Aeris took her time waking up the others in the mansion, hastily knocking on every door to get the sages out of their beds. “Wake up for Dekum’s sake, we have an abduction and I need all of you to help searching!”

After a few minutes a group of 13 owls stood before her with confused looks, some still rubbing the sleep from their eyes.

“Sekti is after her child, we had a break in earlier and her egg was stolen,” Aeris explained.

“Where is Cebyr then?” one of them replied, looking around for the warm gray owlet.

“She took him along for some reason, that woman can be pretty weird in her ways. I was too late to realize as well, he would have been safer here…”

A few nodded. “What’s the plan of action Aeris?” A deep voice coming up from behind her.

A hunched over wood owl came walking in from the still opened doors, leaning heavily into his staff.

“Fargnau, thank you for actually coming.” A sigh of relief escaped Aeris.

“Well… If we split to teams we can comb out the woods fairly quickly, they ran for the riverbanks, let’s hope your egg doesn’t get lost.”

Fargnau didn’t care too much for anyone it seemed, let alone a tiny owl somehow always beside him looking for his attention. Aeris, and others never understood me on that. He just liked my company mostly while reading, easy to absentmindedly talk to. He liked the songs I hum when reading or writing. But when I say I want something, I’m sure to get it! Even if it’s a child, I won’t take no for an answer and I wanted him to be the father. He may not care about them but at least he would be a good teacher in their later years.

I truly loved him, and even if he seemed to not care about me, I knew better. The unreachable is strived for, I suppose. So I decided to give him a bookmark once, I spent weeks finding what I needed for it and preparing it.

A couple of tiny flowers, dried between pieces of paper and flattened with books, then poured in amber.

He never even thanked me for it, but for the past 45 years he has been using it. I asked him about it once. “I know it’s mine and I can always find it,” he had replied. That was the only time I saw him giving a wink.

That was when I realized, I could get from him what I had always wanted. It was then I could convince him to have our first child, Cebyr.

We never spoke about that moment, not a word. Nobody knew but us, things didn’t really change between us on the surface. The other sages couldn’t understand, this man was an immovable mountain to them.

I ordered Aeris to contact him because of that, he would care for Cebyr even if it wasn’t in a parental way. Aeris was a darling, and would help me out at any request I had raising the owlet, but she was still young and simple minded. Too much black and white thinking, Fargnau at least always thought before his actions.