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“When I was very young, with eyes scarcely open and ears still floppy, I heard the beautiful call of an unknown creature. Its voice danced and spun in mysterious loops, brilliant like ice as a cold dawn broke. I was sure that the creature was as large as a fox to master such a powerful voice.
I had searched for it with Pirie by my side; I had listened for it from the night he’d vanished.
I finally found it as I left the land of the furless, on the branch of a tree near a guttering brightglobe, right on the edges of the Snarl. My tail drooped with disappointment: it was only a bird — a small, round creature with a red bib at its throat.
Pirie’s voice in my head. Why are you sad?
I watched the ball of feathers as it flitted from the tree. “I thought I would see a powerful thing,” I said to no one. “I thought it was something special.”
My brother’s voice was fading as the bird escaped from sight. Perhaps it is, he murmured”
― Inbali Iserles, The Taken