Her name is Lucia. Her frame is slim and slender, and her face is that of a fox. Complete with waves of auburn hair and hazel eyes. She likes to take walks at dawn and dusk, and if seen during the day, then that would be out of character for her.
Her walks at dusk take her to interesting places - graveyards, derelict factories, forests, mossy monuments. And today is no different. This time is she walking upon a ridge with no destination in mind. In her tote there is a sketchbook, and in her sketchbook, there are sketches of ethereal beings inhabiting these vacant places. Angels, fairies, demons.
Her parents wish to take her to a psychiatrist, and occasionally an institution when she gets on their nerves a bit too much, but she insists there is nothing wrong with her. The local priest say it is a blessing, and her grandmother believes it to be some sort of a curse. The grandmother knows curse is not the right word, but it is along those lines. At the very least, she knows it is not an illness.
Lucia has faint memories of what had occurred. Her and her sister, Celine, had been in the forest at sunset, they were in a tree to get a better view of said sunset, and then Lucia fell. Hard. Moments later, a pale yellow fog surfaced from the pond that was in the clearing and it crept towards Lucia. Before Celine could get to her, the fog enveloped her and dissipated into her body. Lucia opened her eyes and gasped.
She knew she had been dead.
Before she could get her bearings, there had been a strong gust of wind. Lucia could see that it was not the wind - it was a twilight creature racing across the bleeding red skies. It was in the shape of a draconic owl. And in the beast’s wake, it had blown Celine out of the tree and into the pond below. Lucia could not bear it and she fell unconscious.
It had been past midnight by the time the search party found them. Nothing could have been done about Celine. The tragedy was that if Celine landed a few feet from where she had landed, she might have survived.
And to this day, Lucia wishes that she could have saved Celine, and in her depressive states, she wishes that it was her. But occasionally, she does see Celine. She sees her in the same vein as she sees the twilight beasts. That is to say that she sees her as a passing split-second translucent wisp. It has been a while since the last time and she wonders if that meant that Celine had finally moved on, somehow, or if she herself finally made peace with her loss.
She knows where she is going, and when she sees the transformation, she does not know what to think or what to feel. Grief. Anger. Regret. Relief. All and nothing. The woods had been cleared, but the tree remains. The pond remains. In the place of the forest, there is an elementary school and beyond the school, there are housing developments and corner stores. She sits on a bench on the other side of the pond and she starts to sketch. She looks at the pond and she starts to draw a fawn. With her surreal style, she only sketches the reflection of the fawn and reveals that there is no fawn on the outside.
And after a while, at sunset, she looks up at the tree, and she sees the draconic owl. It is not in its transient state. Oowa is the common name for this creature. It perches itself at the top and it looks at her. She is not its prey, but she is not its friend. One look and she knows that it was the same one all those years ago. She cannot help but keep staring. It is asking something of her and she dreads the question, but she knows she must answer it.
But the question is not asked, now. It flies off and expects her to follow. And so she does. It leads her to beyond the development and to the escarpment. It sits on top off another great oak. She examines the oowa, the horizon, then the tree, and then the roots. There are hallucinogenic mushrooms at the base. She feels like her hand is alien, that her motions are not her own, and she eats the mushroom.