The Owl

I was expecting Nicole when she first arrived but what I wasn’t expecting was how tiny she would be. 

From where I was perched up on the fridge, sitting in my cardboard make-shift nest, she looked like an anxious mouse I could easily eat... and I think she could tell what I was thinking when she looked up into my big yellow eyes.  

Nicole was eleven years old when she first started coming around to the house each day after school. My loving mistress named Miss Vicky was friends with Nicole’s mother, and agreed to babysit her each day after school while her friend took on double shifts at the coffee shop. 

The two ladies met when Nicole’s mother first came to the house for a professional tarot card reading. They both had matching purple dyed hair and hit it off right away. After that, Nicole’s mom would often frequent for readings as her daughter would wait in the car. The sessions always started with a concerned single mother inquiring about her unfortunate financial situation, but they always ended with them both getting high from a shared joint and laughing about old stories about bad ex-husbands doing incredibly stupid things.  

It was always fascinating to hear people open up and expose their lives to Miss Vicky. This tiny poor house we lived in, filled with a million gold secrets. It was obvious fortune telling was her life calling and she was very good at it.  I would whisper you a juicy secret but I promised I would never tell. Sorry, but I'm a Scorpio, the most loyal of them all. Also, I could never betray Miss Vicky, as she was the one who saved my life many moons ago. 

When I was just an owlet, I fell from my mother’s warm nest during a storm. I was cold, bedraggled, and close to death when Miss Vicky, on a hiking trip with an ex-boyfriend, discovered me on the ground. Upon first glance, covered in dirt with my thin feathers and grayish beak, they both thought I was dead. But Miss Vicky examined me closer and noticed my shallow breathing. She scooped me up and they immediately took me to the nearest vet. The vet cleaned me, poked around and eventually stuck some needle in me, but it was Miss Vicky who actually brought me back to life. Holding me in the car on the way to the vet, it was her majestic energy from the universe that washed away the pain and cold inside me. It’s the same energy she manifests today when she gives a reading.  

The second thing I wasn’t expecting from Nicole was how spooked she would be by my initial presence and how long it would take for her to eventually get over me. Most humans that first come into the house are at first naturally alarmed to see an old owl in a kitchen, but then very quickly get over it and find it quite wonderful. Everyone is used to either a cat or a dog, how boring. Over the years, I’ve been treated like royalty and showered with treats from Miss Vicky's clients. Usually, they come with baskets filled to the brim with caterpillars, grasshoppers and beetles but more times than not, I’ll get a live mouse. And they loved to watch me gobble one down. Forever they live inside me, Miss Vicky would always say.  

During the first couple of weeks coming to the house, a shy Nicole would pay no attention to us and spend all of her time in the family room watching game shows on TV. Her after school snack as she sat on the couch would either consist of a peanut butter jam sandwich with some cheese and crackers or a grilled cheese with a side bowl of ketchup chips. Nicole’s mom said her daughter really liked to drink coke from a can but it turned out, as Nicole eventually started talking, she actually preferred cranberry juice in a glass.  

Miss Vicky was good with Nicole and treated her like the daughter she never had.  But a lot of the time, clients would be at the house getting a kitchen table reading, so Nicole was usually left alone. She was used to that. At eleven years old, she grew up with no dad or siblings and her mom wasn’t around much. She bounced a lot from babysitter to babysitter and had eaten more peanut butter jam sandwiches than any human on this planet. So much so, the colour of her pale skin had a pink jelly-like tone to it and her finger nails had a brownish peanut butter tint. 

It was around the second month of coming to the house every day that Nicole started to get comfortable and curious enough to start eavesdropping on Miss Vicky’s readings. It was obvious because any time a client would come to the house, she would lower the volume of the TV to pick up the conversation coming from the kitchen. As soon as the reading was over, the volume would go back up. Eventually, Nicole was starting to hear secrets and I was having a problem with it. I mean, how could she be trusted? In a high pitch, I started hooting and crying at her each time she would come into the house and have to pass through the kitchen to get to the family room. She hated it and so did my Miss Vicky, who I was just trying to warn. 

My shouting didn't last long but only because it would cause Miss Vicky anxious and stressful feelings, which wasn’t good for her heart. She suffered from a rare heart condition that she controlled through daily medication. But without her pills, any short-term stress on her body could give her heart issues. Miss Vicky was diagnosed as a teenager, after she suffered a minor heart attack in her sleep. To this day, she still remembers the dream she was having when she woke up in a panic. She’s told me countless times. She was floating in a pool on the planet Jupiter, staring at Earth, a million light years away. It was a calming dream until a sudden white flash went off, like something had exploded close by. And that’s when the pool quickly took her under, where she started to drown, until she woke up still unable to catch her breath.  

The fateful day Nicole and Miss Vicky bonded was the day Nicole and her ketchup chip-stained fingers got off the couch and sat down next to Miss Vicky at the kitchen table, where she asked her about the colour of her dyed pink hair. The colour of her hair changed with each new moon and Miss Vicky explained to Nicole that was done on purpose.  The change of colour signified a new moon, which meant the start of new life goals and objectives. The new appearance in hair colour also expressed to the universe you were declaring you wished to be seen. I’m not sure how much Nicole actually understood but at the end of the conversation, she asked if she too could get her hair coloured pink, just like Miss Vicky’s.  

The next day after school, an excited Miss Vicky and Nicole jumped on a city bus and rode it to the one superstore that carried the only brand of hair dye Miss Vicky used.  Any time she was out in public, she always liked to put on her elaborate costume jewelry, which included a queen-like crown. She expected to be treated like royalty. This wasn’t always the case.  But after a long and abusive relationship, she made that promise to herself. This is the only secret about Miss Vicky that I’ve ever told. After purchasing the hair dye, the two rushed back to the house and within the hour an ecstatic little Nicole stepped out of the bathroom with her pink hair. I must admit, I didn’t think it was going to look good but it turned out well. Her pink hair matched her light strawberry toned skin. This was the second time since knowing her that I had thoughts of wanting to gobble her up like a delicious little snack.  

From this point on, Nicole and Miss Vicky’s friendship grew stronger. It got to the point where Nicole became like a little assistant to Miss Vicky, helping her prep the kitchen before her clients would show up. She would do things like make sure that there was enough sage available to burn and ensure the table and sink were cleared and dirty dishes were washed. I personally would have hated to do any of those peasant chores but Nicole took pride in being a little helper. She was even being introduced to the clients and always politely asked them upon arrival if they would be interested in a cranberry juice. Our fridge was now packed full of the family size containers.      

One special afternoon, a blue haired Miss Vicky gave Nicole her own reading. The tarot cards were laid out across the wooden table as a curious little girl sat in a haze of burning sage smoke. It was the first time I witnessed Miss Vicky take such a long time to examine the cards. I was an expert by now at reading her face and knowing what was about to be said, but this time around, I couldn’t tell what she had discovered. The frown that flickered across her face for a second revealed nothing to me. It was a secret that only Miss Vicky would keep and for the first time in my life, I felt like I was watching from outside the house, vulnerable once more to the cold and the rain. Eventually, Miss Vicky forced a smile and told Nicole she would grow up to be a princess, who would rule her own planet. Nicole then asked if Miss Vicky would join her. Miss Vicky reached out and grabbed the child's tiny hand and replied yes. 

It was also around this time that Nicole started to finally warm up to me, although not by much. She still never wanted to touch me, but with those peanut butter hands, I would never let her anyway. But she started to make attempts to feed me, which I was okay with. She also got comfortable staring into my eyes, although I showed no mercy during our serious staring competitions. Her eyes were large and hollow like mine. Deep blue in color that reminded me of a still ocean. It was easy to drown in them. For my birthday, she gave me a large mouse that she had secretly kept and overfed for weeks before presenting it to me in a little white box. She even put a little bow on it. As I tore the thing to pieces, I thought that was cute but also slightly twisted of her.  

Eventually it would be Nicole’s birthday and I was amazed to discover she was a Gemini. I definitely was more curious and intelligent than her. She was more scattered in her focus and erratic. At special request, Nicole asked her mom if she could have her birthday at our house. Nicole didn’t have many friends and didn’t care for them, she just wanted us all to herself with a cake. As a present, I thought about returning the favor and getting her a mouse with a bow. Would she eat it?  Maybe with some ice cream? The special request was granted by Nicole’s mom and the countdown was on. During the days leading up to the party, it was the first time I had seen Miss Vicky so excited and anxious at the same time.  She wanted the party to be absolutely perfect. The two talked endlessly about it, to the point that I started to get a little jealous. Don’t get me wrong, my birthdays were always special but when Miss Vicky came home with a second crown that she tried to unsuccessfully hide in a bag, that crossed the line. First of all, you can’t hide anything from me; I spot it all. Secondly, I’m definitely a foodie and super appreciate all the mice but I never got a crown. The change in Nicole leading up to the party was something she couldn’t hide either. She had this new life in her: I could see it in her eyes during our daily staring contest. The once-still ocean was now tempestuous and electrifying and I had to look away each time. This intensity reminded me of the same energy that I had once felt as I came back to life in the bare hands of Miss Vicky, half a lifetime ago.   

The day it was Nicole's birthday, I watched her at school through a window. She was wearing a party dress that matched her purple hair. She was beaming all day; even from half a field away, I could see her anxiously fidgeting to get out of there. When the school alarm went off signalling the end of the day, she shot out of that building as fast as a juicy rabbit. I’d never seen a human move that fast before. At one point, cutting through a park field, she had to stop to catch her breath. It was my first opportunity to hoot a warning at her but I couldn’t do it. I guess my birthday present to her was extending her feeling of joy just a little bit longer before she would shortly arrive at the house, only to discover the party wasn’t going to happen.  I stayed behind in the park to look for mice.   

The cause of death was a massive heart attack in the middle of the afternoon. Miss Vicky was found on the kitchen floor by Nicole’s mother, who had booked off work early to help decorate the house. Although Nicole was used to people abandoning her in life, this particular time was extremely hard for her. She loved Miss Vicky as much as I did. Her reaction to the news defaulted her back to the little shell of a thing that I first laid eyes on. I watched as the wild ocean in her eyes quickly drained away, leaving an empty and muddy floor that stretched for a thousand miles. Her pink hair immediately faded back to her natural dark colour.     

That night as she laid in bed on her back, I came to her window in the shadows of the night sky. She looked over and noticed my yellow eyes glowing in the dark. I opened the window and flew across the room, landing on top of her.  Using my sharp talons, I slowly ripped open her nightgown, exposing her bare chest. She laid motionless as I continued on, using my powerful beak to slit open her skin like a surgeon. She reached up and gently touched my soft feathers as I pressed my beak further into her chest with force. I took her broken heart into my mouth.  

I flew away into the night sky, keeping it safe inside me for now, until the day she grows up and finds her own tiny planet to rule. I’ll return her healed heart and offer her all my secrets.