your life to change?”

“What do you mean?” Ollie asked, his eyes meeting the owl's.

Who knew that owls could smile? But it did. The little feathers around the corners of its beak turned up and the owl’s eyes squinted in a way that indicated it was smiling. Probably at his naiveté.

The owl used its good wing to gesture for him to come closer. Ollie took in a deep breath, then slowly let it out as he kneeled beside the bird. It reached out its wing, brushing the downy soft feathers against his forehead. A light emitted from the creature's extended wing and felt warm against Ollie’s forehead.

“Long ago,” the owl said as images burst through Ollie’s mind, “You were more than just a boy.” There was a man, about ten years older than Ollie but striking in resemblance, about to jump off a cliff. “You were a man who had seen the world and saved it on more than one occasion.” The man jumped and whoever or whatever was viewing him, followed behind and they both swept down through the air. Before hitting the ground the man changed into an owl and led the way. “But you were more than a man.” As they flew through the sky, light fell from behind them, dousing the trees and wildlife as if breathing new life into them. “You were the epitome of magic and power.”

“I… I…” Ollie stammered but couldn’t nail down a thought long enough to put it into words. More images flooded his brain. The man, a little bit older, stood beside a large bonfire. They were speaking but he couldn’t make out the words over the sounds of the nearby ocean and fire crackling. He lifted a hand and light spiraled from it, into the air, and sparked like fireworks across the night sky. “How?” Ollie managed to ask.

“Oleander Amory, you are one of Earth’s two protectors, born to guard this planet and all those on it. You were given a second chance at life to live as a normal human with your memories locked away, but now you must remember. You must return and save this planet once again.”

Memories flashed so quick through his mind he couldn’t grasp onto any one moment. They brought back little pieces of his history he’d long forgotten. Floods, hurricanes, fires, earthquakes, wars. He’d saved the world time and time again. Dormant for the last sixteen years so he could be reborn into a normal family for a normal childhood for a normal human experience for the first time in his existence.

He fell to the snowy ground as the owl stayed still in front of him. Ollie stared above at the starry sky and recalled the names of each constellation and star he’d never known before. Well, he had known sixteen years ago, but they felt new to him again. But the more he thought, the more he recalled everything. Trees, flowers, countries, cities, animals, and other creatures… he knew them all again.

“What happened?” Ollie asked, lying still with his hands across his chest. He felt like he couldn’t breathe, but at the same time he felt like he was breathing the way he always should’ve been. With the weight of the world on his shoulders and the balance of good and evil in his hands. “It must be bad if you’re bringing me back now.”

The owl stepped beside him, looking into his eyes.

“You remember it all?” the owl asked.

“Yes,” Ollie said, sighing and meeting Godric’s eyes. Those eyes he hadn’t realized he’d missed until just now. Sure, there’d been something peculiar about him before and certainly something that drew him to the owl, but he hadn’t realized why until now. Until he remembered everything. He pulled himself to his elbows so he was eye level with his old friend. “So out with it.”

“The harbingers are back,” Godric said. “And they’ve killed more than I’d care to admit.”

Ollie closed his eyes, recalling the havoc they’d wreaked centuries ago; killing thousands, or hundreds of thousands, through famine, disease, and war. Then he remembered his last sixteen years, barely blinking an eye at the countries killing one another, the starving homeless, and the ravaging diseases plaguing humanity in recent years.

“Why did it take you so long to awaken me?”

“You asked–”

“I wanted some peace for a while Godric, but not at the world’s expense. Not at the expense of people’s lives.”

“You knew the risk, Ol–”

Ollie placed his head in his hands. “I only wanted some peace for a while, it didn’t have to go on this long.”

“You looked happy,” Godric said. “With this family. They love you very much.”

“I… I know,” Ollie said, looking back at the old house a couple hundred meters away. His sister was likely still fast asleep, and his parents might be just getting up to begin their morning routines. “I… I can’t stay.”

“I know,” Godric said. “But perhaps you’d like to say goodbye at least.”

Ollie raised his hand and waved, then shimmers of light burst out and sped into the house.

“There,” he said, standing and shaking the snow from his coveralls. “That’s the best thing I can do for them.”

“But they won’t remember you,” Godric said, looking to Ollie. “I don’t believe that was necessary.”

“They won’t have to hurt this way,” Ollie said.

“Isn’t there saying about how it is better to have loved and lost then never have loved at all?” Godric asked.

They exchanged a long glance while Ollie recalled how he’d loved Godric for hundreds of thousands of years before the last sixteen. He’d loved him as a friend, as a brother, as a partner. They took on the threats of the world together, two halves of a whole. Warriors, companions, and then lovers once upon a time.

“Yet I only now remember love,” Ollie said. “In its purest form.”

Godric looked away, his little claws kicked at the snow. “You pleaded to me, Oleander. What was I to do? Tell you no? As if I hadn’t considered it? But to decline would have been far too selfish and I couldn’t bear to hurt you so.”

“Yet now you can tear me away from it without a thought or care?” Ollie asked, knowing he was wrong to do so.

The pain that flashed across Godric’s face was like a fire sweeping through dead wood. Quick, painful, and brutally efficient at hurting everything it touched.

“You believe this was easy for me? That I wanted to rip away your normalcy and happiness? What was I to do? You know I’m incapable of defeating the harbingers on my own.”

“I know,” Ollie said, turning away from Godric. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to insinuate that you don’t care.”

A foreign but also familiar feeling rippled through the air around Ollie and he glanced back at Godric, who was now human. He was older than Ollie’s current appearance, equivalent to a human in their mid-to-late-thirties. His body was lean and strong, fit for a fighter. His face was covered in white stubble that matched the hair draping down his head over his shoulders. He was as bare as he’d been as an owl, now staring at Ollie.

“Losing you was the hardest battle yet,” Godric said, stepping towards Ollie. “Even if only for a short time.”

“I’ll always return to you,” Ollie said, taking Godric’s hands in his own. “It’s our destiny.” Ollie kissed Godric on the lips softly and said, “Are you ready to save the world?”

“As long as it’s with you,” Godric said, his hands squeezing Ollie’s.

“Then let’s do this,” Ollie said. He pulled a hand free from Godric and placed it over the wound on Godric’s arm, emitting yet another bright light. When he pulled his hand away the wound was gone. “It’ll be easier if we can fly.”

“Do you remember how?”

“I believe it’s like riding a bike, you never truly forget,” Ollie said.

They let go of one another and he felt his body shift, changing into something different. The both of them were owls again; Godric as white as the morning clouds while Ollie was as dark as the starless night. Together, they swept through the air towards their sole purpose for existing, and together they would fight to save the world once again.