FACT: Field mice have the reputation for preparing world-class lasagna

She laughed, broke off a dead branch, and threw it toward Aubrey. He dodged it nimbly.

“You’d better watch out. You don’t want to have an owl for an enemy.”

“And why is that?”

“Incredible eyesight, Razor-sharp talons, the ability to do this.” She turned her head nearly a full circle.

“That’s disgusting.”

“All the better to see you with, my dear.”

The sunset bathed the forest in an inviting emerald glow, the kind that always made Aubrey feel like curling up to watch the day’s conclusion. Days like these were the reason he used to venture out in the evenings. For every hundred overcast and rainy nights; for every night he’d come home sniffling and shaking the raindrops off his coat, there was an evening like this, when the universe seemed to smile and look down on the Meadow. What was it the sages’ said? “The evening’s glow is a reminder to take stock of the day.” All the turmoil of the past weeks was melting away into the balmy amber tide.

“Do you want to fly with me?” Adrianna asked.

“Come again?”

“Fly. You know,” she pointed to the sky with her wing. “It’s fun. And perfectly safe.”

“Yeah, if by perfectly safe you mean hurtling perilously through the air in the talons of a potentially dangerous bird of prey, then yeah, sure.”

“Only potentially dangerous?” she quipped. “Come on, you can trust me…”