The fire illuminated silhouettes a somehow indeterminable distance away from him. In the middle was Liya's shape, laying about her noiselessly with some long object in her hand. He could see that she was crying--the firelight caught the glimmer as she yanked and pulled away from the shapes surrounding her--but the actual shapes that reached and grabbed for her were indistinct. He stared, one eye shut, shielding his face with his arm, but couldn't focus. There were hands, and heads it seemed, and claws--maybe? But they all ran together in dark smudges now.

He brought his hands down, pulled forward against the ties, and tried to shout, but his own voice didn't come out as anything meaningful either. Then the next second the huge spotted shape of a grinning saber-toothed cat slammed into the spot between his wings, flattening him onto the green ground. He could feel the great teeth in his hair, the breath on his ears, as the cat hissed,

"Where d'ya think you're going?"

He finally woke, then, pushing himself up as if to get the weight of the cat off his back. His breath came in gasps, and there were tears on his face.