It didn’t take much searching for Mellie to realize there was more going on than the newspapers were reporting. Bloggers were speculating about everything from fluoride in the water making people and animals go crazy (Mellie rolled her eyes at that), to climate change, environmental pressure from logging and clear cutting, and even one group that claimed it was some sort of Magic. Mellie gave up on Google with a sigh. No one seemed to be able to write anything even remotely logical or considered on the strange occurrences of the past few days. The oddest thing was that none of the people who seemed to have befriended an animal was writing anything about it. Normally anyone who had something even mildly news worthy was all over the internet with it, but there was no sign of a first person account. Or even a second hand one, not really; not from anyone who knew a person who had charmed an animal companion. She looked at the clock and began gathering her things, lunch break was over and she had to be back in class. Not that the children could talk about anything other than the influx of animals in their small town. That morning they couldn’t even focus enough to talk about which movie they would rather watch in class the following day, let alone anything halfway educational. ~~~ After school Mellie went by Judy’s house on her way home but sure enough no one answered even though she rang the bell for a good 5 minutes. With a shrug Mellie went to put the shovel, still leaned up against the house from the night before, into the shed. As she leaned the implement up against the wall just inside the door a key hanging on a hook caught here eye. She was almost positive it hadn’t been there the night before, but it was possible she’d missed it in the dark. Pocketing the key, Mellie quickly walked the rest of the way home, grabbing the mail from her letterbox by the front door on the way in. A folded piece of blue paper caught her eye as soon as she began looking through the few letters she had gotten. Unfolding it she saw it was a note from Judy and she read it through quickly, then again from the beginning more slowly. [i]Mellie; I’m sorry about last night. The last thing I want is to drag you into my latest mess, but here I go doing it anyways. I left you a house key in the shed. I probably won’t be back, and I’ve taken everything I want. If you like you can go through the pantry and help yourself, there’s some good meat in the freezer. Shame for it to go to waste but I could only fit so much in my car. You’ve been a good friend to me, the only friend I’ve had in years really. So I wanted you to know I’ve gone somewhere safe. Somewhere people like me won’t cause problems for anyone else. If you really need to reach me you can talk to Landen Avingdale. He knows where I’ve gone and can pass a message to me if he needs to. Thanks, for everything. Judy[/i] Thinking that the day couldn’t get any more surreal Mellie folded the note back up and slid it into her back pocket where it rested against Judy’s house key. She spent a few minutes wondering how she would track down Landen Avingdale if she needed to contact Judy, then gave it up as a lost cause. Well, odd day or not, she still needed to eat. She set to fixing herself a small dinner, marked a thick stack of homework she had put off too long, then headed to bed. It wasn’t early when she slipped under the covers and flicked off her bed-side lamp, but she found herself strangely restless. She didn’t usually have trouble sleeping, but every time she reached that odd plateau between waking and sleeping she had the oddest sensation, like something was pulling at her. Calling from far away, as if a part of her had somehow found itself miles and miles away but was slowly moving towards her. It was the oddest sensation and Mellie tossed and turned for what felt like hours before exhaustion finally swept her past the tugging deep within her into oblivion. ~~~ The next day passed in the sort of disjointed blur days have when you’re too tired to care or pay attention to anything too closely. The kids couldn’t focus anyways, so she put a movie on in the morning then let them do art and creative writing all afternoon. All of them drew birds, or big cats, or bears, and wrote about mice, moose (or meese in some cases, causing Mellie to make a mental note about a class on plurals in the near future), or macaws. She simply couldn’t bring herself to care. Aside from her exhaustion the strange tugging sensation had been steadily growing until it was nearly painful for Mellie to so much as breathe. She took her first deep breath in hours when she let the kids go for the afternoon, then instantly regretted it as the emptiness seemed to swell in her chest along with her lungs. She grimanced in discomfort and sat very still for a moment. If this didn’t stop she would have to walk to the doctor’s office before going home, not an idea she relished at the moment. The sensations seemed to ease a bit, reducing and constricting just enough for her to get her things together, put on her coat and make it half-way home. When it hit, though, the brutal force of the emptiness within her made her drop her bag and fall to the ground. She braced there, on her hands and knees in the middle of the path between her home and work, gasping as she tried to breathe around the sudden violently empty and aching hole in her centre. It hadn’t been this bad before, she tried to sit back on her heels but found she couldn’t she was frozen there staring at the leaf litter and grit inches in front of her face. She didn’t know how long she was frozen there before she heard it, but suddenly she realized she’d been hearing a soft insistent ‘Whoot-hoo’-ing noise from the brush just to her left. Turning her head slightly she tried to make her eyes focus on the source of the sound, but they simply wouldn’t cooperate. She blinked blearily and tried to suck in air. Her vision suddenly sharpened as a small form hopped cautiously onto the path in front of her, tentatively. His feathers – she was somehow certain it was a male – were fluffed up, as she had seen anxious or stressed birds do at pet stores and the zoo. He tilted his head this way and that, making a variety of noises from a deep and low ‘churr’ sound, to a fairly high pitched and inquisitive sounding ‘chiirrrrrrp’. Mellie found the ache in her chest had lifted a bit, enough that she could finally sit back on her heels, and she did so; rubbing at the tender flesh at the base of her palms which had dirt and grit embedded in it from being pressed so firmly to the concrete of the trail. The little owl’s eyes widened and his pupils expanded and contracted as she moved and readjusted herself until she was slightly less uncomfortable. She watched him just as closely as he shivered his wings out then tucked them back again, a clear sign of uncertainty. She couldn’t have said how long they sat like that – five or six feet apart and sizing each other up. Suddenly the little owl darted forwards and nibbled her finger, as if in affection. Mellie had less than a half a second to feel surprised and suddenly alarmed before the whole world seemed to shrink down to just the two of them and then violently explode around her in a clash of raucous colors and shifting sensations. It was gone just as quickly as it had come, and she was once more sitting there in the forest staring at the – equally surprised and stunned – expression of the small male burrowing owl...but everything had changed. Without knowing quite what had happened, or how it had happened, she knew with a deep certainty that everything had just changed irrevocably. Her life would never be what it had been, but somehow she knew it would be deeper and richer now. Looking at the pert little gape-grin of the feathered male – who was now blinking and happily nibbling the seam of her jeans – she knew everything about him. His habits and favourite foods (grasshopper, ew), how he had felt about his mate, how many chicks he had successfully raised, and every second of his journey here to find her...HER, specifically. He had flown for days just for her. Specifically for her. An overwhelming sense of inadequacy and wild joy rushed through her, the guilt and other mess of negative emotions were suddenly swept aside by a decidedly feathery mind, to be replaced with that deep churring noise she had heard before and a solid bird tongue flitting against her hand. She knew, without words or other complicated human things, that this little owl was hers, and she was very much his. A small voice inside her couldn’t help but think “What have you gotten yourself into now, Amelie?” ~~~ *NOTE: Well, that's your signal everyone :) Get those bonding posts up! Let get this thing moving.