“It’s probably too bright for out here,” Nashtra told her when he saw the way the bat wriggled its head a little bit, but kept its face hidden from the light. “Really, it should be asleep right now.”

“But I thought it smelled my apple,” she said.

“Maybe,” Nashtra replied.

“All that nonsense in the cave was probably too much excitement for it,” Peter noted. “Anyway, if you want it to eat, why not pull your sleeve back over it, and give it the apple inside?”

That idea sounded as good as any, so Cerys pulled her sleeve back over the little bat’s body, and used her other hand to slide the apple inside, hoping that she did not accidentally hit it. She felt it twitch, its face moving beside her arm, its whiskers tickling her.

Peter knelt down close to his sister, peering into her sleeve, and from there he could see the bat sniffing at the small piece of apple. It turned to look at him, then looked back to the small piece of fruit, licked at first, and then started to take small, slow nibbles. It clung to Cerys’s arm the entire time, until eventually it had eaten all of the piece of apple. Then is it nuzzled its head back against her arm, and relaxed a little bit.

“Well,” Peter said, “it ate it.”

“Do you think it wants anymore?” she asked her brother.

Peter shrugged. “I doubt it. It looks like it wants to go back to sleep.”

“Just be careful not to hit that arm on anything,” Nashtra warned her. “It seems to have taken a bit of a liking to you.”

“I’ll look after it until we can find it another group of bats to leave it with,” she replied. “Do you think it’s so young that it needs milk from its mother?”

Nashtra shook his head. “It would have gone more tightly to its mother instead of hiding in your clothes if it was that young,” he told her. “It should be happy with whatever fruit you give it.”

Cerise nodded, and ate the rest of her apple.