Heron Lake Plateau not looking for a confession

Owen's intent green eyes took note of the subtle uneasy shifting of weight on Phox's part. This line of questioning seemed to be making his elder kind of uncomfortable, it looked like... which surely was a sign his uncle must be privy to some really juicy family secrets, right?

Phox didn't offer up very much of that juice to fill Owen's alertly tilted ears, however. Disappointing. Maybe his uncle thought Owen was too young to have such details spilled to him. Or too dumb to get it. Or both, who knows. There was one thing though that caught Owen's attention and left his mouth hanging ajar as the implications hit him—an explanation that made some past cryptic remarks of Raven's suddenly make more sense, in hindsight. Wait, y'mean mom was your mom too?! Even though she's also your sister? Owen struggled to wrap his mind around this concept. No freaking way he could imagine Kite or Vasa or Phoebe being a mother to anyone, but especially not to a brother. That was a notion so firmly planted in bizarroland that even Owen's overactive imagination had trouble stretching to encompass it. You and Towhee and— and wait! Did she mother baby X too?! Owen had no idea just what a comical picture his face was as his brain jumped to trying to imagine that, though on some level that still seemed less of a leap than the change from sister to mother. Owen was still pretty fuzzy on a lot of the details of how this whole familymaking kidraising strange business worked but even so, how would one ever nurse a baby raptor?! He was pretty sure the sharp beaks would present some problems, at the very least. And imagine growing up with not only a sister for a mother but a bird for a replacement sibling! Gosh this family was weird sometimes. How had his dad ever managed to entangle himself in all this mess, too? It was just crazy.

Or might Phox be making a bunch of this stuff up, to divert Owen away from areas of greater uncomfortableness? The youngster gave his uncle a doubtful sidelong look, trying to make certain he wasn't being taken in by some sort of family tall tales, here.