ORIGINS: Look at the second owl in the original series while it is upside down. There is a forest between its wings. Those tall trees with their white leaves form a many-legged elephant. Are you wondering where the winged strawberry came from? Every forest has a heart, and the owl refused to be left out.
I am a winged strawberry. A child. All dreams and heart. Sure, maybe some day I will stray too far away from home. Maybe I will get lost in the woods. Where the owls hoot and the trees are as tall as elephants. Maybe some day soon I will learn more than is safe about this life, truths I will wish I could forget. But there is no going back. There are no breadcrumbs on the floor, my strawberry-shaped heart keeps all its dots because safety isn’t the rhythm my wings beat to. I have already learned my first lesson. The one that says that eventually all children die. The one that cut my heart in half. I already know that nothing I do will prevent my death because the owls will just keep hooting their lessons at me. But I am still a child. And I refuse to let my dreams and my heart rot before I grow up.
Are you a lesson? Are you an omen? I am too young to be thinking about the future either way. I have been told not to wander into the woods because there is only darkness waiting for us in that heart. But you are an owl, you live there, and maybe you can tell me a different story. One as sweet as a strawberry and as hopeful as the wings of a bird. I have been told that people don’t learn from their mistakes, that history repeats itself. Do you think that everything happens because we forget? Because we aren’t elephants that remember a path, a whole lifetime? Or maybe we are, and that is just the path we have inherited. One that keeps leading us into the darkest woods. But what do I know? I am just a child. You are the owl here. And I am still waiting for your story.
Why do you insist on getting my hopes up? I don’t want a winged strawberry for a heart. I don’t want something that can’t wait to fly away from me, because I will never live up to the sky, to all the sweet dreams you keep promising me. I can’t help having my own dreams, and that is already bad enough. Do you know what my future looks like? It’s an elephant-shaped forest. Every leaf is a dream. One I will never forget. One that won’t stay green. Not even strawberry red. In time, all my dreams will wither into regrets. But they won’t fall. Because elephants remember, that’s what they do. And as I grow older, the heart of my forest will only grow darker. So, Owl, why don’t you do me a favor and keep what you think you know to yourself? I don’t want to grow up knowing the taste of rotten strawberries in addition to everything else that I already know.
All-knowing Owl, do you want me to tell you where you went wrong? You watched and you learned. You wrote down. You cut down a thousand trees. You cut them into pieces of paper thinner than your feathers to grow your collection of books. And you forgot the most important thing along the way. People aren’t just made of numbers and words. People, especially children like me, have hearts too. Those hearts don’t always taste as sweet as strawberries, but there is something called empathy, that could do more to save this world than any of your books. Pain doesn’t go away, it can’t be forgotten just by closing a book. And I would say that maybe you should give it a try before it’s too late. Eating a heart or two, getting to know their taste, instead of just watching from afar. But there are no elephants left. You cut them all down for your books. And most hearts too. You cut them into paper-thin pieces and wrote all over them. So, there probably isn’t anything left for you to learn.
I am a forest. I am an elephant. The air my children breathe. The memories they keep. I am everything they hand down. I chose to renounce my path, to let my children find their own. Because I didn’t want to become something heavy weighing down their hearts. Hatred. Resentment. Betrayal. All I ever wanted was to be something light in their lungs. Love. Gratitude. Support. All the good things a family should be.
Do you know why cactuses have spikes? It’s to protect their water. I am an elephant. Do you really think that I wouldn’t do the same to protect my memories? They are my life. In this dark forest they are all I have. What keeps me alive. The kindness someone once showed me, when all others had ever done was hurt me. Do you really think that I would choose to forget everything? That I would surrender my heart to the darkness of this forest just to get rid of the hurt? I am not afraid of being outnumbered by the dark. I am afraid of being alone in it.
I won’t deny that I took the easy way out, but can you really blame me? I became a tree because I couldn’t bring myself to take another step carrying such a heavy burden in my heart, where I could never shake it off. It hurt too much, and I needed to shed my memories, like a tree would shed its leaves. So, that is what I became. And I don’t regret the price I have to pay. Forgetting everything is worth it because people only cherish things they know won’t last.
I am still hungry. There is nothing red left in this forest, I ate all the leaves, but that hasn’t done anything to sate my appetite. I want a strawberry, but there are none here, only bare branches. And that should have been enough to banish the darkness from my heart, into the night, where come morning it wouldn’t even have been a memory. But silly me, I forgot that nothing in this life is free. If I had a strawberry, I could bribe the night with a few stars and send it on its way. But my mouth is empty. And the night has decided to stay and haunt me. With all those memories that keep my hunger alive.