Heron Lake Plateau under stars

Owen was startled awake by the howl that came reverberating down the hollow of the entryway. He glanced uncertainly around, but with curiosity getting the better of him stuck his small black nose outdoors and wriggled it intently. The velvet carpet of the sky high above glittered clear and beautiful, and the longer his nose worked the more individuals' scents he could pick out, not that far away and several of them pretty familiar by now. He took a deep breath, girded his courage about him and, with one final glance back to check and see who if anyone else in the dark recesses of the den might follow—da was still back there, at least, right? He had been when Owen had gone to sleep, but the boy feared his courage would fail him if he snuck back in again to check now, and he didn't hear anything from @Quixote, so... he then padded out into the night. His gait was only a little uncertain and unsteady these days; most of his feet's weaving was now due to a combination of environmental hazards and the turbulence of his inner emotional state that was driving them onward. As Owen reached the edge of the gathering of wolves, his feet stuttered to a halt; after a brief hesitation he silently offered an uncertain signing of, -Hello...to all...?-

Owen's eyes darted from one wolf to another, hovering briefly on first this one and then that like a dragonfly on the prowl. It was just as he was looking again at Towhee and quietly wondering if he was going to see some strange display of her bird-morphing powers this evening, and if perhaps the howl had had something to do with that, that he caught a sudden flickering glimpse of something bright and fast in the sky high above. Owen gasped and darted into his aunt Towhee's shadow, where he cowered and looked about more wildly yet. What on earth had that thing been?! He had never in his short life seen anything like it. He huddled and worried about its opinions regarding the tastiness of small puppies even as he looked around at the adults in bewilderment to see if any of them had seen...whatever it was, and whether they too were perhaps worried about the size of its teeth or the capacity of its stomach. Owen threw a pleading glance over his shoulder, hoping that ma or da or perhaps @Niamh or @Eljay might at any moment materialize there to reassure him; right now he was ready to dart over to them and press his face straight into their fur if that somehow magically did happen. Once he was absolutely certain he was safe, then he could have a better look around and maybe try to figure out what he had glimpsed. But thus far in his short life he hadn't had the best of luck with strange inanimate objects; he wasn't about to take a chance with this one that seemed to be fully and quite speedily animate.