Kevin propped his gun against his shoulder and stopped to glance up at the darkened sky. He squinted to make out the soft pinpricks of pale light from the first stars of the evening. The stars were barely visible to him.

The game warden would have Kevin's ass if he was caught after sunset trying to scare up birds, but Kevin didn't care. He broke the law to compensate for his lack of hunting skill. Four times this week he had walked this field and had yet to kill a single dove.

He considered leaving, but caught the softest rustle in the underbrush.

A smile slipped over his face and curled his lips up into a pleasant shape. He stepped in the direction of the sound and kicked at the grass and undergrowth in front of him.

A flurry of wings blasted up from the field as at least twenty doves took flight, each bird taking their own erratic, panicked path toward the sky.

Kevin jerked his shotgun up into position, with sloppy, unpracticed form. The shotgun's stock slipped off of his shoulder and his eyes searched the flurry of doves heading into the sky. His eyes locked on one in particular. It was a white dove, an unnatural color mutation in the wild.

He fired his shotgun, focused on the rare white dove. The pump action emptied six blasts into the sky. The white dove spiraled out of control.

Twenty feet away from Kevin, the rare white dove hit the ground with the soft thud of a feather covered body against dirt. Kevin rushed to the spot and looked down at the white dove. The creature cooed; it was still alive.

Kevin sighed. He reached down and grabbed the white dove by the head and lifted it. He snapped his wrist up and then down, whipping the dove like a towel to snap the bird's neck.

As Kevin left the field with his kill in his hand, he didn't notice that the stars were no longer trying to shine.