Sparrow

0♠ A Beginning

They say it takes a village to raise a child. That you need the support of a community to parent them well. My mother, Vivian, never had that. All she could offer me was her love, and it's the only thing that kept me warm in the small pine shack we called a home.

It's been ten years since I last had a place like that. Ten years since I last had a mother. When the plague swept our lands, it took her with it. It nearly took me too, but God had a different plan for me. One I hadn't expected.

All my life, I'd heard my mother speak of shadoes. She said only those the world could not survive without had them. I'd never known someone with such a gift, but she had. All the stories she told helped me sleep, even on the coldest of nights. I always wondered what it was like to have one—wondered what it cost.

"Oak! Oak!"

My raspy alto voice soared through the weight of the snow storm, an element I was all too familiar with. The never ending curse of winter had been a reality decades before my own conception—this world of white the only constant I'd known in life.

As the crisp chilling wind billowed through the hood of my caribou coat, ruffling raven hair across my frostbitten face, I continued the gruelling hike through the storm, keeping my crystal blue eyes on the sky.

"Oak!" I called out once more, cupping my gloved hands around my splitting lips.

A minute passed, and I began to wonder if I'd somehow wandered a way other than intended. With the snowfall as heavy as it was, it was possible I'd lost my sense of direction, but I couldn't recall straying. Just as I was about to change course, a long familiar screech rang out, clearing me of my questioning.

Barely visible through the camaflouge of her white feathered skin, a beautiful barn owl decended from the sky, its talons spread in preparation for landing.

A smile spread across my face as I extended my arm, watching as the bird neared.

"It's about time you showed up," I said, rubbing my knuckle against her small beak. "Now, lead the way to cover before I freeze to death."

Not a second passed before the owl took flight, following my request. I was quick to raise and lower my legs as I ran through the thick layer of snow on the ground, keeping the bird in sight, knowing relief from the weather would soon be in reach.

As I watched her soar, I remembered the day I found her. My mother had died just a few months prior and I was still struggling to adjust to life alone when she showed up in my life, her broken wing drawing my attention. That was nearly a decade ago, and my life was forever changed. Oak was my shadoe, and I was her lynk. We were shadoe-bonded, given a second chance at life to do something great for the betterment of the world—at least, that's what my mother would have said. That's what she believed. Did I believe it? Well, that was still to be determined.

My name is Sparrow, and this is where my story begins.