The Story Behind Silent as Love: Why Two Owls?

Of all the stories in Silent as the Wild, Silent as Love may be the most unsettling.

And that was intentional.

I knew I wanted to write about the difference between love and possession — about what happens when someone becomes convinced that wanting another person badly enough somehow gives them a claim to that person.

I needed a predator.

And I needed someone he could convince himself he loved.

That's how I ended up with two owls.

Why a Great Horned Owl?

There is something magnificent about a Great Horned Owl.

Powerful. Silent. Watchful.

It is an extraordinarily capable predator.

And that made him perfect for the story.

My Great Horned Owl doesn't initially see himself as dangerous. In his own mind, he is fascinated. Then enamoured. Then devoted.

He watches the Barn Owl.

He listens to her conversations.

He learns her routines.

He follows her.

He collects things she has touched.

He leaves gifts.

And through all of it, he tells himself a story about what he's doing.

He calls it love.

From inside his head, his behaviour can almost sound romantic.

From hers, it is terrifying.

That difference became the heart of Silent as Love.

Why a Barn Owl?

I wanted the female owl to feel almost otherworldly beside him.

Barn Owls gave me exactly that.

With their pale feathers, heart-shaped faces and almost ghostlike flight, they have an entirely different presence from the large, imposing Great Horned Owl.

She belongs to the open field and the barn.

He belongs to the dark forest.

She is light where he is shadow.

She is smaller.

And critically, she is vulnerable to him.

Because the uncomfortable truth behind the story is that a Great Horned Owl can prey upon other owls.

Suddenly the metaphor I'd been playing with wasn't entirely a metaphor anymore.

He really was a predator.

She really could become his prey.

And that changed the story.

When does attention stop being affection?

There is a point in the story when the Great Horned Owl begins collecting little pieces of her life.

A feather.

A bit of straw from her loft.

Things she has touched.

He creates what I called a nest of devotions.

It's probably one of the creepiest parts of the story because he doesn't think it's creepy at all.

That's important.

He believes the intensity of his feelings proves their legitimacy.

When she doesn't respond to his gifts, he invents explanations.

When she doesn't acknowledge him, perhaps she is simply too graceful to speak about such things.

When she is silent, he wonders whether her silence means consent.

And when she finally tells him directly —

“You frighten me.”

— he still doesn't really hear her.

That's the point at which Silent as Love stops allowing either him or the reader to pretend this might be romance.

The predator who doesn't think he's a predator

That was the idea I kept returning to while writing this story.

We usually imagine predators as knowing exactly what they are.

But humans aren't always so honest with ourselves.

Possession can call itself devotion.

Jealousy can call itself protection.

Control can call itself concern.

Obsession can call itself love.

And sometimes the person causing fear is the last person willing to recognize it.

The Great Horned Owl changes his hunting grounds for her. He tries to imitate her flight. He even attempts her call.

In his mind, these are sacrifices.

Proof of love.

But she never asked him to make them.

That's the distinction that matters.

And then instinct takes over

Toward the end of the story, winter comes.

Food becomes scarce.

The Barn Owl increasingly avoids him.

And slowly, the language he has used to describe his love begins to merge with something much older.

Hunger.

He thinks about her warmth.

Her smallness.

How she might feel in his talons.

And finally he convinces himself that possessing her completely would be the ultimate expression of love.

It is grotesque.

It's supposed to be.

Because by then the reader understands something he still refuses to understand:

This was never love.

It was appetite dressed up as affection.

Why Silent as Love?

The title is deliberately deceptive.

Owls are famous for their extraordinary ability to fly quietly. Their specialized feathers help reduce the sound of their flight, allowing them to approach prey with remarkably little warning.

So silence belongs naturally to their world.

But there is another kind of silence in the story.

Her silence.

The silence he repeatedly interprets in whatever way suits him.

And finally, the permanent silence he creates.

That is why the title became Silent as Love.

Because sometimes the most dangerous version of love is the one in which only one person gets to define what love means.

And that brings us to the final line:

“And if it flies like a predator and watches like a predator, it is a predator.”

By then, there are no more excuses.

He was what he had always been.

We just spent most of the story inside his head while he tried to convince us otherwise.