The Kite and the Owl on the Pier

Mule presses Isidro for the witch's location, and when the boy demands he climb down from his horse, Mule courteously does so, catching Isidro off guard. Stuck on the subject to avoid looking suspicious, Isidro pretends Mule means to hand the witch to the Holy See for a promotion, then bolts from the walkway before Mule can correct him. In the scramble Mule glimpses Puck, a sight denied to most of the city's devout. Isidro keeps running, afraid that if Mule reaches Schierke first she will burn at the stake.

Schierke, still low in spirits, sits meditating at the harbor among the gulls, ignoring Ivalera's pleas to rejoin the others. A girl approaches, openly thrilled to meet a real witch, and though Schierke tries to dodge the question, the girl points to her hat, her wand, and the elf on her shoulder as proof. This is Sonia, who admits she watched Schierke free and cremate the Kushan dead. She recognizes in Schierke a fellow outcast and offers a fable of her own making.

Sonia recasts the ugly duckling not as a swan but as a kite. In her tale a murder of crows overruns a pond of ducks and carries off its captives, until a white hawk frees the kite, teaches it to fly, and sets a whole army of dragons loose upon the crows. The hawk alone flies at the kite's height, yet when he rescues a duck princess the flock hopes to wed her to him, and the kite grows jealous, knowing the duck can never rise so high. The kite, Sonia confesses, is herself, and she hopes the lonely owl she has found in Schierke might become her friend.

"The Kite and the Owl on the Pier" runs twenty-two pages of the Millennium Falcon arc and first appeared in Young Animal issue 20 on October 8, 2004. Sonia's allegory thinly veils Griffith's reborn Band of the Falcon, the princess Charlotte, and Sonia's own place at his side. Pressed on whether her companions understand her, Schierke's thoughts turn to Guts and she blushes, and the meeting ends as dozens of Kushan children flee pirates onto the wharf, prompting Schierke and Sonia to intervene.