Fanart: Inktober – Owl

:D Ich hab sie dir einmal herausgesucht:

»There was a time when it was people’s standard procedure to openly lay out their beloved decedents at home. Though it is still possible to do, it has become rather uncommon. In the procedure itself, the corpses get inspected and if there isn't any infectionous illness detected by the coroner, they can be cleaned and clothed with the burial shroud. Back then, when we hadn’t discovered electricity yet, the laying out was accompanied by candles during the night which attracted nocturnal animals especially in rural areas. The tawny owl was one of them and the person oder group of people responsible for the death watch often times heard their spooky hoots. But not only that, the owl was also believed to be the collector of the dead man’s souls. That’s why in one particular night something really unfortunate happened. A woman lay there crying and hunched over her dead husband’s corpse. She couldn’t bare her loss and didn’t want to accept his death. It couldn’t be. They had just gotten together despite their parents prohibitions. So many obstacles they had had to overcome and now it was all for nothing. It just couldn’t be. Firstly, she didn’t hear the sound of the hooting over her sobbing, but when she turned her head to get a fresh breath she saw a tawny owl sitting on the window frame just as they said there would be. She knew it had come to collect her loved ones soul. No, she thought. She wouldn’t let that happen. Therefore, she grasped the rifle, her father loved and had stuck above the cupboard and she shot the owl. It seemed to be a deadly shot since the owl fell backwards out of the window and landed with a nasty sound on the ground. The woman was relieved for a moment until she went back to the side of the deathbed and began crying once more. Also the following night she sat there weeping and trying to escape the painful truth. On the third night when people had already begged her to let go and let them burry the corpse, because he was already starting to rot, she barricaded the door so they wouldn’t take him away from her. As she turned her head however, she saw the owl she had shot sitting on the window frame ones more. Only this time she had a nasty hole and scar where once its second eye had been. In utter fear the woman tried to grasp the rifle again and pulled the trigger. The cartridge chamber was empty though and before she could do anything else she felt her conscious mind being sucked out by an invisible force. It is said that from this day forward, the woman stayed in the room crying for the rest of her life without even knowing who she was nor why she was crying at all. It was as if only a moving corpse remained which was occasionally fed and taken care of by her relatives. The owl had indeed come to collect the soul of the dead man - without any bad intention. After it got shot, however, the owl couldn’t distinguish anymore between the living and the dead, so it collected both their souls. In the end, the woman couldn’t let go and therefore lost all of her loved ones: her husband and herself.«