← Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
Listen To Sleep - Quiet Bedtime Stories & Meditations
The Owl and the Longest Night - A Winter Solstice Bedtime Story
00:38:14
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- [00:01]
A
Hey, it's Eric. Before we begin tonight's episode, just a quick reminder. You're about to hear a few ads that help to support Listen to Sleep. If you'd rather drift off without them, you can join Listen to Sleep plus and get every episode ad free plus bonus stories and meditations. Just go to ListenToSleep.com and click on Support to learn more.
- [00:30]
B
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- [01:00]
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- [01:05]
A
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- [01:05]
C
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- [01:30]
E
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- [01:42]
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- [02:06]
E
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- [02:15]
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- [02:32]
A
Hello friend. Welcome back to Listen to Sleep, where ancient wisdom meets deep Rest. I'm Eric, and each week I read you a new original story designed to soothe your body, quiet your mind, and restore your spirit. We're approaching the winter solstice here on the mountain, the longest night of the year when darkness holds the world most fully before the slow turn back toward light.
- [03:09]
The days have been getting shorter and shorter, the sun barely clearing the southern ridge before beginning its descent. The air is cold and sharp, carrying the scent of damp earth and bay laurel.
- [03:27]
There's something about this time of year, this deep winter darkness that our Western culture sometimes seems to fight against, to fill with lights and noise and constant activity. But the natural world knows differently. The forest settles into darkness, rests into it. Trusts it.
- [03:58]
Tonight's story is about that trust. It follows a small pygmy owl as she witnesses the longest night from her oak tree in these Northern California mountains. She watches the forest prepare for darkness, watches it rest. And in that witnessing, she finds her own deep rest.
- [04:26]
This is a meditation in story form, an invitation to explore the darkness, whether it's the literal darkness of winter or or the darker seasons of life, and to allow yourself to be held by it, to rest in it, to know that the light will return as it always does, but that for now, this moment of darkness is okay.
- [05:00]
So settle in and let's rest together in the longest night.
- [05:07]
Before we begin, a quick word about how you can help keep these stories coming when you subscribe to listen to sleep. Plus, you get over 500 ad free episodes, bonus audiobooks, and early access to news stories, all for less than the cost of a fancy coffee each month. And now you can join directly in Apple podcasts and get a free seven day trial to see if it's right for you. You'll find the link in the show notes. Thank you so much for your support.
- [05:49]
Let's take a deep breath in.
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And out.
- [06:02]
Just letting go of the day, Feeling the weight of gravity pulling you deep down into the mattress.
- [06:14]
Another deep breath in.
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And out.
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Nothing to do, nowhere to go, no one to be.
- [06:30]
This is your time.
- [06:35]
Quiet time.
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One more deep breath in with me.
- [06:45]
And out.
- [06:50]
If you get tired while I'm reading to you, that's okay, just let yourself drift off.
- [07:00]
The owl and the longest night.
- [07:06]
Before time learned to measure itself in Hours and days.
- [07:13]
Before the world named the turning of seasons, darkness and light moved in their ancient dance.
- [07:25]
And on the longest night of each year, when darkness holds the world most fully, this dance reaches its deepest point.
- [07:39]
The still breath between one inhale and the next.
- [07:47]
In the mountains of Northern California, where Douglas fir and black oak grow thick on the slopes, a small pygmy owl sat in her favorite oak tree. She was no bigger than a man's fist, her feathers barred brown and white, her yellow eyes bright even in the fading light.
- [08:17]
She had lived eight winters in these woods, a long life for one so small, and she knew the rhythms of the forest as well as she knew the pattern of her own feathers.
- [08:35]
This was the night of the winter solstice, the longest night, the deepest dark.
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The owl had been here since before dawn, perched on her branch 20ft above the forest floor. It was a good branch, worn smooth by her talons over the years.
- [09:04]
Positioned where she could see the slope below with its manzanita and madrone, and the ridge above with its tall firs.
- [09:17]
She had hunted from this branch on summer mornings, had preened here in spring rains, had watched winter snow gather on the boughs above her.
- [09:32]
But tonight she was not hunting. Her crop was full, her body warm despite the cold air.
- [09:44]
Tonight she was simply watching as the shortest day gave way to the longest night.
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The light was fading now, earlier than it had yesterday, earlier than it would tomorrow. The sun had barely cleared the southern ridge before beginning its descent, painting the sky in shades of amber and rose that would soon give way to twilight.
- [10:20]
The air was cold and still, carrying the scent of frozen earth and bay laurel, of winter settling deeper into the bones of the mountain.
- [10:35]
Below her, the forest was preparing for darkness.
- [10:42]
A few hundred yards down the slope, where the oaks gave way to a small clearing, a deer was bedding down for the night.
- [10:54]
The doe moved with slow deliberation, pawing with her hoof at the duff beneath a bay tree, circling once, twice, then folding her legs beneath her. Her breath rose in small clouds that caught the last of the fading light.
- [11:19]
Further down, near where a small creek cut through the forest, band tailed pigeons were finding their night roosts in the thick branches of the firs.
- [11:34]
The owl could hear their soft cooing as they settled, their blue gray bodies blending into the darkening branches.
- [11:45]
One by one, they tucked themselves into protected spots, fluffing their feathers against the cold.
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Esteller's jay made one last raucous call from a madrone tree, then fell silent. Wood rats were retreating into their Stick houses built in the manzanita, their rustling growing quieter as they settled deep into their nests, lined with shredded bark and moss.
- [12:24]
In the leaf litter at the base of a fallen madrone, a vole was already curled in its grass lined nest. The owl's sharp eyes could see the faint movement of breathing beneath the thin layer of leaves that covered the burrow. It would sleep through the long darkness and wake to forage again when light returned.
- [12:55]
The last color began to drain from the western sky, leaving only the pale blue of twilight. The owl's eyes adjusted easily to the dimming light. She was made for this, after all. Made for seeing in darkness.
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This was her eighth winter solstice. She remembered her first one clearly, though it felt like a lifetime ago.
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She had been barely six months old, newly independent, perched in an oak not far from this one. That night she had stayed rigid with alertness, her small body tense, watching for threats that never came.
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Every sound had startled her. The crack of a branch in the cold, the distant call of a great horned owl, the scrabbling of a mouse in the leaves below.
- [14:09]
She had been certain the darkness would never end, that the sun had abandoned the world forever.
- [14:19]
When dawn had finally come, pale and cold, she had felt dizzy with relief.
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By her third solstice, she had learned the pattern would hold. That year she had a mate, a small male who had courted her with offerings of beetles and mice.
- [14:44]
They had sat together in a Douglas fir on the longest night, close but not touching. Their separate warmths somehow combined. He had moved on to new territory. The following summer.
- [15:02]
Her fifth solstice, something had shifted. She had found herself not just enduring the darkness, but noticing it. The way moonlight transformed familiar trees into silver sculptures. The way frost caught and held starlight. The way silence became its own kind of presence, full rather than empty.
- [15:36]
Now she settled her weight more fully onto the branch, her talons gripping automatically while the rest of her relaxed.
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The tension she used to carry had eased over the years, replaced by something quieter.
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Stars began to emerge in the eastern sky. Faint at first, the owl knew these stars. She had watched them wheel across the sky on countless winter nights, had used them to orient herself when hunting. In the darkest hours before dawn.
- [16:24]
The oaks around her stood dark against the sky, their bare branches creating intricate patterns. In summer, these branches would be thick with leaves, but now they were stripped clean, revealing the essential structure, the strong trunk, the reaching limbs, the patient architecture that had held her through eight winters.
- [16:58]
A gray squirrel was making final adjustments to its nest high in a Douglas fir. Across the clearing. The owl watched as it pulled dry leaves into place, creating a warm pocket in the fork of two branches.
- [17:19]
The squirrel circled inside the nest several times, testing it, rearranging, then finally settled. It curled into a tight ball, its bushy tail wrapped around its body like a blanket.
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The darkness was arriving.
- [17:44]
A bobcat emerged from the manzanita on the far side of the clearing, moving with that particular fluid grace cats have, whether large or small.
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The owl watched it pause to scent the air, whiskers twitching, it sat for a moment in the open, then lifted one paw and began to groom, completely unhurried.
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After several minutes of careful washing, it rose and padded silently back into the undergrowth, heading upslope toward the ridge.
- [18:31]
The thin crescent moon was already beginning to set in the west, its pale light a delicate sliver low in the western sky.
- [18:44]
The owl's oak tree glowed softly in the last of the twilight, its trunk pale against the darkness of the surrounding forest.
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She could see the intricate patterns of lichen on the bark, the frilly edges of lettuce lichen, the tiny cups of pixie cup lichen, and the crusty patches where shield lichen grew in circular patterns.
- [19:17]
The bark itself held a whole landscape of tiny crevices and ridges, places where beetles had burrowed, places where branches had broken off in past storms, leaving calloused scars, places where the tree had simply grown and the bark had split and healed and split again.
- [19:47]
These trees held her history.
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Near here, hidden in shadow now, was the tree with the cavity where she had been born.
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She had fledged from there her first summer and never strayed far from these woods.
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Time moved slowly now, the way it did on winter nights, when darkness settled like a blanket and the world exhaled into stillness.
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The temperature was dropping steadily. The owl could feel it in the air against her face, in the way her breath emerged in increasingly visible puffs. Cold air sank down the slopes, pooling in the ravines and hollows. The forest floor would be coldest up here. 20ft above the ground, the air was slightly warmer, which was one reason she preferred this roost.
- [21:02]
The creek below had slowed, bits of ice forming along its edges where the current was weakest. The owl could hear its voice changing quieter now than in autumn, when rain had filled it to rushing.
- [21:22]
Frost was beginning to form, first on the tips of grass in the clearing below, where she could see it glinting in the last of the moonlight.
- [21:36]
Then on the edges of leaves still clinging to the black oaks, then on the bark of trees creeping upward from the base, where the cold air pooled.
- [21:53]
She could smell the frost forming that particular clean, sharp scent that came when moisture froze out of the air. It mixed with the smell of bay laurel, pungent and medicinal, and the earthier scent of oak duff and the faint sweet smell of madrone wood.
- [22:20]
A great horned owl called from somewhere on the ridge above, a deep, resonant hooting that carried through the cold air. The sound rolled down the mountainside, echoing slightly in the ravines.
- [22:40]
The pygmy owl listened without alarm. She knew that voice, had heard it countless times over the years.
- [22:51]
The great horned owl called again, and this time another answered from across the valley. The two voices wove together briefly, then fell silent. They were calling territories, reminding each other of boundaries. The forest had room for them all.
- [23:19]
More stars had emerged now, thousands of them, scattered across the black dome of sky.
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The owl could see the river of stars stretching from horizon to horizon, what humans called the Milky Way.
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In the darkest hours, now that the moon had set, it would grow even brighter, a glowing band that seemed to pulse with its own light.
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The air grew colder still, settling into the sharp, clear cold of deep winter. The owl fluffed her feathers slightly, creating more air pockets for insulation. Her feet, normally her coldest part, were warm where they gripped the branch. She could feel the wood's slight warmth, the stored heat of the day slowly radiating away.
- [24:30]
A bat flew past, one of the few still active in this winter cold, its flight erratic as it hunted the last insects of the evening. The owl tracked its movement without effort, her head swiveling to follow.
- [24:51]
She watched a coyote move through the clearing below, its movements fluid as it followed a scent trail through the grass. Its nose was down, moving back and forth, reading the invisible map of who had passed this way.
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The coyote paused once, looking up at her tree, its eyes catching starlight and reflecting it back in a yellow green glow.
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For a moment, owl and coyote regarded each other across the darkness. Then the coyote continued on, disappearing into the manzanita on the far side of the clearing. She heard it moving up the slope for another minute or two, then nothing.
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The forest settled deeper into silence.
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High clouds moved in from the west, thin and wispy, veiling the stars briefly before moving on.
- [26:10]
The owl watched them flow across the sky like slow water, their edges silvered by moonlight.
- [26:20]
Behind them, the stars reappeared. One by one, steady and bright.
- [26:29]
Frost continued to form. She could see it now on her own branch, tiny crystals growing where her talons gripped. It formed in delicate, fern like patterns, each crystal building on the last, creating intricate designs that would melt with tomorrow's sun and never be seen exactly the same way again.
- [27:01]
Her own breath made small clouds in the frigid air, each exhale visible, each inhale drawing in the sharp cold.
- [27:14]
The rhythm of breathing was hypnotic. In, out.
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In.
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Out.
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As steady as the stars, as reliable as the turning of seasons.
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The night deepened toward midnight.
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The owl knew midnight was approaching by the feeling in her bones, by the way the forest held its breath, by the quality of silence that settled over everything.
- [27:57]
This was the still point, the deepest moment of the longest night, the place where darkness was most complete, most itself, before beginning the long, slow turn back toward light.
- [28:20]
Even the small sounds had ceased. No rustle of mice in the leaves, no crack of branches adjusting to the cold, no distant call of owl or coyote. Just the gentle flow of the creek. And underneath it a silence so deep it seemed to have weight.
- [28:50]
The doe in her bed beneath the bay tree had not moved in hours. The owl could see the faint rise and fall of her breathing, but otherwise she was utterly still, conserving energy, resting deeply. The pigeons in the fir branches were invisible now, tucked so completely into their feathers and the darkness of the branches that even the owl's sharp eyes couldn't distinguish them.
- [29:28]
The squirrel slept in its nest, the wood rats in their stick houses, the vole in its burrow.
- [29:40]
Everything resting.
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And in that moment, the owl's eyes softened. Her body settled more fully onto the branch. Her feathers relaxed, fluffing slightly against the cold, creating more warmth even as she released the small tension she had still been holding.
- [30:11]
She had learned something over her eight winters, though she could not have named it. Something about being present without needing to act, about watching the world with soft eyes, about the difference between the alertness that kept her alive and this deeper attention that asked nothing, grasped nothing, just witnessed.
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Midnight arrived.
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Stars reached their highest point and began imperceptibly to descend.
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The frost continued to form, crystal by crystal on every exposed surface.
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The owl felt it in her body.
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A kind of stillness that went deeper than not moving.
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Her heartbeat slowed to its resting rhythm. Her breathing lengthened.
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Even her thoughts, such as they were, seemed to slow and space themselves out.
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She had seen the light leave countless times, had watched it return countless times.
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The pattern was was reliable, trustworthy. The light would come back. It always did.
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But for now, for this perfect moment, suspended between fall and rise, the darkness was complete.
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It softened the edges of things, blurred boundaries, made the harsh world gentle. Everything that seemed separate in daylight, tree and air, owl and branch, earth and sky, felt less distinct now, more connected.
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All of it Held in the same darkness, breathing the same cold air.
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Time moved. Or perhaps it didn't. The distinction seemed less important now. The stars wheeled overhead in their patient circles. The forest continued to breathe its slow winter breath.
- [33:17]
These movements felt different now. Not like time passing, but like time simply being.
- [33:28]
Like the moment between breaths when the lungs are empty of air and full of potential.
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The owl rested in this breathing.
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And slowly, so slowly she almost didn't notice at first, something began to shift.
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Not the darkness itself, it would be hours yet before dawn.
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But the quality of it, the way it felt. As if the deepest point had been reached and passed, as if some invisible balance had tipped.
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Midnight had come and gone.
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The owl felt this shift the way she felt changes in air pressure before a storm.
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Something in the angle of the starlight, something in the way frost was forming. Something in her own body, responding to rhythms older than thought, more reliable than memory.
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The turn had happened. The longest night had reached its deepest point. And now, patient as stone, inevitable as breath. The world began its long return toward light.
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But there was no urgency in this knowing, no need to rush. Toward dawn, the light would return in its own time, the same way it always did, slowly, gradually building from nothing. Until one day you realized the sun was setting a few minutes later than the day before.
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For now there was still darkness, still night, still this moment of deep rest.
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And the owl's eyes began to grow heavy.
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Not with sleep, not yet, but with a deep tiredness that felt earned.
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She had witnessed the longest night had been present, for it, had watched the forest prepare and settle and rest.
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Her eyes closed halfway.
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Then, halfway more.
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She could still see the shapes of trees against the sky, could still track the movement of clouds across the stars.
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But she was settling now into something between waking and sleep, a state she knew well from countless winter nights, a state where she was still alert enough to wake if needed, but resting deeply enough to restore herself.
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The owl's breathing slowed further.
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Deepened. Her talons gripped the branch softly, automatically, while the rest of her released into the night.
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She could feel the tree beneath her, solid and patient, holding her as it had held her through eight winters.
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Could feel the air around her cold and still and clear.
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Could feel her own small warmth, a point of heat in the vast, cold dark.
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She had done this before, seven times before, but each time felt new. Each time the darkness felt different.
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Each time she learned something she hadn't known before.
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The owl's eyes closed fully.
- [38:29]
She would wake before dawn as she always did, would shake out her feathers, stretch her wings, perhaps hunt in the gray light before sunrise.
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The longest night would be over. The days would begin on almost imperceptibly at first, to lengthen.
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The world would turn back toward light, slowly at first, then gathering momentum through January and February, until spring arrived again.
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But all of that was still to come.
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For now, in the deepest hour of the longest night, the small owl slept.
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The oak tree held her, its bark rough and solid beneath her talons.
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The darkness held her, complete and gentle.
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And somewhere in the east, still hours away, still below the horizon, still invisible, dawn was gathering itself for its return.
- [40:05]
But that was hours away. Yet.
- [40:09]
For now, there was only the owl, small and warm in her favorite tree.
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And the stars wheeling in their ancient patterns.
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And the forest breathing its slow winter breath.
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And the darkness holding everything.
- [40:41]
Good night.