This is StoryQuest. Today's story is

Scowl the discontented owl.

All was not well in heavy brook wilds, a thick forest which covered the eastern

peninsula of the thorn Wallow lands.

Animals of all sorts lived in the woods, and generally speaking, got along fairly well.

I mean, of course, they were wild, not tame, and so don't go thinking they held tea parties wearing pennies or anything like that. The smaller animals were rightfully cautious around the

bigger ones and kept their distance,

which was increasingly difficult because the wood was becoming a very crowded place.

And that's where our story starts.

After a harsh winter, where heavy snows had coated the nearby beholding mountains, there had been a terrible

landslide, but the landslide itself wasn't the problem. The earth does tend to shift its shape

over the centuries, and far from being a disaster, it actually revealed something rather magnificent.

A waterfall, which had been hidden under the rock sprung forth,

filling the shallow brooklets that ran through the forest with icy fresh water.

The water brought new life to the forest. Fish and frogs and wild fowl from both inland and the

coast flew in to swim, bask and bathe. All of these new creatures

caused those already there to increase in numbers, so plentiful with a fish on which to feast.

So, as I said, the forest was now becoming a very crowded place, and one animal in particular

was not happy about this at all.

Scowl was an owl, and actually, despite his name, he wasn't usually prone to fits of grumpiness,

but he was peevish, and like a lot of animals, he was nocturnal.

Do you know what that means?

...