The Prince Who Fell From the Sky by John Claude Bemis

Night birds and tree frogs filled the darkening Forest with their chorus, but there was no sign of the dog.
    Dumpster trotted out on the boulder beside her. “We have a problem,” he said.
    “What?”
    “I think the pup is out of food.”
    Casseomae gazed down at the child. He was licking a shiny wrapper, but she saw that the pouches along his belly and legs were no longer bulging. “What do we do?” she asked.
    Dumpster flicked his whiskers. “Nip me if I know. I guess we hope we find an undiscovered Old Devil cache.”
    “Is that likely?” Casseomae asked.
    “No,” Dumpster said.
    She snorted and lumbered down toward the child. “We should go. Too easy to be sniffed out on this high ground. A little farther and we’ll rest for the night.”
    The following day, Casseomae watched the cub closely but never saw him take out more food. By midmorning, the tuft of golden fur on the child’s head had turned wet again. The heat drove Casseomae to scratchagainst the rough bark of trees, much to Dumpster’s displeasure.
    “I’m riding up here,” he complained, crawling on her head to avoid being squashed.
    A startled rabbit dashed from a log right in front of Casseomae and she brought her huge paw down on it in a flash. As she stopped to eat the surprise catch, Dumpster leaped from his perch to search for a meal of his own. The child flopped to the ground, squeezing water from the tube onto his face.
    By the time Casseomae had eaten the rabbit, she found that the cub had stripped the blue hide from his torso and arms. She watched with a mix of horror and fascination. Without his hide, the cub was pale, bare, and deer-thin. He was hitting the blue hide with a sharp rock.
    “Don’t do that to yourself, little cub,” she warned, nudging his bare back.
    The cub shot up when her wet nose touched him and chirped in his funny speech before going back to work.
    Over and over the cub prodded the hide with the rock until the fabric tore apart. Dumpster emerged with an acorn in his mouth just as the child was putting the clothes back on. The parts that had been covering his arms were now gone.
    Casseomae sniffed at the two limp pieces lying on the ground. They looked like shed snake skin. “Is this whythey’re called the Skinless? Because they can remove their hides?”
    “It’s not his hide, mushroom brain,” Dumpster replied. “I told you before. It’s clothing. The Old Devils didn’t grow it on their bodies. They made it to keep warm.”
    “Does your memory tell you why he just tore part of it off?”
    “Probably for the same reason you’ve been rubbing against every tree in the Forest.”
    “I’m getting off my winter coat,” Casseomae said, feeling an itch arise at the mention.
    “There you go,” Dumpster said smugly. “Our pup here is just trying to cool off.”
    “Humph,” Casseomae snorted, feeling much better about the whole situation. “They were pretty clever creatures, weren’t they?”
    “Yes, they were,” Dumpster said, crunching on the acorn. “Too clever, if you ask me.”
    The child watched as Casseomae bent down to nose up an acorn and eat it. He came over and put an acorn tentatively in his mouth. When his teeth crunched on it, he immediately spit the broken shell out in distaste.
    Casseomae watched with concern. “He’s so bony as it is. We’ve got to find something he can eat.”
    “His kind ain’t fit for Forest food,” Dumpster said. “They ate beefs, cousins of the deer but bigger andslower and stupider. Unfortunately the wolves wiped them out long ago.”
    “I could catch him a fawn,” Casseomae said. “Maybe he’d eat that.”
    “Old Devils never ate fresh kills. They stuffed the meat in containers called cans. Tough to open, but of course we figured out how!” Dumpster twitched his whiskers smugly. “Old Devils loved eating birds, too, but they had to be set on fire and I’ve got no memory for how to do that.”
    Casseomae considered the cub’s predicament as