Heron Lake Plateau Coo coo for cocoa puffs

Owen's heart leaped gladly at the sight of Niamh barrelling her way toward the bizarre creature and him. His knight in shining armor! His vengeful spirit summoned from the fields beyond to come swooping in to his rescue, or at least to take a bite out of the monsterbird if it was going to go around trying to take bites out of him! Hurrah for the heroic babysitter of the hour! Owen's plaints trailed off, and his eyes widened as he saw Niamh's snapping teeth take a feather for their own. Oh wow—was she going to turn herself into a werebird too now, just like Towhee?!

A tinier yip of suprise escaped him as Kite came thundering out from the opposite side, though with rather worse aim. Owen was relieved: he was doubtful his tiny sister could have taken on the monster without losing an ear or a paw or who knows what. And Kite needed all her body's pieces intact if she was going to learn to walk straight, or properly charge feathery menaces for that matter. Owen let out a small Oof! as she collapsed against him instead, but gratefully accepted her thorough face-washing. He hauled a creamy paw of his own over her back to squooshed himself tighter against her, partly in glad self-reassurance and partly to make sure the birdmonster wasn't going to get a clear shot at Kite next.

As his heart rate slowed, he looked about and stared up in sick fascination past Kite's tiny pink tongue at the weird white featherduster— oh my gosh, its neck was broken again, wasn't it. His eyes bobbled back and forth as they followed the sideways flopping of the bird's head. Now that it wasn't trying to eat his ear, pity was reasserting itself as the main emotion Owen was feeling. This poor monster was screeching some more deluded nonsense of which he understood very little. But he could obviously see this monster was just not right in the head, and given its obvious difficulties—and the still-intact state of his ear when he gave it a quick mental check—Owen felt both sorry for it and curious. He started to bellycrawl closer to get a bit better look at it and see if maybe closing the distance at least some was likely to make its words any more comprehensible or clear.