The Nothing

Quill bent down, while still watching the stars for any sign that the pigeons might return, and slowly picked up the last note. Percy perched silently on his shoulder, his giant eyes scanning back and forth.

“I didn’t realize pigeons were that strong,” the owl said.

“Get a big enough group of flying rats together and they can do almost anything.”

“Flying rats?”

Quill looked down at the scrap of paper in his hand. In elaborate multi colored cursive, the letter G was written.

The owl and the pirate spent the next three minutes rearranging the seven scraps of paper and trying to figure out what they meant. Each scrap had a letter on it: there were two N’s, a T, an H, an O, an I, and a G.”

The owl scrambled the letters back and forth on a park bench. “No night?”

The pirate rearranged the letters, scowling the whole time. “Nog hint?”

Percy froze. “No.”

Quill looked up from the bench. “Yes, no is in there too. Along with inn, if you shuffle things around.”

The owl shivered. “Nothing.”

“Oh. You’re right. That’s the only word that uses all 7 letters.”

“Nothing.”

Quill picked up the scraps and spelled out ‘nothing’ on the park bench. “Okay. Your the wise owl, I get it. You win. You don’t have to rub it in.”

“Nothing,” the owl repeated.

Quill picked up the owl slowly and looked into his eyes. They were filling with tears. “Percy, can you hear me?”

“Nothing,” the owl repeated.