Guardians of Ga'Hoole 14 - Exile Read Free

side.”
    “You must be proud,” the Striga answered softly.
    “I am. I am very proud,” Otulissa replied curtly.
    “You must be careful of too much pride.”
    “Another vanity?” Otulissa leaned forward a bit and peered more closely at him. His face looked different from when he had first arrived at the tree. The feathers had thinned. Indeed, his face was almost bald. There was just a thin mist of blue over the gray-and-puckered skin.
    “Exactly, Otulissa! Exactly!”
    Otulissa flexed her head to one side, then to the other, running through a series of head postures as if she were studying the blue owl from every possible angle.
    “I am curious,” Otulissa began in a reflective tone. “Just what do you mean by this word ‘vanity’?”
    “Oh, I am so glad you asked.”
    I’m sure you are! Otulissa thought to herself.
    “As you know, Otulissa, I came from the Dragon Court, a most impractical place.” The Striga gave special emphasis to the word “impractical.” “It had become this way because of excess—excess of luxuries, of pampering, of every kind of indulgence imaginable. At the verycenter of this excess, the driving force, the fuel that fired it, was vanity.”
    “But what is vanity?” Otulissa asked.
    “Vanities are all the indecent things in life, the fripperies, the impracticalities that distract us from Glaux and our true owlness.”
    “True owlness?” Otulissa blinked.
    “Yes, we are, by nature, humble creatures.”
    “Hmm.” Otulissa sniffed, and thought of Twilight. Humble, my talon!
    “We must practice humility,” the Striga continued. “Anything else is vanity.”
    Otulissa was tempted to say, Well, to each his own . But she thought better of it. “One last question,” she said.
    “Of course.”
    Her eyes fastened on his face. “Are you suffering from mite blight? I notice the feathers on your face are quite thin.”
    “Oh, nothing of the sort,” the Striga answered almost cheerfully. “No. You see, for a long time, I was burdened with an indecent abundance of feathers. These feathers were the ultimate vanity. We dragon owls cultivated them with a disgusting mixture of pride and pleasure, preening all day. There were even special servants whose only job was to stroke and comb our feathers.” The Striga seemedto wilf just talking about it. “I can’t tell you how vile it was.”
    “But you did it. You preened your long blue feathers,” Otulissa said curtly.
    “I knew nothing better. I was deluded,” the Striga said.
    Otulissa blinked. There was so much that she did not understand about the Panqua Palace and the Dragon Court. She thought of Theo, that noble owl from ancient times they had all read about in the legends. When Otulissa had been in the Middle Kingdom, she had learned that it was Theo who had realized that the best way to distract owls with evil intentions, was to engulf them in luxury. The result was overweening vanity, so that their attention could focus only on one thing—themelves—to the point where they were reduced to powerlessness. It was an ingenious strategy for quelling the most dangerous kinds of owls, which had found their way into the Middle Kingdom long ago.
    “But I still don’t understand,” Otulissa said to the Striga. “You now have fewer feathers than any of us. Especially on your face.”
    “I strip them out. It is my personal penance. Thus I relinquish the unnecessary things, the distractions.”
    “I’ve never thought of feathers as a distraction, frankly. They are a most essential part of our bodies.” She paused. “Our true owlness, as it were.” She emphasized the word “owlness.”
    “But not your spirit! And how can the spirit rise, become everlasting, when burdened by the vanities of feather and bone?” The Striga blinked his pale yellow eyes.
    What did the Striga mean by “everlasting”? Life was the here and now. One must be able to rise into the air above this earth and fly. Was it not an abuse to pluck the