Four weeks. Give or take. That was how old I was today. The sun was rising just about now. Father would soon deliver the last meal of the night before disappearing to wherever he rested during the day. Mother still warily kept watch over the outside world. I tried sneaking by her again and caught a glimpse of a mountain slightly to the right and opposite of our cave. It had a very steep slope with a few outcroppings and caves here and there. Some small greenery such as shrubs and bushes as well as the occasional hardy tree survived on the otherwise mostly barren rock.

But before I could make out any more details my mother had shoved me back into the cave rather aggressively. Seems I angered her.

‘You know they say curiosity killed the cat, right? Well, I’m an owl, so I’m fine! Just let me take a look, mum, please?’

No amount of cute head tilting and large eyes could convince her. How harsh!

Well, looking at my siblings I understood how I might be moving away from cute and towards pretty, but that was no excuse to ignore my pleas! Looking at my siblings, and what I was able to see of myself with my insane range of motion in my neck (which was really fun by the way!) I could see a lot had changed with us over these past two weeks.

Our second down, which we were just in the process of growing two weeks ago, has started to fall out even on my youngest sibling. My feathers looked already pretty much like a fully juvenile plumage. I might even be able to start flying soon, but there were still a lot of down feathers on my body and even parts of my wings so I would probably crash face-first into the ground. What I did like about these new feathers is how I seemed to have adopted mother’s colours. Mostly brown on my back and head (which I could not see but assumed due to my covert feathers being that same colour as mother’s) and white with splotches on my chest, belly and under my wings. I would be pretty! Yes!

My status had also changed quite a bit. It seemed to reflect my growth into a juvenile Great Eagle Owl:

Species: Great Eagle Owl (juvenile)

Age: 0

Name: -

Gender: female

Status: sapient, healthy

Level: 1

Class: -

Strength: 6

Constitution: 6

Dexterity: 9

Perception: 10

Intelligence: 12

Wisdom: 8

AP: 0

Skills: [Owl Senses lvl 1], [Preening lvl 2], [Owl Stomach lvl 2], [Solid Grip lvl 1], [Soundless Flight locked], [Maths lvl 3], [Identify lvl 1]

First of all, my stats had grown again. Besides my ‘magic’ stats. They did not want to change at all. At this point, I was just glad they were not shrinking with how little intelligence I was surrounded by. Not to insult my family, but they were very simple animals. They ate, shat and slept. And when they were not doing any of those they watched the outsides or shuffled around a little whenever it got cold.

I instead did some simple thinking exercises. I had been able to recall more of my maths knowledge. It was hard, but I calculated every number squared up to twenty. And then cubed. And then up to thirty. And forty. I could not do any more. Not without writing it down. And the rock of our home was too hard to scratch while the dirt got messed up every time my siblings shoved each other around to get food when father brought over his latest spoils.

But my efforts bore fruit! In my skills! Yes, once I turned juvenile my skills unlocked. The first few skills sounded like standard owl stuff. Racial skills or something of the likes. I would bet my siblings and parents had all of these too.

Senses, because owls can hear and see really well. Smell did not seem to be included or I would not be able to stomach any food in this cave full of bird excrement.

Preening, because birds do that, duh.

Stomach seemed to help digest food whole. Since owls vomit up the remains they can’t digest I wonder if getting this skill to max level might allow me to digest even fur and bones completely, and not have to throw up a pellet? That was quite unpleasant.

Grip because owls have strong talons to catch prey and sit on branches while roosting. That was probably why it was still level 1 for me. I did not catch prey and I did not sit on branches. No branches in a cave.

Soundless Flight was another typical owl thing. It was still locked for me. I hoped that it unlocked once I would become a fledgeling and was not somehow broken because I was different. And I knew I was different because of the next skill: Maths.

Ever seen an owl do maths? And level 3 seemed to be quite decent considering I only had level 2 in preening which I did a lot of every day to both myself and my siblings. This also led me to believe the last skill was something not every owl has. My skills came grouped like this. I did no sorting or anything like that. I did not even know if it was possible to sort my skills. I really hoped it was, or it would get pretty difficult to keep track of any changes once I got some more skills.

Why I did no sorting? Well, my skills just unlocked like five minutes ago and I just did not try yet. But I would try soon. First, though, it was food time. Father’s wings throwing a shadow over our little entrance and blocking the morning light from falling into it made my siblings and myself perk up. We were always hungry. That is how I knew I was one of them. We were screeching for food together.

The morning sun fell on the left side of our cave and disappeared quickly over the course of the early day. I had extrapolated our cave to be facing towards the northeast. If the sun rose in the east in this world, I was right. Right now it shone on the bounty father had brought to feed his hungry kids. A hare. And a big one. This should be enough to sate all of us for a good while. We would not be getting much food for the day, since father rested during that time, so good job on a fat final hunt.

Before we were able to partake in our feast, mother suddenly perked up alert. She shoved past father and let out a piercing screech that hurt my ears so bad I thought I would go deaf. Just as suddenly as it started, it was over. And with a powerful flap of her wings mother disappeared into the morning sky. Father seemed to be worried, the way he looked after her, but he retreated into the cave with us.

And then something magical happened. At first, I did not even notice it, but father’s dirty-grey feathers turned darker and darker. Smoky plumes drifted off his slightly spread wings and when the floating clouds started blocking my vision of the sky past our cave I took notice. He was covering our home in darkness. He was hiding us. Right before the plumes fully closed up I heard a roar not far above the cave. Something that had a place more in a dinosaur’s throat than anywhere else. The roar dampened as the smoke closed up, but it did not completely cut off and was answered by a shriek that created small holes in the shadow smoke, letting beams of light fall into the cave.

Father retreated further into the cave. He made sure to keep us behind him with his wings, but he did not need to. We were already huddled together at the very back of our little hole in the mountainside, shaking in fear. How could owls survive anywhere near something that made such a sound? Especially when it could apparently fly as well since I heard it roar above and in front of us where there was nothing but an empty sky on a normal day.

The screeching and roaring went back and forth for a while, decreasing in volume and hopefully increasing in distance. But I was still scared for mother. She rushed out there to fight whatever that thing was. And while her screeching hurt a lot, just before she took off, I could not see her winning against something this large sounding. Father seemed to be just as worried. The shadows deepened with every minute and he was sitting in front of us shaking slightly. His head lowered and wings slightly spread. I believe he planned to defend us if whatever was fighting mother won, or there were more of it.

A few uncountably tense minutes passed by slowly before suddenly with a loud crash something slammed into the mountain directly above our home. With a splotch sound, it landed on the outcropping in front of our cave. A victorious screech followed by another damp thump and slowly the shadows receded with father taking a few careful steps forward.

Once the shadows had dissipated far enough for me to see the outside, I was completely dumbstruck. Mother sat on top of a body. A leathery lizard-like form with feathers extending from extremely long forelegs. A skin crown half-raised around its head flared a little as its eyes fluttered closed. There were bleeding wounds all over its body, ripped by something sharp. The blood on mother’s bill and talons left no question as to what inflicted those wounds.

That said, mother did not get away completely unscathed either. Her feathers were ruffled and blood was dripping from her left foot. One of her ear tufts was ripped off as well. She was however barely wounded compared to the thing lying at our front door. Bleeding out on our front door. It was still twitching its tail and limbs every now and then but seemed to have lost all strength. Wait. Would this not be a good time to try using identify?

[Identify]

Species: Feathered Wyvern (fledgeling)

Wow. Very useful. At least I knew what it was called. But you really could not have given me more? Like age? Or a level? Or maybe its status? I mean, I totally saw it would be dead any moment but still. This was pretty much nothing. It did however tell me one thing. Because the Wyvern looked at me the second I used [Identify] on it. Even in its super weak almost dead state it still noticed me using a skill on it. And it let out a terrifying growl immediately silenced by mother’s talons finishing it off. Now how would a possibly healthy monster react to this? I would probably be found and attacked immediately. Or prey. They would run away the moment I scouted them. No using this when I go hunting, got it. If it did not give me any useful information, why should I even want to use it at all?

While I contemplated my useless skill, mother jumped off her prey and started pulling off small bits and pieces, throwing them to my siblings. Father also helped himself to a generous meal. Not wanting to be left behind, I hurried away from the back wall towards our morning feast. Since we would rest during the day, I guess this was dinner? And it was tasty! Okay, everything meat was tasty. I was an owl now, I could only eat meat. And because my body liked food, this was tasty!

I want to say the next few weeks passed peacefully and nothing interesting happened, but that would be a lie. At least on the interesting part. Because I had seen my father use magic! Or at least what I assumed was magic. And so I decided I would learn magic.