ssshhhhhhh

weight edit is approved -ok hand-

unflattering wrote:x

892 words- 500 XP

Coora shivered and hunkered down into the strange feathers of a nest that her mother had not made, in a hollow that was not her home. She could hear owls, hundreds of owls, fluttering, moving, shouting, talking, crying. It was an overwhelming, unending crash of sound. But it wasn't as bad as the fire.
The fire, that had eaten up her mum and da and home tree. Singed her feathers and destroyed her life.
She pressed lower in the small makeshift nest. She wanted to go back, ahe didn't like it here, at this strange tree, with these strange owls.
A sob rose in her throat. She wanted to go home!
She buried her face in the strange feathers and began to cry so hard that her down feathers began to loosen from her soft underwings.
Her mum and da were gone. She was alone.

"Are you alright?"

Coora looked up with tearfilled eyes to find another young barn owl perched on the edge of the hollow, her face delicate and beautiful, but her wings singed with soot and her eyes sad.

"No," Coora whispered. She was not alright, how could the other owl even ask that?
"You lost your family in the fire," this time it was not a question and the strange owl's eyes began to spill over with tears "I'm sorry."
Then she hopped down into the nest and wrapped a wing around Coora's back.
Coora pressed her face against the other owl and continued crying. But somehow, even though she didn't even know the other owl's name, she felt just the tiniest bit less alone.

"Egtaline? Egteline are you in here?"
Coora looked up as a young male owl poked his head into the hollow.
At first she thought he was a grass owl or a sooty owl or even a masked owl, but the she realized that every single plume was drenched with ash and soot.
"Shh, Soren!" Egtaline hissed, tucking her wing tighter around Coora "She's already upset enough."
"Oh," Soren said softly, hopping into the hollow "is she hurt?"
"No, but she just lost everything in that fire."
Soren shuffled his wings a bit awkwardly "You want me to bring her some tea? That helps calm them down sometimes."
"Ask Matron."
Coora didn't know what tea was but she was certain it wouldn't help that hole inside her chest.
Soren turned and was about to take flight when suddenly a group of ash covered, smoke smelling owls landed in front of him.
"You back already Soren?" Asked the largest one, a huge great gray who dwarfed his two companions "I thought you woukd still be out there catching coals for Bubo's fires."
"No," Soren said quietly "Ezylryb wanted us back at the tree to help with the new owls that came in. I'm to ask Matron for some tea for one right now actually."
"Oh, is she alright?"
Coora coukd barely see the other speaker, a tiny elf owl, but something about her immediate concern for Coora, whom she hadn't even seen, made Coora actually feel a bit better.
"Shhh!" Egtaline hissed louder "C'mon you guys, have a heart."
"I do have one and I'll have you know it is very large," the great gray pushed past Soren "And to prove it, let me be the first to welcome the young chick to the Great Tree of Ga-Hooole."
Though he was intimidatingly large, there was a spark in the big yellow eyes that radiated a kind of overeager joviality.
Coora hop-skipped a talon's breadth forwards, Egtaline's wing still draped protectivly over her back.
"Hello," she whispered, realizing that all the owls eyes were on her "I-I'm Coora."
"Well Coora, I, Twilight, would like to humbly welcome you to the Tree of Ga'Hoole."

"Humble?" Hooted the third owl, the last to speak "Sorry Twilight, you can't even say that word without making me laugh."
Before Twilight could answer, Egtaline cleared her throat loudly "I beleive you were going to ask Matron for some tea, Soren?"
Soren blinked "Oh, yes, of course. Umm, Twilight, why don't you help me?"
"You don't need my help to get tea, So-" Twilight realized that his friends were all giving him a concentrated stare and sighed "Alright."
Soren and Twilight took off and the other two came closer to Coora.
"I'm Gylphie," said the elf owl "Sorry about Twilight."
"He can be a bit overbearing at times," said the other, a burrowing owl "I'm Digger by the way."
Coora bobbed her head and sniffled, the tears still clinging to her feathers.
"We should go," Gylphie said quietly.
Egtaline began to nod, but Coora shook her head.
"Please stay. I...I don't mind. I'd like you to."
The two owls looked at each other, then back at Coora and smiled.
"Of course."
"We'd love to."
As they settled down on eithe side of her an Egtaline, Coora was struck with a sudden thought.
"M..miz Egtaline. When the fire's gone, do I have to leave?"
Coora thought of going back to forest and shuddered. She'd be all alone.
"Of course not! You can stay here, forever if you like."
"I can?"
"Of course you can," Digger piped up "No owl is forced to leave the Tree. No owl is alone."
No owl is alone.
Coora closed her eyes. She wasn't alone.

838 words- 450+ XP
Dawn glittered like a golden river across the sky, painting the upturned leaves of summer in warm tones. The fingers of light traced across Freesia's tail feathers, tickling them playfully as she bank through the trees towards the familiar girth of her home tree.
The healing moss her mum had sent her out for fluttered from her talons, sending a sweet scent wafting upwards.
She smiled to herself as she imagined the pleased look on her mum's face. The healing moss was hard to find and never before had Freesia managed to collect any on her own. But now....
She was puffing her chest feathers before she had even landed.
"Mum? I'm back! I found-" the barn owl's voice died in her throat as she landed on the rim of the hollow. Her eyes widened with horror as she stared at the destruction of her home. The herbs and grasses and flowers her mother used to create her medicines had been slashed from the walls and trampled into a sickly smelling paste. Talon marks ripped through the bark and worst of all the gouges where stained with blood.
"Free...esia?" a shuddering voice broke through her shocked silence with a wheeze "Is that...you?"
A shadow twisted away from the wreckage and up towards her.
"Jordan?" she leaned forwards, her whole body shivering "What happened?"
The blind snake lifted his head towards her, his whole body shivering.
"They...came."
Before he could tell her who had come or where they'd gone, Jordan collapsed into a shivering puddle.
"No, no, wake up," She flutttered down to his side and gently nudged her friend "Please, Jordan..."
Her heart beating rapidly, Freesia swiped a clawful of the green medicinal mush and carefully began to form a poultice out of it.
Her talons shook as she applied it to his head, but several seconds after the bleeding stopped, Jordan coughed weakly and his body stiffened.
"Freesia?"
"I'm here, I'm here, it's okay," she leaned closer, cradling his chin with her talon "Jordan, what happened? Where's Mum? Who took her."
"Pure ones."
Freesia's gizzard twisted into a knot "No..."
"Me... me and Allya came up to have a chat with your mum...We didn't even hear them coming. Just swooped in and pinned your mum to the wall. Wanted to know if she was the healer and then....they took her and Allya. I tried...to...fight."
Jordan began to fade again.
"No, no, no," Freesia hunched closer to him, holding his head up "Jordan, Jordan I need you to stay awake, please, stay awake!"
The snake shuddered "I'm...I'm not going anywhere."
Freesia felt like she'd gone yeep in a downdraft. Her gizzard and heart were both turning somersaults and she couldn't even see strait.
Half-blind with stunned tears, she began to shred the moss and wind it around Jordan to keep the medicine in place. It was an automatic response, but got her mind working again. In a very jittery, clattery fashion.
Pure Ones. Pure Ones had taken her mother.
She hadn't even been able to believe that such a disgusting evil even existed. Now, it had swooped down out of the midnight sky and snatched her mother away from her, destroyed her home.
"Too tight!"

Freesia was pulled from her distracted worried thoughts by Jordan's voice and realized that she had indeed wrapped the medicinal moss too tightly around the blind snake's injuries.
"I...I'm sorry," she stuttered, loosening it "Th-there."

"Thank you," he stretched a bit "So I'm alright?"
She bobbed her beak weakly "You should be fine..."
"Okay, so then, let's go."
Freesia blinked "Go where?"

He tiltes his head and if he had eyes she knew she'd've seen judgment in them.

"To get your mother and my Allya back," he said, scowling.
"What? But I can't fight!"
"I'll fight them," he hissed "You fly me to them and I'll fight them."
"You can't fight them, you already fought them and you're a mess," Freesia fluttered her wings agitatedly "And I...I can't..."

"Fine then, you sit here on your fluffy feather tail and I'll go by myself," Jordan slithered to the rim of the hollow, clearly in pain.
"No, Jordan... How... how do we know they're even still alive," Freesia's gizard lurched as she said it. Her Mum couldn't be dead....
"Those fat featherbags took them because they're healers, they need them to heal someone. They're not dead, not yet," he shuddered "We got to go now, Freesia, or we'll never find them."
"B...but-"
Jordan stopped her by slithering up on her back and nestling between her shoulder blades.
"Please. Please. Freesia, if we don't go now, we'll never find them. Never. Do you want to never see your mum again?"
Freesia shuddered. She couldn't sot there, while her mum was drug away by those horrible...

She hopped to the rim of the hollow, flung her wings out and took off into broad daylight.
Into the sun, that blinded her to the world around her and to the future she'd just hurled herself into.

Art-300 XP
writing-wip
Meeting Astrillys- Pure One Fight- Finding her mum but unable to save her, Astrillys convinces her to go to the Great Tree to seek aid