Built to Burn

Though the amenities were quite dull, Zephyrus was beginning to enjoy his home. It was dark and tightly enclosed, with soot-lined walls that if he pressed up against too tightly would further darken his spotty grey plumage. Each night the owl who'd hatched him would depart through a hole the floor itself and the chick would wait excitedly for when the heart shaped face would return to push through the broken damper with a fat vole in her beak. As his body began to grow so did his courage, and soon Zeph was peeking his own beak down into the firebox and imagining his own first exploration from the nest.

The frantic sound of wing beats broke the boy from his dreaming, his empty stomach churning in early anticipation of the coming meal. It was not a noise he was used to - as his surrogate mother typically flew very silently - and it drew his curiosity. He hopped toward the hole in the ground, curving his talons along the hard stone and struggling to squeeze his head further down into the firebox for a closer look. Feathers were strewn about the floor below, though the lintel blocked most of the chick's view of the scene unraveling before him. There was a pained cry, and the fluttering of wings quieted abruptly.

Zephyr blinked in confusion, unkempt head tilting to the side. The barn owl had not yet poked her head back into the smoke shelf where his nest lay - had she been unsuccessful in her hunt? His stomach protested loudly against the injustice and his talons squeezed tighter upon the stone, his heart pounding hard as he looked down at the drop below. There was always the chance that his mother had decided her hunger came first, and that just a few feet away he'd find her ripping pieces of meat from his meal, and the thought was enough to steel the chick's heart and hop down into the firebox.

He found himself caught in a windstorm of soot, ash and bits of charred wood before his young body even hit the ground. It obscured his vision, filled his lungs, and brought an indignant croak from his burning throat. Desperate to get out of the cloud of ash, he hop stepped forward bashing into the inner hearth's walls until finally he'd found himself tumbling out of the fireplace entirely. Bits of cobweb clung to his face and hung off his beak and he lifted his stubby wing lifting to bat angrily at it. So overwhelmed was the chick by the newness of it all, that he hardly noticed the other presence in the room.

The harpy eagle had pulled away from the long-undisturbed bones in the corner and turned it's curved beak toward the chick. The slow clicking of talons across the hard floor was an early alarm to the boy, who'd in expectant hunger whirled on the noise to see that this was not his mother-owl. There was a change in the wind as the eagle took to the air, rushing across the room with talons extended toward him. Zephyr squeaked in alarm, waddling backwards and bringing from the eagle a shrill scream that reverberated so deep within his breast that he thought his heart might burst.

Panicked the chick panic-hopped across the floor toward the only form of protection he could immediately identify. A decrepit, broken down chunk of something vaguely wood-ish, with a space beneath that he could only pray would fit his growing body. A wave of pain crossed the crown of his head followed by a chill of cold, the growing tuft of feathers there torn by the much-too-close swipe of a fly-by talon. He squeezed himself beneath the bed before the eagle could turn and readjust - streaking blood across the underside of the mattress as he did so - and shoving himself as far back as he could. Again and again the talons reached in after him, closing in so narrowly that they fluttered the soft down upon his face. "HELP!" Zephyr cried out, his small form shrinking with fear. "I DON'T WANT TO BE EATEN!"
 
Word Count: 689
"Zephyr"