Dream or Truth?

Fiction

It was 3.47 in the morning.I was still struggling to catch my lost sleep and all my efforts were in vain. So, after trying for an hour or so, I thought of going online to check if someone like me was still awaken. Not a good luck that was that no one was online and their ‘last seen’ reminded me of my class schedule for the next day as if they were scolding me to go to sleep. I had to wake up early in the morning. I got up from my bed, checked if any of my roommates was awake. But, everyone was asleep. One of them was snoring,too. I walked to the balcony and caught a glimpse of the vast college campus spreaded before my eyes. No one was there. Not even a security guard in sight. It was a cold winter’s night. It was so quite that I could listen to the sound of the breeze. I stood there for a while having various and random thoughts. Suddenly I saw a white coloured object on the top of an air cooler in a room nearby. I moved from where I was standing to a step closer towards my right wall to get a closer look at it. I thought it must be someone’s shoe or some white cloth. But it was shiny! It interested me so I moved further ahead and what I saw was unbelievable. I had never seen such a beautiful thing in my life. (And trust me, I have seen many beauties ) It was a snowy owl (or I was hallusinating!).They say,snowy owls are so rare that the people who see them are very very lucky.True or not, but I was feeling out of the world. I couldn’t control my excitement for what a great scene it was! It was over a feet long and very beautiful. I had my lifetime experience of witnessing one. It flew away after a couple of seconds. Did I really watch it in front of my eyes? I forgot to pinch myself to check as if I were  asleep or not. I could not really believe that this happened. So I went back into the room and slept. I don’t remember anything past that.
The next day I came back from my morning class but I didn’t mention about this to any of my friends thinking they would laugh as snowy owls are mostly seen in North Americas and not in India. So, I sat on my chair holding a rolled stuffed parantha for breakfast in a hand and the newspaper in other and a smile came up on my face as soon as I read the headlines of the city newspaper. It read: “A white owl had been seen on various places in the city at late night. “