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[i]Three nights ago[/i]

Mal clung to the rock, gulping in breath after harsh, ragged breath. The pounding rains left the stones slick with rainwater, and her palms grasped onto the wet surface as though it was the only thing keeping her alive. Her eyes were clenched tightly shut. She thought she might be sick, a thought followed all-too-abruptly by her retching, vomiting up bile and whatever was left of her last malnutritious meal at the Chimera facility.

She didn't think she could hear anything following them, but her ears remained strained, desperately trying to make some kind of sense out of every sound that made it to her through the storm. Was that just the wind bashing rain into the rocks? Or was it a helicopter in the distance? Was that faint distant light the headlights of a passing car, or a search party, already beginning to track them down? She was going out of her mind with fear and worry. Pressing her face into the stone, she screwed her eyes shut even tighter and pressed against whatever was left of a 'dry' surface under the shallow cavelike indentation.

Her wings were sopping wet, stretching out uncomfortably onto the rocks behind her, and yet she wasn't in the right enough mind to pull them back in. So they simply lay there. 

"[color=CC14CA]Please,[/color]" she found herself whispering, and hating herself for it, "[color=CC14CA]someone help me.[/color]"

When she eventually fell asleep, it was as she was crying.


[i]Present[/i]

Mal groaned as the early dawn light hit her in the face like a freight train, and she reflexively tossed an arm up over her head. "[color=CC14CA]Go 'way,[/color]" she moaned. The sun, however, did not go away, and was irritatingly persistent. Eventually, she accepted the fact that she probably wasn't going to be able to sleep anymore and lifted the arm, peering out from under it at the sun. "[color=CC14CA]Nice to see you,[/color]" she yawned, grinning a little. It had been a very...[i]very[/i]...long time since she'd seen the sun. In person, not in a video or a simulation or a hallucination or something.

Her malaise had largely slackened off; she didn't have time to worry about what had happened, or what might happen, when she was busy trying to keep herself and her family alive. As she sat up, yawning and stretching her wings out just a bit, she heard Dizzy talking to Flick from a bit away, and stumbled over to them, trying to rub the sleep from her eyes and miserably failing. She was still wearing the dirty, torn hospital gown, simply because she had nothing else to wear, and she pulled at it in irritation. It certainly wasn't comfortable, though the massive jagged rips in the back to let her wings out had gone some way towards alleviating that issue. She flopped an arm and Rook in a halfhearted attempt at a wave as she walked.

"[color=CC14CA]I think...[/color]" she paused, heaving a colossal yawn, "[color=CC14CA]...I think we should head into that city. Just to a junkyard or something. All the videos and classes said that people have a lot of different kinds of clothes they wear. These,[/color]" she plucked at the sleeve of the gown, this time not as angrily, to demonstrate, "[color=CC14CA]won't cut it, I don't think.[/color]"

"[color=CC14CA]Also,[/color]" she added (mostly towards Dizzy) as she suddenly felt the void in her stomach, "[color=CC14CA]there's prob'ly food there. And I don't know about you, Flick, but I [i]need[/i] it. The berries and things aren't enough.[/color]"