5 Avis Noctis

It was a serene night, the noise of the leaves of the willows moving fluidly with the wind and causing a perfect background sound to rest. Windy and stormy weather was predicting for the next two days. Zenda adored rainy days, but that would mean that she would not be able to continue with her plan to visit most of the surroundings of the town and the swamp, something that excited her because of the beauty and mystery of the place.

It had been an hour since mirtha said good night to zenda, but what zenda did not know is the second surprise besides the dinner that her mother kept for her, it was a book, but not any book, but one by Julio Verne, a writer that Zenda had heard before and that attracted her much attention.

The name of the book attracted hereven more, she had never seen it but it seemed as if she had heard it once, its name was "Journey to the center of the earth" and without hesitation, she began to read it that same night.

Everything seemed quiet, the book was getting more and more interesting, as was the weather outside. Dark clouds like the night itself and dense as if at any moment they burst in a heavy rain. Moving with total speed making noticeable the strong wind that was rising.

The storm grew stronger and stronger, and the lightning began to appear, illuminating everything for mere seconds, followed by the thunder, some so loud that they scared because they made everything tremble. Zenda, in spite of the outside tumult, kept reading as if nothing, thinking how incredible that moment was, a simple book and the sound of the little drops that one by one were hitting the window, that was nothing but calm to her, until soon something interrupted her.

Suddenly a lightning becomes present and noticeably illuminates more than the previous ones, soon after this a loud noise is present making the room tremble, and like the cherry on the cake, all the light is cut off. Zenda on this one more than on the previous ones if she got scared, she grabbed her completely tanned, and when the light went out she hid quickly under her quilts. However, she spent a few minutes below waiting for the light to turn on but nothing happened, the storm continued but the electricity did not, nor the oxygen that was left of so much being under that thick wool padding that covered her so that she uncloaked and stayed in bed for a while.

She thought about getting up to ask her mother to turn on the light, in the orphanage when there were thunderstorms and the light was cut, she had to turn on the electricity key, but zenda not only didn't know where the light key was in that house, not even if there were any, but she also had no idea how to put it on, she thought it could give her an electric shock. So it was better for an adult to try it before she did and ended up electrocuting herself like in the cartoons, at least that's how she imagined it.

The storm did not calm down, at times it got worse, to points that were worrying, so zenda, more than excited, waited lying on her pillow with a little fright until everything relaxed. Suddenly, she hears a strange sound, it was not another thunder or anything that she will sound to have heard before. At times he thought it could be the crackling of a tree, but then that sound was taking greater prominence and no longer sounded like a tree, but like an animal, but did not recognize which. At that moment she decided to stand up with courage and peek through the window to see if she could see something, but she did not see anything, however the sound continued, and now she could recognize that it was a bird, something strange with the weather that was outside but she thought it could be a bird that had lost its nest or just had nowhere to sleep without getting soaked.

After a few seconds looking from side to side, a lightning bolt appears and Zenda manages to see something, in a tree that was not far from the window but not very close either. At first he cannot identify what it is, although it impressed him since it looked like a fairly large and robust bird, something that perhaps she had never seen before and that perhaps the fact that it could be an exclusive marsh animal added to why she did not know it. So she decided to stay looking at the same place until lightning returned.

In that, another lightning bolt appears and lets see this silhouette even more clearly, at that moment Zenda realized what it was, it was nothing more and nothing less than an owl perched on a tree branch, nothing abnormal. Until suddenly Zenda begins to notice something strange in it, the bird's eyes began to light up in a strange way, they looked like two blue lights that caused confusion in Zenda, she had never seen an animal give off so much brightness from its eyes.

Mysteriously, the owl's eyes start to light up more and more, so much so that they looked like two flashlights pointed right at Zenda, but, out of nowhere, they start to turn off in a way that was very strange, a lightning suddenly illuminates everything again, just that this time and in a period of 3 seconds, the owl disappears. Zenda, disoriented from where that owl was, begins to see everywhere, until suddenly lightning strikes the tree causing it to break and catch fire. Zenda could not believe what she had managed to see, everything had happened very quickly and just after seeing that lightning bolt, a very loud sound caused everything to shake abruptly, Zenda crouched and unconsciously shouted at such an event, covering her ears and sitting down on the floor waiting for all this scandal to end.

Quickly Mirtha gets up and goes to Zenda's room because the lightning and that scream woke her up. By the time she was coming in, Zenda was already in bed completely covered from head to toe and clinging tight to her pillow. Mirtha managed to calm her down quickly, she had been very scared and did not know how, if she loved stormy days, Zenda said almost stammering to her mother that the tree in front of her was burning because it had been struck by lightning, but by when Mirtha looked out there was nothing, that tree was intact only with a broken branch hanging down and the eyes all wet. Zenda didn't believe it, so she got up immediately from the bed and leaned against the window, and with total clarity she saw how that tree was in good condition, it simply had a broken branch, but Zenda, shocked, noticed something strange in everything this, that branch was on which that strange owl rested.

Mirtha turns up the key of the light and says good night to Zenda again, but this time she decided not to stay reading, she already wanted to go to sleep thinking about everything that had happened and trying not to fall into the fact that this was someone else dream that seemed real, she looked at her hands and touched her face, it all turned out that it had not been just another dream, but the beginning of a series of events that would leave Zenda with many doubts.