Secret Owl Society

2546

Born from the bitter union of a Confederate sympathizer and a steel welder from rural northern Virginia, Luke Morris spent his formative years huddled next to a furnace in the belly of an Icelandic fishing trawler, where the roar of the engines buffeted his overwhelmed auditory nerves and the darkness of the boiler room disallowed him the use of his eyes.

When the storms of winter caused the vessel to run aground the harsh topography of the Louisiana coastline in the middle of the night, Luke found that the throbbing hum of the ship's stalwart motors had been replaced by a caucophony of noises he had never before heard and as his ears acclimated to the foreign land, he separated and processed the sounds in his mind, hearing their forms with lucidity. Every sound's ridges and contours were vivid and new when compared to the steady engines, though his eyes could not bear the rising sun.

Retreating to the deepest recesses of the forest, Luke found a home far away from the intrusion of light, where only the common owl stirred alive in the darkest moments of the night.