Varrus the Ethical wrote:Civic Temple
Titus lays all thee doves and the dagger on the Altar, and kneels before the statue of the Speaker of Storms, waiting for a sign.
He doesn't wait for long. From the vaulted ceiling above, a large owl swoops down and snatches two of the doves with its talons, and flies back towards the entrance.
Titus stanches up the remaining dove and chases after the owl as it flies out the temple door.
"My apologies," he says to the crone as he bounds past her.
He follows the owl outside.
The owl leads Titus on a wild OWL chase through the streets and plazas of POVERO.
Several times he loses sight of it, only to spot it again a short time later.
He finds one of the doves dead, throat pierced by the owl's talons, floating in a canal near the Market District.
The Owl, holding the other dove--which hangs limp-- continues its erratic flight with Titus doing his best to keep up.
But on foot, he's not fast enough. He searches, but no owl...
At last, tired, hot, and thirsty, not having seen the owl for a couple of hours, the priest returns to the Frisky Friar as the sun sinks low in the west.
HOOOOO!
The owl, sans dove, waits for him perched on the inn's signboard. And then it takes flight, circling once above Titus before flying southwest. Now it keeps in sight but out of reach.
Renewing his pursuit, Titus follows the bird across the yard of an ostlery, down a lane of small houses, and toward the outskirts of the city...
After dark, he catches up with the owl at a large hawthorn growing on a hillside below the edge of a small vineyard.
A light flashes in the hawthorn.
Something thuds.
The owl hops deeper into the shrub, vanishing from sight.
Delight is to him- a far, far upward, and inward delight- who against the proud gods and commodores of this earth, ever stands forth his own inexorable self.
-from Moby Dick (Hermann Melville)