Gran'papa Owl
Character studies. The widowed Mr Goldstien knows all about raising owls; children, not so much. However, his wife, his son, and his daughter in law are all gone, leaving him to raise his two little granddaughters all on his own.
1915
Somebody has lost their chickcharnee. Elijah is none too pleased about it. Especially since whoever owns it has taught it to talk.
It is Tina who brings it home, of course. It had been tangled up in an alley fight with a cat and she thought it must have been injured, since it couldn't fly. She didn't know that burrowing owls don't fly. She swaddles the shivering, screeching animal in her coat and carries it home, earning its fragile trust. It's obviously a pet.
The cryptid, tropical owl is not a pretty species to begin with and, moreover, this one is probably the ugliest chickcharnee Eli has ever had the displeasure to work with. It's especially tall, closer to three and a half feet rather than the average two and a half to three, and its tortoiseshell coloring belongs on a cat. Its eyes are a bit too far apart; its beak ragged with age. It trips over its own two gangly feet. It is constantly trying to flirt with Hyssop and isn't deterred by the fact that it is a burrowing owl and thus can't follow her when the long-eared owl takes her leave of him. It escapes the owlery and moves into the house when the owls start vomiting their pellets on him in their displeasure and begins harassing the girls. Eli has yet to find a spell that keeps it in the attic for more than 30 minutes—it's a weasel of a bird.
It is also hopelessly fond of Tina and absurdly bitter toward Queenie.
"Nosy!" It screeches at her, obviously referring to her legilmency. Though she hides it well, Eli can tell that his youngest granddaughter is hurt by the name-calling.
Despite its constant groveling, Tina doesn't like the cryptid; its affection borders on harassment. Despite being a magical animal, it's as stupid as any owl and its lack of intelligence paired with its ability to speak about two dozen words makes it especially insufferable. It's like a particularly idiotic parrot. Eli wonders if it got lost delivering a letter, since it had an empty red ribbon tied around its leg when it showed up. It's not unheard of for chickcharnees to be used for mail, but they're flightless and unreliable and expensive to import. Passenger pigeons are infinitely better, even better than the smartest owls, but they're nearly extinct.
The chickcharnee's abilities as a magical creature of luck is mostly simple favoritism. It has a keen eye for things that sparkle, so it brings home lost jewelry and pennies and scraps of glimmering tin for Tina… and beetles and half-eaten mice for Queenie. It takes Queenie a couple of days to adjust to mouse entrails, but her irritation wins over her squeamishness. She feeds the bodies of the mice to the stray cats until the cryptid becomes annoyed with her using his insults to her advantage and throws a temper tantrum.
"No! No, no, no! No!" It wails, beating its wings against the girl's legs until she threatens to kick it. It scuttles away and hides under the sofa, its beady red eyes glaring out of the shadows.
Five days in, Tina has had her fill and explodes at the creature in a fit of frustration, backing it into a corner and scolding it into tears.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry." It moans.
"Don't apologise to me, you wicked thing, apologise to Queenie and to Gramps. You've treated them horribly. You're a nasty creature!"
"Sorry, sorry."
"Go on, then!"
The chickcharnee morosely makes its way through the house, its fluffy, ugly head bowed, wings dragging, as Tina parades it first to her sister's room and then downstairs to the den.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," it grovels to Queenie in a tremulous voice.
"Sorry, sorry, sorry," it sobs to Elijah.
It is a quiet and complacent cryptid for the next two days. Eli receives a letter from a woman claiming to be the animal's owner and announcing when she would be by to retrieve him. She knocks on a Wednesday afternoon: a middle-aged, dark-skinned woman with a sprinkling of pepper-black freckles in a sunny yellow dress and matching hat, carrying a large wicker birdcage on her hip.
"Who-whoooooo-leeuhhhh!" The chickcharnee shrieks and tears down the stairs (quite gracelessly) to the feet of the dark woman in the doorway.
"Winnie! There you is! We been lookin' all over the county for ya."
The chickcharnee rubs its head against the woman's dress, crooning in delight.
"Aww, did they gone an' bully you, Winnie?"
"Yes, yes, yes!"
"Did ya'll deserve it?"
"…yes."
"Mmhmmmmm. I reckoned as much. Rascal. Didja say you was sorry?"
"Yes, yes!"
Winnie the chickcharnee, while troublesome, is an old cryptid belonging to the Cook family. He is rude and crude and simple-minded, but he can be funny, Julianna explains, and however annoying he may be, the family isn't about to let his quality of life decay during his final years. A Haitian relative brought him as a gag-gift for her great-aunt some decades ago and he wouldn't be able to survive in the wild if he tried, spoiled and pampered as he is—he'd probably walk right into the mouth of a cougar and be halfway eaten before he figured out that maybe he ought run away instead.
The girls may not be fond of the cryptid owl, but it's difficult to hold a grudge against a simple animal—as long as they don't ever have to look after him again.
Elijah and Julianna, with a shared appreciation for owls, get together to play bridge once a month from then on.
Author Notes:
Chickcharneys are a cryptid owl belonging to the Caribbean that bestow good luck to those that they like and bad luck to those that they don't. They're not rumored to speak, but Winnie does because he's more charming that way. Julianna Cook will continue to have a presence in this story-there is a period after the Civil War called The Great Migration due to the large numbers of freed black folks who moved north.
You can find me on Ao3 under the same old pen name. Find me on Tumblr, too.
~MegiiJ