Chapter 24: The Owl

We quickly make our way to the wood craft tent.

Barn owls have an angelic heart-shaped white face. The males are more ghostly with white bellies and white feathers streaking their wings falling from brown feathered epaulets. The females are more striking with white faces framed in a coppery red feather. Dappled brown and red body with a white belly splattered with copper red and brown feathers.

The barn owl had more of a shriek than a hoot, raspy and cutting, swooping silently in the dead of night. Their white bodies gliding like spirits and ghouls, swallowing their prey whole. Some believe that these owls are demons that swallow your soul. Hearing the owl screeching is an omen of your death.

I like to think of them as beautiful nighttime creatures. Graceful but strong. Elusive and solitary.

“Ceres!” Dmitry exclaimed, running towards us. “Where have you been? I expected that you would have been here much earlier.” He asks while tightly embracing me, his little arms tightly claspin