The Owl at Night

Read these stories first; this is the third in the series.

Green for Go: Jery'la

Cold as Ice: Kura'hy

~~~~~~~

Even as Kura'hy was in the Depths, and Jery'la was on the land, so there was a third Traveler of the Home Realms now on the small planet out at the Edge. After Jery'la's mishap with the wheeled transports of the species who called themselves human, it was decided that there should not only be teams of two as had previously been discussed in the Travelers' Conclave, but in fact teams of three. Even four, if the planet being explored had sentient beings in any other medium than land, water, or air.

There was safety in numbers, after all.

Awoo'ho was a natural in the air, and its species did not even require a disguise to pass for a denizen of the third sentience on this tiny planet. Not that the others on the planet knew they were sentient, which Awoo'ho found amusing. The sentients among which it was Traveling were assigned several traits by the land-dwelling folk called "humans" in a major language of the planet, the most common of which was wisdom. And yet, the humans did not truly believe that the sentients known as "owls" in that same language were intelligent. But the owls were nocturnal - which to humans equaled mysterious - and thus the humans beingified them.

Many of the owls with whom Awoo'ho spent its time in studying found this behavior - anthropomorphism, the humans called it - to be endearing, in the way that a nestling was endearing. Indulgent amusement seemed to be the most common emotion regarding this. "After all," Arooooihrahoo had said when Awoo'ho joined her flight, "After all, they are only just beginning to discover as a species that they have more than two genders - they aren't nestlings, they're practically eggs!"

Then Arooooihrahoo had laughed so hard she nearly fell off her branch.

This darkfall Arooooihrahoo's flight had plans to visit a human settlement, and they had invited Awoo'ho to come along, conferring the invitation as though it were a great honor. Perhaps it was. Of the three sentient species on this planet, the owls were the only ones who knew Awoo'ho was not a natural denizen of the world, and that might mean something to the flight or even to the species as a whole.

Awoo'ho hoped it could be of assistance.

The human settlement was spread apart; did humans not believe in huddling for warmth? Awoo'ho knew there were species who did not, who felt the need for privacy and the like, but it'd thought that Jery'la might've included that in their report. Well, perhaps they had been distracted during the encounter with the vehicle, or maybe different humans had different customs; this planet's sentients' seemed very fractured as to commonality among cultures and even species, and...

Awoo'ho was distracted by the bright light shining into its eyes; nocturnal beings are not built for this. It blinked several times, noted that the rest of Arooooihrahoo's flight had scattered, and focused on the human shining the light in its eyes.

The human appeared to be fledged but not yet fully grown; an adolescent then. Awoo'ho wondered if the human fledgling was frightened, and going by the scent of stress hormones in the air, the answer to that question was yes. It sighed. Beaks weren't really made for this, but it could try.

"Could you move the light, pleasssse?"

The fledgling started, looking astonished if Awoo'ho was any judge of human expressions, and the scent of stress hormones eased.

But the light moved away.

And so Awoo'ho set its communicator to automatic transmission and said to the fledgling human, "Take me to your leader!"