Gunmetal Talons

In which our Hero has a passing moment of genius (loci)

Another one of those dingy fall days, early enough that the grey of the weather matched the grey of the dawn. Another one of those tired mornings, not enough sleep, too much stress, indifferent work. Indifferent traffic too, enough to feel slowed down by the collective lack of oomph, but enough offense to react to any of it beyond an extra bleary tension to the blank expression.

But we’re driving in the gap in civilization, in the space where river and ravine have carved too prohibitive a space for development to claim, and there are trees, sickly yellow and dull red, but still proudly standing watch at the sides of the road. And from one of the trees ahead of us falls a greyish brown something, heavy enough not to float like a leaf, but fractal-edged like a leaf would be.

My guess is that it’s a dead branch, or an abandoned squirrel nest, so I set up to see down to the ground and something is there, impassively looking back at me. Something is there, and all of the signals are hitting my brain with no obvious connection but the accelerated pulse and adrenalin that something is different and something is strange and something is there *looking* at me.

And then my brain finds an answer, finds a match to the pattern, finds a name to something, and I am still awestruck, because it’s not just the only owl I can ever think of having seen wild, but he was huge. More than a foot tall, dappled grey brown feathers, and completely unmoved by the hurtling tonnage of steel and plastic on the road.

For those few seconds hurtling past, I was considered by a predator, and left the moment with far more awe than I suspect the owl had ever felt at any human he’d ever seen. I’d seen magic, a giant of the wood come alive, and he was likely just passing the time as whatever prey had drawn him to the ground now likely died in the owl’s sharp grasp.

The owl vanished behind us and the day swallowed us both. But now it’s days later and now he’s a part of the gap in the world. He’s out there, somewhere, unaware and indifferent to the man who saw him for a moment, who thinks again to that moment of eye contact, of recognition.

I think of that stare, and I shiver.