This night Zaiss wishes to find the owl he had been seeing and that had been watching him around Imladris. Just the week prior he followed the animal back to a tree a short jaunt outside of The Gate of Rivendell, and located its nest in a hollow. He did not scale the tree, nor try to spook it, but he could see the fallen feathers poking out of the hole. This owl and he had met more than a few times, and with his curiosity satiated for that time, he had headed home that night.
Still something was off, after continuous spotting for weeks, this night he didn't see her. Worried for his great, horned, feathered and slightly rounded friend he sets off to her nest. It is cold tonight, and the wind blows a whipping into his cloak as he trudges only briefly out of The Valley. As the man finds his way back to the tree, he stops in brief shock as a mess of feathers and twigs have fallen to the ground out of the tree Zaiss rushes forward, looking to make sense, and at first worrying that the nest may have fallen from the tree. This was recent, and he was right, but it gets worse.
Eggshells and dried yolks cling to the ground. A bit of an adult wing is left behind, and a discarded talon as well. Scratches of great paws have torn the bark from the tree trunk all the way up to the hollow, indicating an animal clambered its way up, and made short work of his friend. For a moment Zaiss just stands there and reminds himself that animals live and die naturally as everything, and it can be cruel as it is beautiful. Still, he feels saddened, such a beautiful creature, and he would miss her sassy head tilts, looking down at him like the confused man he was. His breath escapes him in a sorrowful recalling of the name he gave the beautiful creature, "Oh, Big Mama..."
Zaiss doesn’t know why, but after fermenting in his mourning, he takes a breath and climbs the tree. Maybe to find some remnant of his passed owl friend that he could keep without feeling guilty for robbing it’s corpse, or what remains of it. As he ascends the branches he wonders what could have done this. Some kind of large feline such as a lynx, perhaps. He lifts his head over the branch that the entrance to the hollow straddles, and almost loses his grip in surprise as he inspects within.
He gasps and reaches in to pilfer what perhaps he shouldn't, a white, rounded object that he handles with care as it fits in his palm. It is heavy, unbroken, and must have slid off the bulk of the nest as the attacking predator scraped it from the cavity. It fits almost perfectly in the palm of his hand, and concerned, he immediately sets it back down to manage himself. He grabs a well sized pouch for the job from his pocket and immediately empties it of coins, they scatter and ping against the branches on their way down to the ground.
He finesses the egg into the pouch and makes it snug but not too snug, before fastening it to himself tightly and in a place he will not bump on his way down. Now, ever so carefully carrying what might just be a dead animal in a shell still intact, he crawls down the tree, obsessively checking on the egg as he does. With some struggle, some care, but determination, he makes it down the tree, once again checking the egg but this time pulling it out to do so. He cups both hands over it as if to keep it warm and ever so slowly begins his journey back to Imladris, his gentle voice catching in the wind as he sings to it, as though it will act as recompense for its fallen parent.
