The feathers feel so different.

And the colors are, too.

Her wings ache, and her back feels raw, her spine rediscovering where each vertebra starts and stops with a long, deep stretch.

She looks around, and everything is a fog of ash and mist. A cold smolder of something familiar and not at the same time. Almost like being in several places at once – looking at one’s self, being the snow on the branch, the branch on the tree, and the snowy owl looking at the branch as it lands and feels the snow as they all look back at you, the observer, who feels all their sensations at once.

She shakes off her body and looks around.

“Oh, this mess!” she thinks looking at everything around her.

Nothing is in place, or maybe nothing makes sense anymore.

In her mind, is a jumble of thoughts fighting for dominance: What am I doing? Ugh, look at this muck. Where was I going again? Everything is sore. Is it ALL supposed to be this sore? Where the heck am I? What is this? I had a plan…

She welcomes the rain and the cold feeling that will wash her clean from the chaos of whatever “this” “is”. “Maybe then,” she thought, “I will have a better idea of what this is going to be.”

And so she takes in the sensations of freezing rain, the pain of it makes her feel alive.

She shakes off again, and decides to seek shelter.