The Owl Who Could Not Sleep
High in the hollow of a great old oak tree there lived a family of owls, and the smallest of them all was a little owl named Olive. Now, owls are creatures of the night. All day long Olive's family slept, tucked up warm with their feathers fluffed and their eyes shut tight. But Olive could not sleep at all.
While the others snored softly, she sat at the round window of the hollow and watched the morning come. She loved the way the sun turned the sky pink and then gold, and the dew that sparkled on the grass, and the busy hum of the waking woods. Her mother would open one drowsy eye and murmur to her, “Olive, do close your eyes now. The day is for sleeping, little one.”
Olive tried. She really did try. But the day was so bright and so alive, and her little heart was wide awake.
Wide Awake and All Alone
By the time the moon rose and her family stretched and blinked and flew off to hunt, poor Olive could hardly keep her eyes open. She would yawn through the whole night long and curl up to sleep just as everyone else was waking. It made her feel rather strange, and rather sad.
“There must be something the matter with me. A night owl who sleeps at night. Whoever heard of such a thing?”
Most of all she felt lonely, awake by herself while the daytime world she loved was full of creatures she had never met. So one bright morning, Olive gathered up her courage, spread her small wings, and flapped softly down from the old oak to see the daytime woods up close.
A Daytime Friend
The daytime woods were even lovelier than she had imagined. Butterflies looped above the flowers, and the warm air smelled of grass and honey.
Then, from the top of a swaying reed, came the merriest song that Olive had ever heard. It belonged to a little brown lark with a bright eye and a cheeky tuft of feathers on his head. He hopped closer and looked at her with great interest.
“Well now! An owl, awake in the daytime? I'm Sunny, and I don't believe I have ever met a daytime owl before.”
“I'm Olive. I suppose I am the only one there is.”
“Then you are one of a kind, and that is a very fine thing to be.”
And just like that, Olive had her very first daytime friend.
The Best of Days
All through the long golden days that followed, Olive and Sunny were hardly ever apart. Sunny showed her the secret places of the day — the pond where the dragonflies danced, the warm flat stone where the lizards dozed, and the hedge where the wild raspberries grew sweetest of all. And Olive showed Sunny things too, for she had sharp owl eyes that could spot a beetle hiding under a leaf or a lost feather caught high in a tree. For the very first time, Olive did not feel out of place at all.
Being different, she was beginning to see, was not the same as being wrong.
When the Dark Came Down
But one evening, just as the sun began to sink and the shadows stretched long across the grass, Sunny came swooping down to the old oak in a dreadful flutter.
“Olive! Olive, please wake up! It is my littlest sister, Pearl. She flew too far chasing a moth, and now she cannot find her way home, and the dark is coming, and larks cannot see in the dark!”
Olive's heart gave a great thump. All around them the woods were turning grey, and then slowly, deeply black. One by one the day birds tucked their heads beneath their wings, blind and helpless in the gathering night.
“None of us can search for her at all. By morning she will be so frightened, and so terribly cold.”
The One Who Could See
Olive looked out at the deep, dark woods — the very woods that frightened every daytime creature. And then a wonderful thought came to her, soft and bright as the dawn she loved so much.
“Sunny, I have eyes that can see in the dark. And I know all the daytime places where a little lark might hide. I can go and look for Pearl.”
So out into the night flew Olive, the owl who loved the day, her great round eyes shining like two small moons. Silent and sure, she glided between the silvered trees. She searched the dragonfly pond, and the warm flat stone, and the raspberry hedge, calling softly all the while, until at last, tucked deep in a tangle of roots, she found a tiny, shivering lark.
Home Through the Night
“There you are, little one. Climb up onto my back now, and I will take you safely home.”
And carefully, oh so very carefully, Olive carried Pearl up through the dark and home to the waiting larks, who wept and cheered and wrapped the little one up in their soft brown wings. Sunny pressed his head gently against Olive's.
“You found her, Olive. Only you could ever have found her.”
From that night on, every creature in the wood — those who loved the day and those who loved the night — knew the little owl who belonged to both. And when at last the sky turned pink and gold once more, Olive curled up happily in her cosy hollow, while high above her, Sunny sang the sweetest, softest song, until the little daytime owl drifted gently off to sleep.