Legends & Lore: The Owl & The Ant | Episode 8

00:00
Speaker 1
Welcome to the country's most exclusive boarding school, bishop Gray. Where rules mean nothing and money means everything. Academy is a new scripted podcast that follows Ava Richards, played by HBO's industry Maihala Herald, a brilliant scholarship student who has to quickly adapt to her newfound eat or be eaten world. Her ambitions take hold and her values bend in hopes of becoming the first scholarship student to make the list. Bishop Gray's all coveted academic top ten, curated by the headmaster himself. Becoming a chosen one means she's on a path to big things. After realizing there's no way she'll make the list on her own, she accepts an invitation to an underground society that promises her one of the ten coveted spots if she bends to their will. For her own success, she could have everything she's ever dreamed of. But at what cost?

00:45
Speaker 1
Ava must navigate a game of high stakes chess and risk throwing it all away for love. If she makes the right moves, she could be set for life. But one misstep could cost her everything. Academy takes you into the world of a cutthroat private school where power, money, and sex collide in a game of life and death. Prime members, you can binge all ten episodes of Academy on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today.

01:07
Speaker 2
Hello, listeners. Be advised that this show is an immersive audio experience. It may seem like sounds are coming from the sides or behind you. Listener discretion is advised as this content is intended for adult audiences only.

01:21
Speaker 3
Q Code presents birds of Empire created by Jason Liu.

01:33
Speaker 4
The Owl and the Ant it's believed by those who don't know that when a woman abandons her child, she feels a lifetime of loss. This is wrong. What she feels is forever pregnant. She feels every limb and loss grow inside of her body for all time. A ghostly silhouette floating just under the skin, like cobwebs in the dark and hollow of an aspen, moving at the whim of some demon, some wraith. This mother felt this way. And she felt this way because she left her boy to die in the underbrush. She left her boy to die in the underbrush because she could no longer stand his screams in the night. He had terrible visions that came as they pleased and stayed as they wished. At first, she did what she thought a mother should do. Hold him, soothe him.

02:35
Speaker 4
But the visions grew worse, not better. It overwhelmed her. And she was not one who had the luxury of being overwhelmed. It's not that she didn't know what to do. It's that she did it. Her name was Egret then, just gret to the few who bothered to call her anything. One of the many women in the brothels who wondered why the gods had created them. Gods must need whores, she would think. And then she would try to imagine why. And then she would become sad. And then she would look up and see she was still here in this place. Gods, protect me. She would say this even though they never did. When she joined the order, they would find her muttering the phrase and mistook it for fear they were wrong. She feared nothing, for nothing more could be taken from her anyway.

03:37
Speaker 4
She had given up on the gods long ago. To speak to them was like talking to an unmarked grave. No, when she said it, she was always thinking about what he would be like now if he still had her hands, her crooked shoulder, her heart. His memory turned inside her womb. Even when she became what she became she would always feel him there. Antler found the body half sunk in a bog one of his climb downs. From the underbrush, he would skim the treeline of the soil where the landfolk dwelled. It made him feel like he was a ruler of a cursed dominion. He liked that one of his ears had ripped off when he was younger and he touched the smooth, jagged pattern left behind in times of worry.

04:34
Speaker 4
It somehow made the rest of his face come together in a way that commanded respect. Or it was his height or it was the scars all over his body or it was the way he would drop his chin down lower his gaze at you. He was put together as if the gods grabbed a tangle of thorny vines and immediately forgot what they were doing. But when held a blade, a blade is all you could see. Many in the Underbrush were like him, so he never thought he was anything but ordinary. He had flashes sometimes of his life above his mother holding him as his visions clawed at the backs of his eyes. The lathe she'd used to pretend that wherever they found to sleep was actually a bed for royalty.

05:30
Speaker 4
The muscles of her forearms stiff from washing her garment again and her face floating just out of reach like a map made by memory of a place no one cared to travel. Later, she would tell him things about the day she left him in the thicket of tangles and thorns and moss and sorrow. It did not comfort him to hear it. It did not change the map. The visions he had as a child still came. But now they came like a weary friend arriving unannounced for dinner. He would set the table as fast as he could. When he would wake from them, he never knew where he would be. Sometimes it would be in the midst of a climb down half sunk in the bog. The body was the color of clouds after a storm, a shade of white he'd never seen.

06:32
Speaker 4
It gave him pause, but the mysteries of rot were commonplace and curious. He watched it sink slowly before throwing a hook down, catching just beneath the chin. It tilted the head upward as a mother does when forcing the gaze of her child, hauling it into the trees. Antler was struck by the emptiness in the face. The remaining eye looked deep in thought, not the vacuous gape he was used to seeing. When death took a souvenir, an ASP was winding away through the muck, as if hoping to go unnoticed. Antler grit his jaw as he cut some cloth away to salvage or trade. It was loose on the body. So came apart easily. He didn't notice the bits of metal beneath the skin until years later, when he remembered this moment, recounting it to barlin in the quiet moment before the noise engulfed them all.

07:37
Speaker 4
Only then did it make sense, he found himself saying, without knowing why, gods protect me.

07:53
Speaker 3
Birds of Empire stars Gwendolyn Briley strand as The Keeper written and Directed by Jason Liu executive Produced by Jason Liu rob Herding Sandra Yi Ling Michelle Zarati and Shenyan Heeu story Consultant Quinn Perry original Score and Composition by Darren Johnson and Matthew Carcenti music Editor David Tattershor audio Engineering by Ryan Walsh and David Tattersore edited by Jeffrey Fetig supervising Editor Neely Offdering supervising Sound Effects Editor and Sound Designer Randy Torres foley by Dan O'Connell one Step Up Mixed by Ben Milchev additional Mixer alex Chalk casting Director chrissy Fiorelli assistant Director kelsey Adams script Supervisor bethann Morgan production Coordinator tom Breck head Production Assistant alex Buddha production Assistant cesar Chavez post Coordinator emma Jacobson production Legal christina Bulbrook and Lindsay Keel production Accounting Pin Chun Lu special thanks to Mara Schuster Lefkowitz this podcast was recorded under a SAG Afra collective bargaining agreement.

08:59
Speaker 3
Birds of Empire is a Q Code production. Sound recording. Copyright 2022 by Q Code Media, Inc.

09:08
Speaker 5
Are you a Marvel fan, Matt? You know I am, Jeff. I was asking the listener.

09:13
Speaker 4
Oh, okay.

09:14
Speaker 5
Yeah, I thought it seemed like a weird question because we've been doing a Marvel podcast together for nine years now. No, I was trying to grab the attention of all the Marvel fans out there for this ad.

09:23
Speaker 6
Oh.

09:24
Speaker 7
I thought it was weird, too. You should definitely warn us.

09:27
Speaker 5
Good note, Ashley. Well, if you like Marvel movies and TV as much as we do, join us for the Marvel Cinematic Universe podcast.

09:35
Speaker 7
He did it again.

09:38
Speaker 6
Hi, I'm Bobby Miller, and I host Podcast, the afternoon special, where you can expect a ton of media and pop culture analysis and history, but also a ton of fun. I volunteer as tribute to go down the rabbit hole so you don't have to. All you have to do is sit back, tune in, and you'll maintain that status of the friend who knows just a little bit too much about pop culture. Search for the afternoon special. Wherever you're listening now.