Owl Narrative

The drop

I stared down into the deep, dark nothingness, and then I began to fear what was to come.

“Hey son! Can you walk with me?” My mother said in a near sing-song voice, or at least as much of a sing-song voice you can use as an owl. It’s pretty hard, since all we do is hoot for communication. She was always cheerful, but this time I could see it was a bit forced. I remembered all of the new rules. Don’t play for longer than an hour, no more sneaky snacks, the list went on. The rules seemed harsh, but my siblings and I all loved our mum so we followed all of them without complaint, well, except for Derek, but he didn’t complain in front of her.

“Hey mum, why are we at the food storage?” This place had been the first thing to become out of bounds, and when I peeked in, I saw exactly why. “Oh no! Is it that serious mum? I mean, surely, maybe, you can still find some more food right? Right?” She had a sad smile on her face as she said the dooming words. “No son, I’m sorry. Right now, you and Derek either find some food, or we’re going to run out.” The blood drained out of my face.

Derek and I stood with mum, staring into the great abyss before us. “You go first, geek!” Derek sneered, but I could see in his eyes that he was frightened out of his skin. We had all been told about Uncle Terry and what happened to him when he forgot to spread his wings. It wasn’t pretty, I can tell you that much. Maybe for all his size, Derek wasn’t much the “Macho guy” he pretended to be. I smiled back at him. “If you say so!” and hopped off the edge, laughing at Derek's scream.

I had practiced for years to get to this point. Mum didn’t know it, but the time I broke my wing when I was young was when I was practicing to fly, jumping off a little tree’s branch and gliding down to the ground. The tree was about 3 feet before, and nows it's nearly twelve. I had always wished I could be tall like that, until I found out that you need to hunt for food. If you were the size of a tree, how much would you need to eat? A lot, that’s all I know. And a lot of food means a lot of hunting. Anyway, back to the present. I spread my wings as I heard mum shouting encouragement, her words garbled by the rush of air through my wings and feathers. I began to glide, and felt something peculiar. The air was pushing me upwards, and instead of gliding, I was flying! “Muuum! I’m doing it!”

“Great job son!” I surged upwards towards her voice and “Watch out for that tree George!” and the world flashed red. “Ow! Owie Owie Ow!” I bounced off branches until I freefell, regained my balance and flew up again. “I did it mum! We’re saved!” I saw that Derek was still perched tentatively on the edge of the nest, sticking his claw out and then whipping it back in. “Cmon Derek! You’ve got this!” he didn’t budge. Then I thought of attacking his pride instead of being friendly. “Look at yourself you big wimp! A tiny, little geek like me can fly better than you! Although, you’re probably used to coming last on things that require brains, aren’t you?” He roared at me and dived head first towards the ground far, far below. Mum went pale “What is it mum? He’s going to fly!” She turned her head to me and her voice shook. “Son, that’s how your Uncle Terry dived when he tried to fly.”

“Derek!” As much as I disliked him, we were brothers. “I’m coming, don’t you worry!” I dived, and all my mother could do was watch the two of us go down, down, down, into the darkness.

This is my narrative about an owl flying for the first time, and the prompt for this story is based on Panmure Bridge School's topic this term, flight. It was very fun to right and even though Mrs Anderson's writing group all made plans my writing deviated off of it, only the characters and their characteristics staying the same.