Malta was exhausted. She lay down beside the little struggling creature and, eventually, gave up on remaining upright, flopping miserably to the ground.
She watched as the Uruu tried to escape her makeshift cage.
"Don't... bother..." she mumbled, her eyes closing as cool winds graced her overheated scales. Gods... she was tired...
"I'll bring you home..." she murmured,
"Just give me a bit..." And with that, she fell asleep.
She woke up from her doze feeling groggy, thirsty, achy, and all around miserable. She sat up, shaking off the evening dew and dust. She'd been asleep for a while, but she had been tired after...
She looked down at where the Uruu had been confined and made a little whinnying sound.
The Uruu was gone.
She searched the area, her muscles begging to be stretched, and keened unhappily. It wasn't nearby. It was gone! It had escaped! But how?! She nosed at where her 'cage' had been, and realized with a jolt that the roots that had been there, making up the cage and anchoring it to the earth, had been gnawed away.
"Nonononono!" she keened, flailing around for the Uruu's scent. She couldn't find it anywhere - it must have escaped a while ago, while she slept.
She cursed, as she had before, her fat, ugly, weak body, but she couldn't give up on the poor creature yet! It was getting darker, and that was when the scarier things came out. She had to find it before then, and rescue it. She began to search the area around it, padding through the brush and sniffing at likely places.
Finally, in a small clearing by some rocks, she found it - or, rather, she found her cage. It was broken, the roots and vines wilting as the life that had coursed through them was no longer. She sniffed at it, uneasy as the creature hadn't seemed strong enough to manage such a feat.
Notbjaovin she realized, her earflaps drooping with despair. One of the feline predators had taken her fluffy thing.
"No hope now..." she murmured sadly, staring at the remains of her clever cage,
"You're probably eaten by now. I'm sorry." she said, sitting down.
"I'm sorry..."
