Mornings quickly became Marcia's least favorite part of the day, as students received their packages from home, all delivered by owl. Owls; how had her parents, Marcia wondered, come to figure an owl would make a good daughter? And if they had left her as she was, would she have just grown up to send packages hither and thither for witches? It was all quite stupid, and she grew to dislike their greasy wings and their creepy necks and their bulging eyes that never moved. Their attention was too solid and their voices too close to human as they asked, "Hoo? Hoo?" They might know, Marcia realized one morning, and after that, she stopped taking breakfast altogether, favoring to leave a roll or two from supper the night before in her bag for a quick breakfast while walking to class.
It was weeks, therefore, before Marcia first heard the owls' voices.
Under ordinary circumstances, Melly, Julia's owl, lived in the owlery with the others, but a fortnight into school, the bird had managed to hurt its foot in a heavy package from home and Julia brought it to the hospital wing, then into the dormitory. One evening as the two girls studied, Melly perched, favoring one leg, on Julia's chair, and stared openly at Marcia, even as Julia tousled her feathers and let the bird's wings.
Marcia was half way through a potions essay on "which spices—useful for disguising the purpose of a potion—could react with the active ingredients of a potion, and why," when she heard a gentle voice, "Oh yes, oh yes, right there." Marcia looked skeptically up from her work to her friend. Though it had come from Julia's direction, the voice hadn't been hers. She looked back down. "Oh, stop it. I'm hungry and want to go out, just let me…oh that's good."
"Sorry, did you say something?" She put down her quill and looked expectantly at Julia.
But Julia, looking up from her book of runes, shook her head. "No."
"Funny," Marcia continued, "I thought I heard someone." She looked around herself and saw that most of the students had gone already to bed, and only a few were still awake and studying, and they were all involved in their own work.
"I didn't. Just Melly hooting." Julia stroked her owl's head and down her silky feathers. "Smelly Melly, are you feeling better?" She kissed her bird's head and turned back to her book.
As Marcia watched, Melly continued to debate whether to go out or stay and be petted, and Julia continued to hear nothing. That night, long after Melly had gone out to hunt, Marcia lay awake in bed, staring at the dark ceiling. There was no denying it, then. She was, at her core, an owl. Simply an owl, and the appearance she wore was just that. Marcia held her hand up and flexed her fingers in the dark. It seemed so odd to her that the skin she'd worn for this long wasn't her own, but a charm placed on her by a wizard and a witch whom she had grown to love as her parents. Marcia turned over in bed, knowing what she had to do.