owl

the bird shelf finally keeps the night. two owls wear one shape: the tawny holds the forests and taigas, the barn owl — pale, with a white heart for a face — works the plains and meadows. the coat is the birth country's and never re-rolled. days are spent asleep on a crown of leaves, and a perched owl watches a passing player the one way everyone knows an owl does: the body holds still and the head comes round, a hundred and fifty degrees of it. nothing comes of being watched. you looked up, and it was already looking at you.

at dusk one hoots — the parrot slowed to a low warble with a phantom's breath under it — and another owl answers out of the dark, a breath later, from wherever it is. its wings make no sound at all: no steps, no flight, only the voice.

where the mousehole runs its mice, the night has teeth. the owl swoops the field mice in perfect silence — and the mice never learn to fear it, because a mouse that heard owls coming would be a mouse that never got caught. a fed owl later coughs a pellet at its roost; a pellet crumbles to a pinch of bone meal at the grid. find pellets under a tree, and you know who lives there. no taming, no breeding, no farm — a feather or two, and the watch.