Colony Collapse

In these woods my brother handed me a note. A white paper sea sailing a black ship. I said to my brother What does this mean? and he said There are no words and I repeated There are no words but he was already a deer running back into the lake of these woods. A rabbit crossed from trunk to trunk, a bird from one umbrella of branches to another. My brother's note cried out my dying. A single black dot on a square of white meant that I was deathly, and my brother was a deer again,
turning tail. My feet were hooves, but I could not chase down his reasons.