What the Owl Sees

A bad winter the worst since the last one. The camp had lost its children and horses now the owl sees her last step. Separated, not expelled in disgrace, but her tribe disenthralled, deprived of care by deaths unremitting cull. She, the last to stumble away from the brow-beaten village knowing there were no more paths for her in this bleak land. Only the moon was not cruel, its wane glow lit her up like its own shadow in the yowling dark. Now only the owl does not hunt her. She knows that if she ever saw herself, so weary and close to the bone, she would think of herself as prey, She would let fly one last arrow for a piercing end, and let the owl see what it may.