The Counsel of Owls

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There are moments when I can sense a certain something trying to communicate with me. This certain something is within me. It is me. But which me is it?

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Last night in the still of darkness, the midnight hour, a screech cut through the silence.

It repeated itself, it wanted to be heard.

It was heard.

A reply came in the form of a gentle ghostly hoot.

The screech repeated.

The hoot replied, then added a new sound to its call, a woo to the hoot. A woo-hoot.

The screech became a squawk. A screech with a squawk.

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The conversation moved on.

It flew from tree to tree.

First they were close, then afar, then close again, closer still.

A kerfuffling ruffle occurred as they came together,

the sound becoming a screech-woo-squawk-hoot,

conversation merging,

communication becoming communion.

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The moment of cacophonous chaos passed.

Order returned and separated them.

The separation after union.

The screech-squawk going one way, the woo-hoot going the other.

The distance between them growing.

The distance between them…

…and me, the one who overheard,

gradually became me alone.

In the night, the still of darkness, after the midnight hour.

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I wondered what it meant,

this council of owls… this counsel of owls.

What it meant for them.

What it meant for me, the overhearing one, the auricular observer.

I could not make heads nor tails of it, it was all feathers to me.

It was an earful of sound without meaning… unless I gave it a meaning,

for them,

for me.

And so I did.

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Not last night.

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But this morning.

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Alive project by Andreas Preis