• If any owl had the right to call herself extraordinary, well, Emma Brighteye certainly did.
    She just didn’t know it yet.
    In fact, Emma saw herself as little less than ordinary. She was of average intelligence, and her feathers were a dingy brown color. But underneath this unassuming exterior, a great power lurked, waiting to be woken.
    Emma, oblivious to this slumbering force within her, would wake up every dusk and make the long journey to the canyons. She would work from midnight ‘til dawn, and would arrive back at her nest well after sunup. Such a schedule is not fit for an owl, but Emma went about her nightly work as if it were perfectly normal.
    Many owls worked at the canyons. You see, there was this new, top secret project for something or other, commanded by whoknowswho. No one was sure on the details of what they were doing, not exactly, but they were promised great benefice once the project was completed, and owls arrived in droves every night to work.
    Emma, barley out of the nest, was one of the hardest workers there. Ever since her parents had died in a forest fire, Emma had to learn how to be self sufficient. She didn’t have her family when she ate her first mouse, or yarped her first pellet. When she threw herself out of the nest, she was alone, with only the tree to cheer her on.
    It hadn’t exactly been an easy life.
    So Emma worked every night in the canyons, and every day she returned home weary and would sleep, only to find herself blinking awake one moment later. She lived this way for two years, before, one day, something happened to change all that.