08-06-2022, 05:00 PM
[font=trebuchet ms]Don't think about the smoke.
She'd spent entirely too much time in the air. In some ways it was comforting to be far above the ground, the howling of the wind drowning out the noise of the world below, but... well, she had yet to really get good at flying. It was hard enough to fight the turbulence with her sore, wounded little wings during hour one, but past hour five or so...
Don't think about how long it hasn't been.
She descended to the forest floor and touched down on solid ground, almost losing her footing, but just barely managing to save herself from face-planting. Squeezing her eyes- both eyes, though one wasn't so useful now- shut, she struggled to parse through the wall of auditory information that slammed into her. Crickets in their rituals. Water on the shore. Wind through the grass. Woodpeckers on tree bark. Creatures sharing a common language, speaking to each other, conversations oh so meaningful to them, but oh so meaningless to me-
She clamped her beak shut and opened her good eye. I'm- I'm in a wetland. Yes, that was a good place to start. She was here, in a very, very polluted wetland- polluted beyond what the vegetation was capable of filtering out. How anyone or anything could survive in such an environment, well...
There, in the midst of the chaotic cacophony, underneath the web of garbage noise, something was coming closer. Frantically looking in that direction, she flapped her wings and prepared to take off- reaching out telepathically to them, attempting to read their mind. Predator? Does it want to eat me? Does it hunt owls for sport?
/tl;dr: injured owl lands in Tanglewood and, out of fear, tries to read the mind of the first person she hears coming
She'd spent entirely too much time in the air. In some ways it was comforting to be far above the ground, the howling of the wind drowning out the noise of the world below, but... well, she had yet to really get good at flying. It was hard enough to fight the turbulence with her sore, wounded little wings during hour one, but past hour five or so...
Don't think about how long it hasn't been.
She descended to the forest floor and touched down on solid ground, almost losing her footing, but just barely managing to save herself from face-planting. Squeezing her eyes- both eyes, though one wasn't so useful now- shut, she struggled to parse through the wall of auditory information that slammed into her. Crickets in their rituals. Water on the shore. Wind through the grass. Woodpeckers on tree bark. Creatures sharing a common language, speaking to each other, conversations oh so meaningful to them, but oh so meaningless to me-
She clamped her beak shut and opened her good eye. I'm- I'm in a wetland. Yes, that was a good place to start. She was here, in a very, very polluted wetland- polluted beyond what the vegetation was capable of filtering out. How anyone or anything could survive in such an environment, well...
There, in the midst of the chaotic cacophony, underneath the web of garbage noise, something was coming closer. Frantically looking in that direction, she flapped her wings and prepared to take off- reaching out telepathically to them, attempting to read their mind. Predator? Does it want to eat me? Does it hunt owls for sport?
/tl;dr: injured owl lands in Tanglewood and, out of fear, tries to read the mind of the first person she hears coming
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