CHAPTER 43: UNCEREMONIOUS

"What does that even mean? Who left?"

Hoot~

"Your whole family? When,for what exactly? Wait, just what exactly is going on?"

•••

The owl animatedly flapped her wings as she whistled the fake to the human.

"So a couple weeks ago they came to you and informed you of their leaving this forest for another place? And they did not tell you why or where?"

The owl nodded.

"They do that huh? So why are you still here?"

’That was tactless of me.. It was because she is here that I can talk at all to somebody.’

0^0 (stare....)

"Don’t just stare at me now... "

".."

"Well... do you... want to come with me?"

Noctis asked and then felt himself stupid for asking that.

Perhaps it was just the time that the little owl had gained some independence and had just stuck around the area in case he woke up and looked for them.

He should just be thanking her.

Why then would she come with him?

He really needed a coffee at this time. His brain refused to wake up.

Just as Noctis was mulling over his thoughts, the owl suddenly leaped in the air with her ever silent flaps of wings, floating at his eye level.

"Yeah I get it, I was just kidding."

The owl stared at him for a while before bolting straight towards his head to his utter surprise.

"Hey I said I was joking, why are you- huh!?"

Just as the owl was about to ram in his head straight on he noticed the critter vanishing entirely.

It has actually entered his head as a white light flashed from his temple.

Noctis touched his head and face, gobsmacked as to what just happened before he heard a whistle.

Not in his ears, in his brain directly.

Thinking something, Noctis focused with his eyes closed and entered the snowcapped mental plane.

Just as he had conjectured, he noticed a white owl flying across the landscape inside his mental plane.

"How the how...?"

Krrrrr~

"Oh thanks a lot.. I guess?"

Noctis felt the happiness of the critter as well as her appreciation for the plane and himself felt good without fretting too much over how she entered.

He couldn’t get an answer for now anyway.

"I’ll take that as a yes then?"

He didn’t know what exactly to even feel about that, where was he going anyway?

Well at least he’d have someone to talk to at the very least, so that was cool right..

Thinking along those lines something stuck out to him.

"Why can I understand her speech now by the way?"

As the critter just enjoyed sprawling around the sky, Noctis was forced to chalk it up to yet another effect of the change in himself.

’Such a bizarre world.’

While the owl was flying around, his eyes fixed on her, he also noticed the continuous change happening slowly around the plane.

Quite a few trees had appeared and stood tall over the snow now, full of peculiar white leaves and encased ice.

The sky wasn’t the same white anymore, rather some black had started mixing in at certain locations, making regions of white and black swirling together without actually mixing and making a grey skyline.

Rather it gave off a feeling as if a painter had splashed his canvas with white and black before sorting out his other colours.

’Curious.’

He also noticed the stalk had now grown into a small tree a little taller than him, with a few lush branches.

For now this was the only tree with green leaves and a blonde yellow trunk in the space.

As Noctis was admiring this he heard the owl calling him from a distance.

Focusing on it, Noctis reached her with a thought he noticed something he had somehow missed during the previous visit.

’Was this always here?’

He saw a platform made of ice on which a globe of purple fluid floated about freely.

It wasn’t enough to make a full globe and thus was moving around as if someone was manipulating a canister filled with water, making various shapes.

What struck out to him rather than its colour was the way it felt to him.

Unlike everything in this plane this was the only thing that he somehow felt was completely alien to him.

Mind you not even the stars previously and the silver moon in the sky was alien to him but this thing.

For some reason it made him uncomfortable too.

It felt as if he was looking at an animated object filled with malice.

Noctis took a step forward as he stretched his hand to touch the purple sludge to check if he could understand something.

But before his fingers could touch the liquid he felt himself forced to stop in his tracks.

As he took his eyes away from the liquid to look at his hands, he found his wrist, forearm and even shoulders being held gently but firmly by numerous white, blue and even green vines.

Along with it, an ice wall stood between his fingers and the purple fluid, barring any contact whatsoever.

Understanding the intent coming from the plane itself, Noctis took a step back as the vines as well as the ice retreated to its earlier positions.

’I don’t have great luck with strange liquids, do I?’

Noctis mused to himself.

But on a serious note, this was definitely bad news, so why did he have this in his mental plane anyway?

Before he could spend too much thinking about this he felt himself ejected unceremoniously in the real world.

Back in the real world Noctis fumed over the lack of hospitality from its own supposed plane, and some more when he noticed it was only him and not the owl.

"What the hell are you still doing there, come on out already!"

Krook-kwook~

"What jealousy? Shut the hell up, already stupid owl."

Krrrrr~

"Yeah whatever."

"Anyway I just realised you don’t have a name and I do not like it to keep calling you owl. Imagine calling someone human, human over and over. I could never."

0^0

"Right, no help here.

Let’s see... owl, owl, owl... oh I get it! Minerva! Form the Roman goddess of wisdom. Uhmm that’d be perfect.

How about it?"

Krr~~

"Glad you do. Alright then. Minerva it is."