About this story
Hootie is a little owl who has only ever seen the gray and silver of the night. When a woodpecker wakes her at noon, she pokes her head out of the oak tree into a world full of colors she has no names for, and meets a blue butterfly.
Ages: 3–7 · Reading time: about 2 minutes
Moral: The world has two sides, light and dark, and both are wonderful.
The light hurt. That was the very first thing the Little Owl felt.
She was sleeping in the dark hollow of the old oak tree, but a noisy woodpecker—*tap-tap-tap*—woke her up right at noon. She opened one large, golden eye. The world was… wrong.
There was no soft grey of the night. There was no deep blue of the moonlight. Everything was exploding in colors she didn’t even have names for. Curious and blinking rapidly, she poked her head out of the nest.
A World of Color
The green of the leaves wasn’t black; it was a brilliant, shimmering green that almost stung her eyes. And there were red and purple spots on the ground (they were flowers, but she thought they were magical stones). The sun was a hot ball of fire that warmed her brown feathers in a cozy way.
“Who are you?” buzzed a tiny, colorful thing right in front of her beak. It was a blue butterfly. At night, the Owl only saw dusty grey moths. This creature looked like it was made of pieces of the sky.
“I am the mistress of the night,” said Hootie, puffing out her chest, but her voice came out a bit sleepy. “Well, I am the dancer of the day!” the butterfly replied.
Two Sides of the Same World
The two stayed there for a while. Hootie told stories of how the moon was silver and silent. The butterfly described how the sun made the flowers open and smell like honey. Hootie felt her eyelids growing heavy. The light was beautiful, but tiring.
She backed into the cool shadow of the trunk. Before falling back to sleep, she smiled (the way owls smile). She had discovered that the world has two sides—the light and the dark—and both are wonderful, even if we only live in one of them.
