everyone please draw the spine finding a tiny baby horsie owl
I can’t draw, but I can write.
Stand back - there may be feels.
*
After the dark and stormy night was the bright and wreckage-strewn morning. In the absence of the usual automated systems - knocked out by the city-wide blackout - the robots were the ones doing the heavy lifting.
Mostly doing the heavy lifting, anyway. Rabbit and Hatchworth were erroneously attempting to build a treehouse out of real trees. The Spine didn’t have the heart to tell them they were really building an inexpertly thatched hut. Not yet.
He’d let it go until something or someone caught fire.
The Spine lifted yet another branch and balanced it on his shoulder, but he didn’t take it to the shredder, because something small fell out of it.
Something small, pale, fluffy and wriggling.
Hardly wriggling at that.
The Spine bought up his emergency medical database and, fighting down the flashbacks from the wars accessed the veterinary data on avians. This specimen was a hatchling. Species - owl. It would need to be warm and secure.
The Spine scooped up the tiny fluff-ball in his other hand. Cradled it against his chest, where he was the warmest.
“Stay strong, little fella,” he murmured. “I’ll make sure you’re safe.”
*
Mixing up the special blend of baby owl food had been… gross… At least he’d had the sense to use a blender (after checking five times that Rabbit wasn’t around) for it, but handling all the raw materials was something he’d rather forget.
And he would tell Rabbit, later, about what happened to her third-best feather boa. And explain to Pete VI about why he’d suddenly needed so many socks. Or a calibratable infra-red lamp.
At least the cardboard box, in which the improvised nest and the little owl sat, was unclaimed by anyone for anything special. He’d set the whole thing up in the high, safe places of the Hall of Wires, where Marshmallow could never reach. There, he carefully fed the owlet with a pipette - yet another tool he’d appropriated and steam cleaned - and cooed encouragingly to the ravenous little creature.
He felt a warmth inside him that could not be traced physically. Love? He didn’t know. “You’re going to need a name, little fella.”
The owlet, annoyed that food was currently not forthcoming, let out a screech that was almost like a whinny.
The Spine smiled and fed him more food. “All right, pard'ner. Your name is Horsey. Good Horsey.”
Horsey the owl was just happy to gulp down blended mouse bits.
