Chernevog:

[owl_and_heart]

A young man, he is, hardly more than a boy--seventeen, eighteen? A beautiful boy, a handsome boy, surely someone's sweetheart, or some mother's pride, fussed over and loved: very surely someone loves this boy, it must be so. Dressed very neatly, if patched, in trousers and a shirt with a little charm for luck and safety embroidered into the collar, with a long coat to keep warm in a Russian winter, or a Russian downpour. Then, too, he has an Owl on his shoulder, a white Owl, keeping a sharp watch about itself, and he looks at the Owl from time to time with great love. Attached, certainly, a boy with his pet. One wonders how long they've had each other. All told he presents a good picture, a pretty picture; young, well-scrubbed, a little shy, with his long brown hair on his neck. Probably a farmer's son, or a fisherman's. The god knows there are plenty of those.

For all that, though, he doesn't look right, there's something not quite right about this boy, and after a moment, one notices it's the transparency, the quality he has of being not entirely there, as if a man could look right through him and see the trees on the other side. One can't, of course, but the quality is there; and the way he bears himself, as if there's something troubling in his chest.

He smiles a little, though, timid and well-mannered, smiles, for the god's sake, though he clearly doesn't know where he is. "Hello," he says, polite boy.

Owl flutters its wings.

Kavi Chernevog, sorcerer, from C. J. Cherry's Rusalka trilogy.