CHAPTER TWELVE: {THE BELOVED}

Late, late in the afternoon Crow finally stirred. I was a mountain, she remembered, with a small and anxious Crow inside me. She blinked, confused. She wasn’t in her familiar forest, there was no flood, and she had the odd sensation that she was the wrong size. But she was calm. Calmness spread through all her muscles and up to the tip of every feather on her wings. This was new. 

Being a crow, she was always interested in new things. She explored the sensation a little more and found layers of feeling. Underneath the calm she found a sadness for the mess she had made of things. But covering that was a warm sense of forgiveness for herself. Underneath everything else, she found a knowing that she would have to make things right somehow, and a trust that she would learn how… even if it took a very long time. The last new thing she noticed was herself noticing. This, too, was new. I got bigger, she thought to herself. I’m able to be in me and outside of me, looking in.

Slowly, slowly she came out of her reverie and readied herself to fly home. But was her home forest really her home, now? This was a surprising question and she filed it away to think more on later, now that she was a Crow who gave herself plenty of time to think about things. In fact, this new thoughtfulness was so much fun she found herself perched at the very top of the mountain surveying the forests below—her own forest on one side and the new forest she’d visited on the other. She thought about all the ways they were similar and different, and all the things she thought she knew about them that she wasn’t so sure about anymore. Where do I go now, she thought, when I’m not sure of anything anymore? The question was a little exciting. She wasn’t in any hurry to answer it. 

As the sky began to darken into a rich sunset, she watched the striking colors come and go and she watched her thoughts do the same. She started to sense that she was no longer alone, but the feeling crept up on her gradually. When she turned to check, she found Owl perched a few short hops away. 

“Hello, Owl.” she said, feeling anew that sense of warmth, calm, and a little sadness. 

“Twilight greetings, Crow.” Owl replied. 

And then they were quiet. Perhaps each of them had questions in their own minds about the other, but for a long while, neither spoke. Owl learned a lot about Crow from the silence she kept. Finally, Crow broke the silence— 

“I owe you an apology, Owl. Perhaps more than one.” 

“Mmmm…” is all the Owl said as a reply.

“I was so afraid and didn’t know it!” Crow continued, “I went on and on about things I don’t understand, and I was so wrong about so much.”

“Yes, you were,” said Owl, almost amused. “But tell me, what do you think you were wrong about?”

“I’m afraid it may take a long time to talk about all the things I’ve been wrong about,”  Crow mused. 

“We have time.” Owl assured her. “The night is young.” 

Again, Crow and Owl sat in silence. Stars, like wildflowers, began to shine across the vast field of night sky before them. 

Crow began to remember the dream of her forest being destroyed. It had scared her so much, and when she woke up to find the strange rock in her nest, she was so sure it meant danger. She shared this memory with Owl. “That was one of the first things I got terribly wrong. Because the truth is I had no idea what that rock meant, if it meant anything.”

Owl seemed very interested in the rock and Crow described it, remembering how beautiful it was. Another pause came over their conversation as they watched the stars grow brighter. 

“Oh, Owl, I then made so many mistakes in a row… it’s hard to talk about.” 

“What was the worst one?” Owl asked. 

“Ha! What a question!” Crow laughed, feeling a bit more heartened. “Well, the first worst one was telling my family that you were the enemy responsible for dropping a rock in my nest—because then they all wanted to go to war.” “Yeah, that one’s pretty bad,” Owl agreed. 

“But then the next worst mistake was being so arrogant when I met the stag that they walked away from me pitying me!” Crow was on a roll now, “and then the next worst one was how completely ignorant I was when I first met you! I was trying to impress you but didn’t have a clue what I was talking about. I really just felt lost and scared and wanted a friend.” 

Owl was quiet for a while. And then said, “When we first met, you told me that you came to the mountain looking for me. Was that true?” 

“Yes and no. I wasn’t sure what I was looking for then, though I was interested in getting to know you. But after I made a mess of that conversation, my next worst mistake was kicking rocks at some snakes—”

Owl inhaled in a sharp hiss. “You did that?”

“Well, yes and no. It was an accident. And now that I think about it, I’m not sure that part was a mistake. I mean, they didn’t seem to mind. Though I don’t think I’ll be kicking rocks at anyone again,” Crow hastened to add. “But they helped me realize I was angry and then I went into this very strange dream…”  Crow fell quiet, thinking about what she had experienced in the dream. Finally, she said, “It helped me see that I went out in search of whatever it was that was threatening my forest, whatever it was that was scaring me so much that it had the power to ruin my sense of safety. And I did find it, but it was me, not you.”

There was another long, long quiet. Only once Owl spoke again did Crow notice that Owl had moved much closer to her.

“It sounds like that last dream was a teaching dream.” Owl said. “I love teaching dreams.”

“You have them too?” Crow asked. 

“Oh, yes. When I’m lucky.” 

“Do they always show you your mistakes?”

Owl ruffled some feathers and made a sound something between a snort and a chuckle. 

“Or do owls not make as many mistakes as crows do?” Crow asked. 

“Owls make different mistakes. And yes, sometimes they teach me what I’ve gotten wrong, but sometimes my teaching dreams help me imagine something I’ve never experienced. Like this conversation.” 

“You dreamed we would meet and talk on this mountain?”

“Well, not exactly. It was more of a forest, but not like one I’ve ever been in. The air was warm and the trees heavy with bright, round fruits. But I was sharing my tree with a crow and we were talking of many things. In the dream, I had no fear of this crow.” 

Crow became aware of a new idea—just as she had been afraid of Owl, Owl had been afraid of her. She would never have known it, and Owl was barely admitting it, but she was starting to understand that owls spoke very differently from crows. They said less, but they meant a lot with every word they used. Or, she corrected herself, at least this one did. 

“That sounds like a good dream.” said Crow. 

“I think so.” said Owl. 

Together, they watched the fully darkened sky aglow with stars, each imagining a forest they’d never visited, with trees bearing bright fruits, like the bright new questions and visions that began to grow in their minds as they relaxed more fully into their conversation.

THE END.