How’s this opening?

Wonderful Sunday to you. Life has been wild. Hopefully your writing has been productive.

How’s this? Thanks in advance!

* * *

The world was quiet at this hour; her mind was not. Nestled in the crook of an oak tree, Nina set her knife against a palm-sized piece of wood. Maybe she shouldn’t have picked this shape, but it was the only thing she could envision. The horizon was a deep, dark bruise, underlined in pastel clouds. The rhythm of the blade hummed through her forearms. Each curl of pale wood had an earthy scent that reminded her of sweetened black tea.

*Scrape.* An investigation. Nothing more.

*Scrape. Scrape.* Identify targets, gather intel. *Scrape.* NO.

Not targets, civilians. Be civil.

*Scrape.*

The rounded head of a barn owl took shape. The two sides of its face angled like the crease of a heart-shaped leaf. No eyes yet, save for two dents where her knife had pricked the wood. Eventually, she would make them round and innocent—not wolfish like hers.

It was only wood, harmless in her hands. The world below woke up in a ballad of warbles and murmurs, bright thrusts of laughter, the clink of shifting armor, a horse’s restless snort. Soldiers gathered for the morning briefing in a clearing nearby.

A new kind of mission, one that would hopefully see no violence.

*Scrape. Scrape.*

The rhythm faded beneath the pounding in her skull. The last scrape curdled into a scream. The scent of fresh wood soured to sulfur. Her vision blurred; the light of morning bled into a mottled, furious orange.

She was back on her last mission for the Syndicate.

* * *

The same wooden bird lay in dark ash at her feet. [cue brief sensory flashback]