Lomadia's Night Watcher
By: MusicPnFFreak/ObsessedWithPhinBella
Lomadia is 14 here.
At first, I hated the thing, always keeping me up at night.
I growled, pulling myself to an upright position on my bed. "Don't you ever go to sleep?" I hissed, so badly wanting to take my Batman comic and throw it at the annoying bird-thing that stared at me from my window. But, of course, I would never do such a thing. I would never do that to Batty-man, throw him out the window. I glared at the animal through my blurred vision of tiredness. It looked very unusual, having black and grey feathers to cover it's entire body, and beady black eyes that stared at you like you were about to murder it. But, in a way, the creature was kind of beautiful… It made its annoying sound again, which made me stumble out of my trance, shaking my head vigorously.
"Shut up. You'll wake the others." I hissed at it again, waving my hands frantically towards it in an attempt to make it fly off. But no, it just stayed there, cocking its head to one side and staring at me intently.
Somebody behind me scowled, and I whirled my head around to see five girls who were in need of desperate beauty sleep. Their hair was an absolute mess, not to mention they looked extremely cross.
I only blinked; half scared they would go all psycho on me, half confused. I was whispering for God's sake.
Melina, the fifteen year old, and eldest of all the girls in the orphanage, scoffed at me. "Would you mind keeping it down with your little…" I cringed at the squeal she and the other girls made at the sight of the bird. I heard a sudden flapping noise and turned to see no sight of the creature.
"What was that thing?!"
"Why is it here?"
"Makes sense why it likes you, you two are both freaks!"
Instead of talking, I just shook my head, ignoring them. I usually did this to... well… everyone. They didn't really like me, and vice versa, so why should I give them the time of day? Melina crossed her arms, frowning at me.
"Can you, like, get it away from here?"
I only shrugged.
"Well, do it or I'll kill it."
"Wait!" A new voice was heard from the back of the room. Shuffling could be heard, and then a new face appeared from behind the girls. Abigail, who was both small and one of the younger girls in the orphanage, pushed up her bulky glasses and approached me. She tightly held a book to her flat chest. Like the rest of us, she wore her thin white nightgown, and her red hair was messily tied back in a bun. Her emerald eyes flashed up to me, and the book reached my hands. Slowly, I looked away from her face to the book, skimming over the cover. The book was hardcover, fairly large, and the large font over the top read "Handbook of the Birds of the World Volume 5: Barn Owls to Hummingbirds." Confused, I looked back up to her, my eyebrow raised. Most of the time, like me, Abigail was silent. She was very intelligent for her age. Only a couple years younger then me, she knows more then I do about almost everything! Maybe it was because there was hardly anything to do in this place, or maybe just because she wanted to learn.
"It has information about owls. See?" She took the book from me, leafing through the torn pages and stopping somewhere in the middle. She turned the book around and pointed at a photo of an owl that looked exactly like the one outside. My eyes widened and looked at the group of girls that were no longer there and had finally retired back to their beds. Thankful, I scooted over and patted one side of the bed so the girl would sit. Obeying, Abigail crawled on the bed and looked at me. I turned to her.
"Tell me everything I need to know."
At first, I hated the thing, always keeping me up at night…
… But, now I don't mind it at all.
The more time I took out of my comic-reading and outdoor time to study up on these owls, the more time I got to spend getting to know Abigail. She was a lot like me, actually. She was quite secretive, so she only told me the little things of her life. She was like a living, breathing puzzle, and I just had to find the pieces and put them together to figure her out. But I didn't mind, really. It just added suspense and mystery. Together, we looked through that book, and every night that same owl would come back. We'd watch it for hours until one of us fell asleep. In the morning, we'd predict that it went somewhere else to sleep, while 3 eggs in its nest remained for our eyes to observe. On one particular night in the orphanage, we had just come back from dinner, and we had gotten there just in time, for we had gotten to see a miracle.
We all filed into our rooms. There were 10 to a room, at least. All mixed ages. Not mixed genders, of course. The boys had a whole different building. As soon as Abigail and I entered the room, we dashed over to my bed, pulling out the books on owls we had specially requested to the "mother". I brought out a box of my old comics, bringing out a royal blue notebook and a pen.
"Can I write down observations tonight?" Abigail asked. Since I did last night, I handed over the book and pen. Hearing the familiar hooting of the owl, we both smiled to each other. The famous owl was here. During my studying of the owl, I have learned to like the sound it makes. Sometimes, it even soothes me into a deep sleep. We both nodded at it as a greeting. Behind us, Melina cleared her throat.
"Having fun, freaks?"
I started flipping through the pages until I found the same page we'd been looking at for days on end. I chose to ignore the girl, hoping she would just go away. Thankfully, I heard her growl silently and walk away.
"I wonder when her eggs will hatch." I thought out loud, starting to read through the paragraph on how to care for owls.
"I know. So, who's taking night shift tonight?"
"I did last night. Hope you're awake enough." I said moments after finishing the paragraph. "Hey- do you think that we could help care for her babies?"
"Well, you know how moms usually are, very protective. So maybe not."
"Yeah, I guess your right."
The night consisted of chatting about the weirdest things we could come up with, me trying to explain Batman to Abby, and then somehow I ended up falling asleep, dreaming of nothingness. That all ended around sometime in the middle of the night when I was shook awake.
"…adia! Wake up! T-they're hatching!"
"Meh..?" Slowly, I opened my eyes, welcoming the view of Abby's face. She looked very excited about something. "What is it?"
"They're hatching. come on!" She grabbed my arm, helping me sit up. I squinted out the window and gasped. The eggs! They were hatching! Together, me and Abby watched in amazement as 2 pink newborn owls broke out of their temporary homes.
"What's up with that third one there?" Abby asked me. My eyes darted over to the un-hatched egg. While the other two were now out of there eggs and struggling to move about, the third egg remained as still as stone. I frowned at this, thinking I knew the sad answer to her question.
"I guess… it's a dud." I sighed, feeling bad for the owl, who was now out, maybe gathering worms for its newborns. Abby sighed.
"She's not going to be happy about it. We should hold a funeral for it. Also, we should give names to these little guys."
"Hmm…" I went into thought, trying to find a decent name for one of the owls. I observed them, the smallest one immediately catching my eye. I cocked my head to one side before finally coming up with nothing. Sighing, I just decided to wing it and say the first thing that came to my mind.
"Mister Owl."
"What? That's the only thing you could come up with? Lomadia, you don't even know if it's a boy!"
"So? If it's a girl, I'll just rename it. No big deal, it's okay." I gave Abby a reassuring smile. She nodded, and then asked me which one was mine to name. I pointed it out, which gave her a laugh.
"Alright, I'll take the bigger, better one."
"This is an insult to Mister Owl." I playfully frowned, crossing my arms as if I was very offended for the smaller owl. "What you going to name it?"
"He is the best and his name shall be… Bob."
"Err, what?"
"You heard me. Bob. Prince Bob, actually."
"Huh. … Yeah, alright." I shrugged off my friend's weirdness and nodded towards the egg. "Just to make it fair, we need a name for that one.
"… Lewis."
"What?"
"Lewis. I don't know why, I've just always liked that name. He seems special enough to have that name."
Not questioning why she didn't name the live one Lewis, I just nodded. "Alright. Tomorrow, we shall have his funeral. As for now, we welcome you, Mister Owl, and… Prince Bob." I cracked up saying 'Prince Bob' because honestly, what a weird name! She and I giggled together, causing somebody to harshly shush us.
~FIN~