"Diath! Diath, get up! Come on, Diath!" Diath Woodrow woke up that morning being shaken and screamed at. Still feeling drowsy, he forced himself to sit up. Immediately, he felt his back protest, a wave of pain shooting through his spine. He tried his best to ignore it. It was a side effect of sleeping on the floor. Blinking wearily, he peered through tired eyes at the little girl that sat beside him. She was about four years younger than him, having just had her seventh birthday. "Arabelle," he had to force himself to sound more energetic than he felt. "What are you doing up here? You sleep downstairs." He peered around him to see several other kids still sleeping. Most of them slept in some sort of makeshift bed, only a few were curled up on the floor like he had been. "Everyone's still sleeping..." he remarked, eyebrows furrowed. "What time is it?" "Diath, you have to come downstairs!" she exclaimed, her words running together in her excitement. "There's an owl outside and it has a letter for you!" He was silent for a second. "Arabelle," he responded slowly. "Are you sure you weren't just having a dream?" "No! No, not a dream! It's big and brown, and the envelope is pretty and white and it has your name on it!" He sat there staring at her numbly. The girl had only been a part of the home for a few weeks, so he didn't know her very well. She had been brought to them by a few men who claimed that she had recently been declared a ward of court. They had explained that there was no other home that could take her and had made up some lie about helping fix the overcrowding problem soon. Of course, the two adults who ran the home couldn't bring themselves to say no, so one of the older kids had had to give up their bed. This had happened a few times; Diath had given up his bed a few months ago. Currently, the house was home to about twenty kids, all declared wards of court for one reason to another. Some had parents that had been declared "unfit", others had been orphaned. Diath fell into the second group. "Please, Diath!" the girl pleaded, her voice shrill. The boy winced, glancing around. She was going to wake everyone else up if she kept shrieking like that. "Arabelle, are you sure there was an owl down there?" She nodded vigorously. "Yes! Owl!" "Okay, but even if there is an owl outside, why would it have a letter for—" Seeing the look in her eyes, he stopped mid-sentence and sighed deeply. Slowly, he threw the jacket that he used as a blanket off of him. "Fine. Show me the carrier owl." She practically squealed with joy, and he fought the urge to shush her. She took his hand and began tugging him along, rambling all the way. "You'll see! It's down there, and it is very big and very brown! I don't know who wrote the letter it had, it wouldn't let me touch it. I think it was supposed to only let you see it. Maybe it's your owl now!" He fought back another sigh. "Okay, that's great, but keep your voice down," he tried. They arrived downstairs, miraculously managing not to trip. With the speed they were moving, and the way she was dragging him, it had seemed inevitable. "Okay, Arabelle, so where is this—" He stopped in the middle of his sentence, his blue eyes widening exponentially. They had landed on the window that adorned the front wall. Sure enough, sitting there was a large, brown owl. Its yellow eyes were trained on him and as they made eye contact, it let out a soft hoot that was muffled by the window. His jaw dropped. It was real. He had thought it was just a crazy story fueled by the imagination of a little girl, but there it was.