#pattern assassination

He had no idea how long he’d been trudging through the streets of this human city, with little to guide him but the owl on his shoulder and a creased, brightly-colored map full of incomprehensible writing. It had been months, at least. His supplies had long since run out, leaving him with little but the clothing he wore and a few precious items in the leather pack on his back, his shoes wearing thin.

He was getting very hungry indeed, and was not nearly as clean as he’d prefer to be. Once again, whatever signal the owl seemed to be sensing had cut off abruptly, leaving them to try and guess where it had come from.

It could be much worse, he supposed. While these people didn’t even speak the common human tongue, there were various places to relieve oneself and wash up a little, a luu or a dubbayu-sii. Some of the shops would give out unused food at the end of the day, and as such he had largely been surviving on irregular meals of day-old bread or bay-gulls or cold greasy chipps.

There were plenty of rats, however, and the owl had no trouble feeding herself. She had, in fact, attempted to feed a few to him... but in his current form, this was less than appealing. She would grumble and then swallow the dead rodent herself, not wanting it to go to waste.

You can always go back home, the little voice in the back of his mind would tell him. But that would mean admitting failure... and there was no way he could make this trip again if he aborted it now. She had to be here, on this world.

Somewhere.