The most communicative owl in the owl kingdom is perched outside Michael’s window. She’s on a chatter-on-chatter-off schedule: approximately twenty minutes chatter, ten minutes silence.

During the silences, Michael’s been sleeping and dreaming in vivid bursts. He’s expecting the dialogue of these dreams to soon be reduced to, “Who? Who?”

Nan McLamb lives and writes in a Carolina pine forest wedged between a swamp and the ocean. She is rarely kept awake by owls.