The child twists in my grasp but it is half-hearted. Confusion settles into both of us as I run, trees flying by at an impossible speed. The wind rushes into my ears and drowns out the sounds of a chase. Was I losing her finally? Yes... she was almost gone. I could no longer feel her presence suffocating me. The pup in my jaws would remain alive. A burst of pleasure runs through me at this because I consider it a victory. She had lost a victim and I had saved one. Except as I run, my steps growing more clipped as my body begins to scream against my abuse of it, I realize that I now have another conundrum. Where do I take this creature? It hangs limp from me, lost like I am, and my lips twist around it in discomfort. Carrying a pup a short distance was easy, a long way - not so much. I had probably put three or four miles between where I had picked it up at. I didn't know where it came from and it wasn't safe yet to go back that way.
Plus I was feeling dizzy still, my steps sometimes missing. I kept walking. It was all I knew how to do. Keep going and things would sort themselves out. Onward we went, down into a gulley that had a thin trail of water running through it from recent rains. I splashed across it wishing I could set the child down and drink from the meager liquid. If I did that though I wasn't sure I could pick her up again and I certainly couldn't leave her here. Seline might be gone but the buzzards would surely find her body later.
My strength was flagging when I caught the scent of Malum. My ears perked up, nares flaring, and I sped off in the direction it came from. I had met him by chance and he had been a decent fellow. The kind who wouldn't kill a pup, I was sure. I followed it all the way to the border of a moorland, the short grass waving in a soft wind. There is no way I was going in there - it was Iromar, I was sure. But I couldn't take the pup back so I stepped over the broders, just a tad, and set down Peregrine gently. Then I lifted my head and I howled, a call for Malum, and with a sorrowful glance at the confused pup, I turned tail and took off.