Barn owl and swirls on ribs

The frost has been on the yard for nine days now and Dad has stopped complaining about the cold, which tells you how bad it is. I went up to the loft on Tuesday to fetch the second bale for the heifers and there she was, sitting on the cross beam above the oats as if she'd paid the rent. Barn owl, pale as a dishcloth, face like a heart somebody had pressed flat. She didn't move when I lit the torch. She just turned that face and looked at me the way Mrs Hallam looks at a badly sung hymn.

We've decided she's ours. Dad says she's been keeping the mice out of the feed since before either of us was born, and I suppose that's true enough, because the sacks haven't been chewed once this winter. Each morning there's a neat little heap of pellets under the beam, tidy as a pressed flower, and inside them the tiny bones of things that would have had the whole barley crop.

I found a feather on the back step yesterday, long and grey-brown with a bit of green-blue at the tip, probably off the drake that keeps landing on the frozen pond. I've put it in the biscuit tin with your old marbles. I know you'll say it's rubbish, but I keep thinking of the way she opened her wings to drop off the beam, slow as someone lifting a sheet off a bed.

Come home at Christmas if you can. The owl will still be here, and so, if I'm honest, will I.

Love, Nell