A Barn Owl & A Blood Angel

The owl appears to be almost tame. They are shy creatures as a general rule, but the falling body and the impact it made against the snow hasn't startled him off his high perch.

The small girl stared up at the bird through thick lashes, and eyes almost to match his. Her winter coat was so bulky, it made her arms stick out comically to either side.

He is perched on his customary post, his feathers fluffed out and blinking against the flurrying snow. Much easier to look at that than the red spattered young man on the ground several feet away.

She knows, though she is studiously avoiding looking, that the man looks tremendously smart. That is, except for the messy way his arms and legs are strewn at odd angles. It is quite astonishing how much detail a brain can drink in, even in just a few seconds. It's even more amazing how much brain one head holds.

The owl really is very pretty. He looks almost nondescript and scrubby from this angle. Then he turns and his face is a perfect white heart, haunting as a ghost.

Ah. She is trying not to think of ghosts.

The expensive white shirt with its perfectly starched cuffs is splotched with scarlet and pink. His suit jacket, a rich black to begin with, is darker still in patches. Wet, sticky patches. His face looks straight out of a boy band or an anime adventure. Smooth shaven on one side, and caved in on the other. Silky blond hair segues to a dark matted mess with fragments of bone. Where in life he had been slender - elegant, even - now he is all wrong angles and soft pulp. His eyes are looking at nothing and gently filling up with snow.

The owl spreads his wings and takes off, with almost less effort than it took to huddle on his perch. He is poetry, so light he is almost not there at all... and then he really isn't there.

If Daddy didn't work so hard, she might live in a smaller house, and this boy wouldn't have died. Maybe he would have just hurt his leg. If he could fly, like the owl, he wouldn't be making a blood angel in the snow.

Her mouth trembles. Her eyes widen, casting about for something to land on, but there was nothing except the dead man. Panic rising and cresting, it wouldn't take much to push her from her perch and set her to running. The crunch of a soft footstep did it. Look! She is off! Her stumpy legs working hard, but not efficiently, her coat hobbling her further.

A gunshot cracks the stillness, and then two men lay crooked in the snow. She's still running, an awkward little shape panting through the expanse of white.

Outside the bright sphere cast by the outdoor light, the tree line is the only place to go. A lady is standing there. She looks slim and kind, with dark hair and a wide smile. She's wearing pretty gloves and her coat has a big shiny buckle at the waist. The sight of her causes a wave of relief. She seems safe. Safer at least, than what the little girl is running from.

If we were really there, we would step in front of her, warn her that the same smile belongs on a cat or a crocodile. But we are only shadows, you and I. She can't hear us. We cast no shadow on the snow.

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Thank you for reading! Please leave a comment so it's easy for me to reciprocate.

Behind the story: I wrote this for the Barn Owl challenge, but it didn't feel finished enough to submit. I do like it, as far as it goes... but I felt like it wasn't good enough to enter a challenge. As a regular post, labelled Excerpt, I can justify it!

Edit: sorry I don't know why I lost my edits when I hit submit! I forget the site hates android!