Guardians of Ga'Hoole 14 - Exile

snakes twined themselves through the branches of the aerie and glimmered in the rising sun like bright ribbons. They wouldkeep the day watch, for their sleeping habits were very different from those of owls.
    Had they, however, kept a night watch and not frolicked so heartily performing their skywriting, they might have caught sight of a Burrowing Owl hiding in one of the thick cumulus clouds. Concealed under his coverts was a small blue feather. He was a spy and what he had seen was strange, very strange. But he knew it was good information, valuable information. He did not particularly like wearing the stupid blue feather, but compromises had to be made. He would be handsomely rewarded. One had to look out for one’s own self-interests, after all, and his future was uncertain since that last battle in the Middle Kingdom.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Word by Word
    T his can’t be so, can it, Mrs. Plithiver?” “I’m afraid it is.” Soren peeked into his hollow. Pelli was sobbing.
    “Why? Why would he abandon us like this?” she was saying. “Why have they all left?”
    “But I haven’t!” Soren exclaimed. “I am right here. Right here! Can’t you see me?” He flew into the hollow and alighted on his old perch, the one from which he often read to the three B’s. But Pelli and the three B’s stared right through him. Was it possible? Had he become like mist, some vaporous collection of insignificant water droplets in the air? His gizzard froze. “It’s me!” he cried out to them. “Me!”
    “Wake up, Soren, You’re dreaming. Just dreaming,” Gylfie said, fluttering above her best friend. Her tiny wings beat madly in an attempt to fan him and bring Soren out of whatever terrible dream he was lost in.
    “But it was so real!” Soren gasped.
    “It was just a dream,” Gylfie said again. Digger and Twilight exchanged nervous glances. They all knew that for Soren there was no such thing as just a dream. Soren possessed a rare ability: starsight, which was a kind of dream vision in which he could see the future, or things that were happening in some distant place. The other members of the Band never asked him for the details of these visions. There was a silent understanding that it was best not to make such inquiries.
    “Look,” said Digger, trying to quell any telltale quaver in his voice. “It’s almost tween time.” The sky was streaked with the deep purples of twilight. In another few minutes it would be completely black. “What do you say we get going to this book place?”
    “What, no tweener? I’m starved,” Twilight said.
    “I prefer to fly light,” Hortense said. It was all the Band could do to keep from bursting out in churrs of laughter. Light? What could be lighter than Hortense, who was not much more than a collection of dewdrops? “Don’t worry, Twilight,” Hortense added. “We’ll pass over a meadow that is crawling with voles. You can eat on the fly.” Eating on the fly was a skill that all Guardians had developed to a high degree, especially in time of war. It involved seizing the prey, then immediately taking off again and dismembering it to be shared as they flew.
    They found a plump summer vole almost immediately. “Can’t believe how much fat this fellow still has on him,” Twilight said. “And here we are well into autumn.”
    “He must have been lounging around in his hole,” Gylfie said.
    “Must have been a tight fit for a chubby rodent like this,” Digger commented.
    They all churred. Digger, being a Burrowing Owl and superb excavator for the construction of nesting burrows, was an expert in such matters.
    “I’ll just take the tongue,” Hortense said.
    “You sure?” Soren asked.
    “Oh, yes. Fatty foods, yechhh! Just can’t eat them anymore.” Once again the Band was struck by the oddity of Hortense’s remarks on eating.
    With his superb hearing, Soren could pick up all of the squeaks and grunts and grinds of their gizzards as they digested the bones and hair of the vole, organizing it into the tight packets that would soon be pellets. It seemed deafening to him. He flew off from the others for he wanted to be able to hear the first sounds of this Place of Living Books.
    Hortense was soon beside him. Her own gizzard was almost perfectly silent. Whatever mechanisms turnedthere were closer to the sounds of the fluttering wings of a moth than a gizzard packing pellets.
    “You won’t hear anything, Soren, until we’re actually there,” Hortense