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weren’t meant to last.
    Another group of neighbors approached us, both human and both looking quite distraught. I stood by for support, but my mind still wandered. If Emily and I weren’t meant to last, then who was truly meant for me? It was a dark thought as my love for Emily was still ripe, but a thought I had to think in order to protect myself. My heart had been bitterly damaged by Jane’s rejection and it taught me to never get too comfortable, but—I wanted to be comfortable. I wanted easy. I wanted true love.
     
    STELLA:
     
    I stepped into the shower, quickly washing my earthly body. This body was attached to me, that was for sure, but it still didn’t feel like mine. I washed my hair with the only bottle of soap there was. Suds ran down my face and I rinsed them away. I stood under the stream for a while and dug the dirt out from under my nails. My thoughts ran. I’d observed enough about the culture I was about to enter to know what it meant to fit in, but I didn’t know everything. Being unable to talk was going to pose a problem, but hopefully I would be able to learn as I went along. I’d tried on my own but it hadn’t been easy. I couldn’t make my soft, human mouth form correctly. The only sentence I was able to say was, ‘who am I?’
    That wasn’t going to get me very far.
    Done washing, I shut off the water and stepped out of the shower. Steam rose from my body as I reached for the fresh towel I had found in the hunter’s closet, now resting on the counter. It smelled of pine and damp forest, a smell much more familiar to me than the human smell left on most of the objects in this cabin.
    I had less than an hour before the hunter returned, give or take depending on how the hunt went. The hunter was relatively skilled as far as human skill took him, but still much slower than me. With the arrival of winter, however, I myself had seen the dwindling animal population in the woods. I was hoping he would be later than normal as a result.
    I roughly dried my hair and ran a comb through it, placing each object back exactly where I’d found it. The hunter was very neat, very calculated. Each object was clean, and each object had its place. I’d learned what each object was used for by observing the hunter through the windows, learning what it was called by listening to him talk to himself despite the muffling of the glass between us. Some things I instinctively knew already, like some part of this human body remembered it from a previous life.
    I looked at my reflection in the mirror. My long, dark hair began to curl as it dried. My face was pale and thin, my expression plain and sad. I bit my lips, trying to bring out some color. There were a few freckles kissing each of my cheeks. I pinched them too, hoping to add color there. My eyes were the only thing that felt like me, a bright amber, wildly speckled with brown and gold. That was the owl I knew, but the rest of me was the human I needed to get to know.
    Leaving the bathroom, I rummaged through the hunter’s closet in search of some human clothes. There was a red and black flannel shirt, and searching through his collection of pants, I settled for a pair of long johns that fit me in a more feminine way. Diving in one last time, I stole a pair of his hunting boots from the back. They were an old pair I was certain he wouldn’t even notice were gone. I pulled a tall set of wool socks on over the leggings, rolling them up and below my knees before slipping them into the boots. The thick wool made the boots fit a little better. Luckily, the hunter didn’t have very big feet.
    Satisfied, I grabbed a wool coat hanging by the door and walked outside. I paused on the small porch, listening intently for any sign of the hunter, not wanting him to see me as I walked off in his clothes. Though I knew he wouldn’t shoot at a human, I still felt the tingle of fear from my animal side. That was enough to scare me. Standing for another moment, I heard