Fio was exhausted. She had been traveling for days, avoiding hawks, rats, raccoons, cats, wolves, and even a particularly hungry trout. Being 5 inches tall was hard enough without being completely alone.

It had all started when Fio had woken up inside a flower that had pushed through the cracks in the floor of an abandoned log cabin. She had short white-gold hair that matched the petals of her flower, eyes as green as the leaves of her flower, and olive skin like the sandy soil her flower was rooted in. She had explored the cabin, looking for food or just a little company. There was no one around. She found some berries on a thorny briar outside the window. They were large and sweet and dark black. She drank the dew that collected on the leaves. At night, she slept in a book that had been turned upside down to make a tent.

Then she found the pictures. The pictures were of people that looked like her--two arms, two legs, ten fingers and ten toes--but the people in the pictures weren't quite like she was. She was all one color from the roots of her hair to her toes, but the people had blue legs and red torsos and black fingers and even more colors all over their bodies. More pictures showed just the colored bits when they weren't on people. It was frightening at first, to think that people grew strange patches on their skin only to have them pealed off.

When, after a few days, Fio didn't grow any strange colors on her body, she wondered if something was wrong. Then she found a book of people who were almost exactly like she was. The fluff on their heads was darker and their skin had different shades, but they had the same curves, like two nuts stacked on top of one another with mushroom caps on the front of the top nut--which was different from the other body type she'd noticed, a flat slab shape. Very few of them had patches of color on their bodies, and most of them were completely patch-less, just like she was. That made Fio feel better.

Then she turned the page--which took more than a minute, considering some of the pages were stuck together and all of them were taller than she was--and she saw pictures of people holding the patches of clothing close to their skin while water hit them. A few of them seemed to be pealing away tiny bits of color, and they looked very happy about it.

After a moment studying the pictures, Fio began to wonder if the patches were something the people in the pictures enjoyed. What would she look like in patches of color? So she set out to make herself clothes.

While there was nothing her size in the cabin, she found what she needed to make them. There was a whole box with small knives, hooks, needles, and even some sparkly gooy things that looked like worms. (They weren't real worms, though, because when Fio had tried to set them free in the dirt, they didn't move.) The skirt was easy. She cut it from the blue checkered drapes around one of the cabin's windows. Excited by her success, she tried again with different colored fabrics she found around the cabin. Soon, she wore five different skirts, all different lengths and different colors. The shirt was a little harder to make, and it took a few tries to get it right. The nights were cold and the days were getting colder, so she always wore everything she made.

The hardest thing to make had been the shoes. She'd found an old leather glove and spent an entire day cutting out pieces for ankle-high boots. She sewed them with some thin, clear line that she found in the box of tools. They were loose when she tried them on the first time, so she looked for something she could make into socks. She found another set of gloves, but these were soft and white and made for a smaller hand. She cut off 4 fingers and so had 2 pairs of socks. She used the thumb of the white glove for a hat and to cover the tips of her pointy ears. She still had to tie the boots around her ankles to keep them up, but that was alright. At least she didn't wake up with numb feet or ears anymore.

Prompted by the smiles of the people in the pictures, Fio also made a thick sleeping bag and pillow from a blue towel, and cut off the thumb of the leather glove to make herself a bag to carry it in. She didn't need to carry the sleeping bag much, so instead she used the bag to help her gather more useful things from around the cabin. Using some of the string and hooks from the box of tools, Fio made a grappling hook so she could climb up to the shelves around the cabin. She found a thimble which could save dew for later in the day. She found more food in strange packages that instructed her to add dew. The food was good, but not as good as the black berries.

She discovered a box of sticks with red tips, and following the pictures on the box, had started her first fire. She didn't touch the first one, but after it burned out, she couldn't resist lighting a second one. That one singed a finger. Startled she dropped the stick and the flame went out. Sucking on her burnt finger and comforting her wounded pride, she left the sticks and went to look at some of the other things on this shelf. There was a white box with a red + on it. When she couldn't open it, she pushed it off the shelf. Inside was a hundred things she could use, and it took her most of the day to take them back to her book. One of them even helped her finger feel better.

Fio was happy exploring and discovering and making things from her discovery. That is, until the night the rat came. She woke up to something scratching at her book. A claw poked in at her feet and she screamed. The creature quickly scampered off, trailing its ugly hairless tale after it. She didn't sleep the rest of the night. In the morning, she found the box that had scary pictures of dead things on it. She carefully laid down a circle of the green pellets around her book. After that night she lived in fear that the rat would come back.

Then she discovered the map. It was a small map, but after spending hours staring at it, she decided that the tiny square that had been circled was where she was right now. And the box with a smiling face was probably a place safe from rats. She copied the map with a pencil nib so she wouldn't loose her way, even the squiggly symbols: |/|/ lΞ l_ ( O /|/| lΞ

Carefully packing up everything she needed for the trip in her bag (she'd added shoulder straps by now) and tying the towel sleeping bag on top, she set out to find a safer home and maybe even someone--anyone--like her.

She walked all day along the edge of a flat pathway, so she could jump into the tall grass if another rat came along, and found a good hollow between two tree roots to sleep in for the night. But night outside the cabin was scary. There were so many noises--there couldn't be that many rats outside the cabin...could there be? And could rats fly? She was certain shadows were leaping from tree to tree and even jumping out under the moon.

Miserably cold and tired the next morning, Fio almost gave up and went back to her cabin. But no, she told herself. She had to keep going. If she never found out what was at that happy face on her map, she might never find someone like her. Pushing forward, she scurried down the road, head bent with weariness but footsteps determined.

She learned a lot in the next few days, like how to hop rocks across a stream, how to find food close to the road, and how to avoid being eaten by all the not-rats that lived outside the cabin. Still, it didn't seem like she had traveled all that far. She couldn't see a happy face in the distance, but the map in the cabin said it was there and her little map kept her going in the right direction. She just had to keep moving, but it was such a lonely business.