“They don’t bite,” Nashtra told her.

“Most bats don’t have an interest in meat or blood,” Peter reminded her. “This one looks like it’s hiding its face from the daylight.”

“Can I pull it off?” She asked. “Can he fly back to the cave?”

Nashtra looked down at the small star bat. “This one is quite young,” he said. “It would be a long flight, and I’m not sure that he would be able to find the right cave.”

Cerys’s expression turned suddenly to one of sadness. “You mean he is lost from his family?”

Nashtra seemed to sympathize as well, although not quite so openly. “I am afraid so,” he replied.

“Do these bats live anywhere else in Summerlay?” Peter asked, hoping that perhaps there was something they could do to help.

“They do,” James told him. “We’d never be able to take this one back to that cave, but the next forest has its share of bats. Another colony might be willing to take it in and let it join them. They do not terribly need the group. It is more for protection and numbers that they gather together.”

Cerys was starting to calm down about the idea of having a bat clinging to her arm. Now that she knew that it had inadvertently been separated from the others, and probably from its mother, she felt sad for it.

“If it’s just a baby, doesn’t know how to find food?”

“Perhaps,” Nashtra replied. “I wonder if it smelled the apple that you were pulling out. That was right when it started to move.”

“Oh! Of course, the apple.” Cerys reached for it and bit off a fairly large chunk, then held it towards the star bat’s face. “Do you want some apple, little one?”