Pio awoke clinging to a pine tree. He shivered from the cold and the dew that saturated his thick coat of midnight blue fur. He unstuck his tongue from the roof of his mouth and swallowed the bitter taste of sleeping through the night.
"Where is mother?" he said aloud.
The tree stood in stoney silence and did not respond. Pio looked down through the needles and towards the ground. He saw for the first time how long and thin his legs were. He pulled his shiny black claws from the bark and slowly inched his way down to the ground.
"Where is mother?" he asked again when he reached the ground.
The ground refused to answer as well. Pio began to feel the first tremors of fear. He wrapped his long arms around himself. A deer came into view and started to scratch its thigh on a rotting log. Pio loped towards it, and found that it barely came to his knee. When he stood right next to it, the deer suddenly stopped scratching, its leg still raised awkwardly. It flicked an ear and then an eye in his direction without moving any other part of itself.
"Where is mother?" Pio asked the deer.
The deer flinched, and then a moment later leapt over the log, into the ferny undergrowth and soon disappeared completely. Pio frowned. Then he saw a worn path in the forest and decided to follow it. He covered the ground quickly, but the branches of the trees that hung over the path kept getting in his eyes and he had to swat them away. He was getting scared and frustrated.
Then he heard voices. He stopped, hopeful. He saw two humans walking towards him on the path. They carried sticks and wore orange and they were speaking and laughing. Pio's heart leapt at the sight of them. He ran towards them, crashed through the bush. The men stopped suddenly and raised their sticks.
"What the hell is that!?" one of the screamed.
"Kill it! Kill it! Kill it!" replied the other.
They lifted their sticks and fired. The blasts hit Pio in his paunchy abdomen and he fell to his knees, clutching his middle. Then men fired again, and Pio vomited up inky black blood. He fell forward with a thunderous crash.
The men stared at him, panting and breathless.
"What is it?" whispered one.
"Is it dead?" whispered the other.
"It looks like..."
"A big muppet?" finished the other.
They were both silent and frozen in their steps for a moment.
"Maybe it's from another planet."
"Why couldn't we have come across Sasquatch or something? Why...this?"
Pio moved his hand towards them and the men jumped back.
"Where is mother?" asked Pio.
"That's...that's the baby? Whoooh."
"And we just killed it. That's not good. Not good at all."
"Yeah. Let's...let's go."
The two men turned and ran back down the path until they were out of sight.
Pio started to cry big inky tears.
"Where are you?" he said quietly, but the forest did not reply.
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