Twisters Express
By Hannah Bertalot
There was a particularly stony silence as Wren entered the post office one morning. The Postmaster had paged her to let her know she was needed for an important ‘mission’ today, which seemed an odd way to frame anything done at her job as a carrier for the Twisters Post Office.
“Morning, Wren. Thank you for coming in early on such short notice,” the Postmaster greeted. She only nodded in acknowledgment, then fell into step next to him as he led her away from the aviary where her bird was kept. “You won’t be using your usual Hummer today, you’re going out on an Owl.”
She raised an eyebrow. “What’s the occasion?”
“One of our rookies has gone missing—he tried taking a Hummer into The Alpines and hasn’t reported anywhere in over twelve hours.” A weary sigh punctuated the old Postmaster’s explanation.
Wren frowned, then mentally ran down the list of newcomers who had joined the crew recently. “Who was it?”
“Orion Flaxley. Scrawny lad, you’d take him to be fresh out of school.”
“Ah, him.”
Wren recalled the brief glances that she had caught of the mail carrier the previous few days while he underwent the typical training—she had pinned him as the sort to err on the side of caution, though it was hard to guess at personality based on appearances alone, she supposed. Regardless, a rookie made a rookie mistake, and as usual, it was left to her to clean up their mess. How thrilling. She huffed, then nodded to the Postmaster.
“Right, then. I’ll get right on it.”
“Thank you, Wren, really. We’ve been in over our heads with the new crew lately.”
A few hours later, Wren was out on the back of a particularly disgruntled giant snowy owl—she guessed that it was just as thrilled as she was to be headed out into the mountains first thing in the morning. Her breath came in billowy clouds as she scanned over the forest, eyes trained on the terrain below as it passed in a blurry green and white mosaic.
Once she had been out for a while, boredom nipped at the edges of her attention and nearly caused her to miss the unmistakable flash of color nestled in the snow next to a scattered collection of boxes and deep footprints gouged into the snow. Wren tugged sharply on the owl’s reins, and it chittered at her unhappily as it reluctantly wheeled around to land in the clearing.
With a flourish, the owl landed, and Wren dismounted. A scowl crossed her features as she looked over to the huddled pile of tropical-colored feathers as a particularly miserable-looking Hummer shivered in the alpine temperatures.
“Hello? Orion? Are you here?” She called. Promptly, a young man’s head popped up from behind the Hummer; he looked relieved to hear his name being called.
“Yes, that—that’s me!” He responded as he scrambled to disentangle himself from the bird’s feathers, where he was sheltered from the brunt of the frosty mountain air. He enthusiastically struggled through the snow to meet her halfway as Wren walked over. His overall state was disheveled; his hair was unkempt and dampened by powdery snow, his coat zipped up to cover his face, and a shiver wracked his shoulders.
Wren sighed as he offered a gloved hand to her, “Orion Flaxley, at your service! You’re Wren, right? I don’t think we’ve had the chance to meet each other properly, yet!”
His energy seemed entirely disproportionate to the predicament he found himself in, Wren noted with a prick of irritation.
“That’s right,” Her gaze panned over to the scattered packages, then to the small pile that she assumed he had attempted to pull together after he initially crashed. “You acted against company protocol, you know.” She deadpanned. Orion looked put out as he sheepishly followed her gaze.
“Err… yeah, sorry…” He mumbled.
“It’s not me you need to apologize to—you have a lot of superiors to worry about when we get back. Anyway, how long have you been out here?” Wren asked as she stalked past him.
“Uhm, well, we left at around… I think it was six PM? I thought we would get over the mountain before it got dark…”
Wren inhaled very deeply and caught herself before she snapped at the greenhorn. “That was exceptionally stupid of you.”
Orion deflated, then sent her a guilty look as she knelt next to the Hummer, which stirred reluctantly as Wren prodded it.
“Poor thing…” she murmured.
After a short check-up, she concluded that with the condition of the Hummer, it wouldn’t be able to fly far.
“Hand me the spare canteen of nectar in that Owl’s bag, then pick up the rest of the packages you dumped in the snow.”
“Right, right! One second!” Orion said, then ran to where the Owl had settled in a shallower part of the snow. He fumbled through the bags for a moment before he ran back over. In the process, he nearly tripped and dumped what little precious nectar Wren had on hand, and won himself a sharp glare. He relinquished it to her quickly, and she then offered it to the Hummer while Orion went to clean up the packages.
“Right, then. Now, since you so brilliantly brought a tropical species into the Alpines, it needs to rest before it has any chance of flight. We don’t have that time, and here is not a good place to rest. So we’ll have to find an alternative way to get ‘em home.” Wren said pensively. A beat of quiet passed before Orion made a distant ‘Ooh!’ sound as he rifled through her bags.
“You have rope in here! What if we rigged up a harness of sorts and the Owl flew it back?” He suggested.
That actually… wasn’t a bad idea. Wren nodded in approval. Once the Hummer had its fill of nectar, she capped the canteen and grabbed the rope.
A few minutes later, with some struggle, they had figured out a way to carry the Hummer home in the least stressful fashion possible for the bird.
“Right then, all the packages are accounted for?” Wren asked, climbing back onto the back of the Owl.
“Yep!” Orion affirmed as he joined her on the Owl’s back. The bird snapped its beak irritably at the increase in cargo weight but, as Wren prompted it, reluctantly took flight.
“Let's high-tail it out of here then; I’m pretty sure there’s a storm on the forecast tonight, and I’m not keen on getting stuck out in the Alpines.”