I stopped, slowly wandering the country.
At last alone with my thoughts (except for the occasional inquisitive moo from puppet cows) I pushed through the strange yellow-brown plant plants, struggling to understand these feelings of guilt, and who I was.
My kind ate humans to live.
Well, mom said there had been a few cave dwelling lifeforms in the area we used to live in, but grandmother got greedy and hitched a ride on a human's spaceship, starting a family in a world that no longer had access to those kinds of prey.
Humans, I now knew, weren't just livestock. They had feelings and personalities, families of their own, friends, people who wept for those who got killed and eaten.
As I thought about it, I found myself coughing and sneezing in sadness.
It wasn't just concepts getting to me. The idea that this Maria person had been a friendly and gentle individual, that my life would be forever deprived of her presence because of what I did to her, that made me cry.
I'd learned far, far too late that friendship is infinitely more valuable than food.
I cried again. A cow stared at me in puzzlement, giving me a wrong sounding moo. I scowled, wandering away from it.
Chop chop chop wud wud wud.
The noise came from the air, in the far distance.
As stated previously, I existed in a world of limited sensory information, so I couldn't tell the exact location of the noisemaker, or its identity. I could only crouch amid the wheat and whip my head around every which way in search of the noise.
Moments later, I spotted a tiny dot in the sky, growing larger with each whudding chopping noise.
I dug myself in the dirt, craning my head upwards as the object increased in size and definition.
Impossible!
I already inhabited a world filled with impossibilities, but this one far surpassed anything I had ever encountered.
Gretchen Goose could fly!
Never before had I seen any individual of my race taking to the air. I'd only heard rumors of them hitching rides on spaceships.
To be perfectly honest, I hadn't even seen a bird fly before. A few researchers kept pet parakeets or budgies from time to time, but the animals never left their cages, and I never bothered to attempt eating them due to their tiny size. They could jump funny. That's all I knew.
But here, this defied logical sense.
Gretchen was too large for flight, even as an actual bird. Now, as a Ss'sik'chtokiwij she didn't even have wings.
She had...propellers.
Four of them, like some kind of weird helicopter. (I've never seen one of those either, but that's the closest comparison I can think of).
I don't know how she found me. I hadn't made that much noise, but somehow she'd tracked me down.
She landed, calling to me as she marched my way.
I didn't want to talk. I just wanted to be alone.
I fled through the grain field.
A few yards into my escape, I came across a ramshackle log cabin with a sleeping dog on the front porch. The gap beneath looked dark and peaceful, so I dove for its safety.
For several long moments, I lay still, holding my breath, silently watching Gretchen Goose search for me.
"Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!" she called from the distance. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik!"
I backed away from the light, hoping I hadn't been seen.
When I retreated further, I noticed an irregular shape obstructing my path.
Through my night vision, I could make out familiar curving lines, lean powerful muscles merged with hard edged angular exoskeletal features.
A voice spoke from the darkness. "Sh'kassk'dwuissueblik, why are you running?"
I swallowed. "Mom?"
[0000]
(14) The only change to this section (Chapter 128) is Big Bird. The other characters are unrelated to the Muppets. See Chapter 128 Section III.
(15) See Item II-B on Chapter 128.