From outside the bedroom window comes the screech of an owl, a sudden war cry beyond its peaceful hooting. With it, a mouse or a squirrel cries like a baby as it perishes, blood spilling on the pure white blanket of snow. Inside the house, a girl with a shy smile, patrolling her own habits, not watching nature, not aware of nature watching her, loyal to the mythology of safety that has four walls, but no defense for it. She comes home at night at the same time, leaving in the morning at the same time, driveway dark, obvious to anything outside that watches her world with the same intensity by which she disregards it.
A couple of miles away, a moonlit lane between pine trees and stone. There in the shadows, only steps away, a long shadow shifts. A woman with a gun stops, sensing movement, sensing darkness within the dark, in the woods past her mailbox. Her hand moves to her firearm, poised. A bobcat, easing back through the trees. A shadow, a form that slides like light through a picket fence, slanting sideways, then disappearing under cover. Her hand eases away from her weapon, but she backs away, towards light, towards home and sleep.
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