Sarabi whimpered as she awoke, not at the pain in her leg - though that might have elicited a response anyway - but in her belly, something was poking into her hard. Cracking here eyes open, she looked around to find she was surrounded by several, creatures. Tall yet slender beasts, with dark pelts and hands that could hold sticks. For a few moments she found them to be worryingly mysterious, new creatures she knew not of, but then her brain threw up a memory, of a horror story she'd been told in her cubhood, and suddenly she found her former worry seguing into abject terror, these were humans, the scourge of the savannah against whom the only viable response was to run. Running wasn't an option here though, not only would they kill her before she'd even had a chance to get to her paws, but the pain in her right foreleg told her that even without the humans, she'd be running on three legs. Accepting that she was to die, she rolled onto her back, to give them the easiest target, so perhaps they'd give her a quick passing.

However, a moment later Sarabi was surprised to feel, not the sharp pain of a spear thrust, but the questing of curious fingers. She made to look down at her belly where the human seemed to be examining her, but a spear-tip pressing not-quite-painfully into her neck dissuaded her, and so she lay back, wondering at the humans' motives, and hoping they were honourable. After a few more seconds, the probing stopped, and then the humans began to make sounds, talking she assumed, but she couldn't be quite sure. Quickly, the spear was removed from her neck, but then was applied, with another, to her back low down near the ground. For a moment she was confused as to what was going on, but then guessed they wanted her to roll over, and so she did. This seemed to please them for a moment, but then she felt them poking at her belly from both sides. A sign to rise?

Sarabi struggled to get up, the usually easy job made surprisingly difficult due to her inability to take any weight on her right foreleg. Eventually she did make it up, but found that with her leg in the state it was, she was shifting her weight slightly to the left to try to keep her balance, even when standing still. Not that she was given the time to think this through though, for as soon as she was up, the humans began prodding her to move. This was easier said than done though, for her injury forced her into a half-hopping gait that was slow and tiring, and which eventually began to cause her left foreleg to ache with the effort. Nor did it help that it was mid-morning which mean the temperature was already uncomfortably warm and only getting hotter. Finally after nearly an hour and not much more than half a mile, she'd reached her limit, and misstepped and stumbled. Reflexively, she tried to catch herself with her right foreleg, but all this achieved was to cause her to pass out in agony.

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Sarabi came to with the sense of being handled, part lifted and part rolled onto something rough and uneven. Cracking here eyes open, she looked around, struggling to contemplate her surroundings, though the headache made it difficult. There were more humans here now than there had been, though she wasn't able to keep a count for they moved swiftly in and out of her sight. Suddenly she realised she could feel things lying across her back, and turning to look, quickly realised that the humans were binding her to whatever it was she was lying on. Protesting at the treatment unfortunately didn't help, as she quickly found that instead of releasing her, they only bound her more firmly for it, and in her weakness, she was unable to offer much more resistance than protesting.

Once Sarabi was firmly bound, the humans surprised her by arranging themselves four on each side, and lifting the wooden frame on which she was, up to shoulder height. The surprise however was only a temporary distraction from her condition, which as they got under way took on the additional maladies of dizziness and nausea. Closing her eyes, she tried to keep control of herself as best she could, and was surprised to find it was actually a little easier, the dizziness was a bit less severe, and the nausea and headache were, if not diminished, then at least more controllable. At first she tried to keep track of how far they'd come, but as the journey wore on she found it more and more difficult to do anything but keep control of her condition.

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Sarabi awoke with a groan, the headache was, if not the absolute worst she'd ever suffered from, then not far off. Cracking her eyes half-open she did her best to examine her surroundings, but quickly found this to be of little use, because her vision was badly blurred, and the brightness was worsening her headache. Suddenly, there was a sensation of movement in front of her, and then a new, welcome smell hit her, blood! Opening her eyes again, she found in front of her a small pool of reddish liquid, in some sort of wooden...vessel. A tiny part of her mind was suspicious of this - her sense of smell was telling her that there was something else besides blood and water in the bowl - but it was immediately overruled and she dove her head into the bowl, so eager was she for the liquid. So eager was she to drink, she barely even noticed the loosening of the ropes binding her, or the cool weight of water-dampened blankets being placed across her back.

The more she drank, the better Sarabi felt, the headache weakening rapidly, as did the other maladies, replaced by a sense of, not calm, but relaxation. Only belatedly - when she suddenly realise she was struggling to even keep her head up - did she realise her foolishness in accepting the liquid as soon as it was placed down, she'd known something was up with it then, and yet she'd still drunk deeply for some reason. Not that she could do anything about it now she knew, whatever poison they'd laced the liquid with was already making itself felt. There was one consolation though she though disconsolately as she was forced by her growing weakness to lay her head within the bowl, her chin resting in the poison, at least she wouldn't have to suffer going through life with only three legs, the thought of that was, quite awful...

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Sarabi awoke feeling rather woozy, where was she, how had she gotten here? She could remember leaving the pride after Sarafina's warning, as stopping off at the waterhole, but after that... Slowly though, as the wooziness wore off, memories started to come back to her, as did the sensation in her right foreleg, not actual pain, but an unbearable itching. Looking at the bothersome limb, she was surprised to find it wrapped in...a material she didn't recognise. Worried by this, she sniffed at it, and, finding the smell to be disagreeable, licked at it, using her tongue to slowly wear it down. That was the plan at least, but she received a most unpleasant surprise to find that while it had smelled bad, the material tasted worse than anything she could remember having experienced before. Even more worried now, she tried instead to claw the material off, but stopped even before she could even extend her claws properly, the pressure of her paw seeming to be enough to cause a bolt of agony to shoot from beneath the material, startling a pained roar out of her.

Soon afterwards, Sarabi - as yet unable to think of another way of removing that material from her injured leg - was started out of her thoughts by the arrival of several humans. She couldn't quite make out how many there were altogether, perhaps five or six, of maybe even more, but as they hid behind one another, getting a firm figure was very difficult. And then counting became unimportant as three of the humans detached themselves from the group and approached her, two carrying spear held now quite at the ready, and the third a large wooden bowl from which the smell of meat and blood emanated tantalisingly.

As the bowl was placed down, Sarabi suddenly found herself feeling peckish, even hungry, causing her to wonder how long it had been since her last meal. A day at least, she was sure, and so she wasted no time in beginning to eat. This was the first step, she would realise much later - though the change was imperceptible at the time - this was the first step in changing her views of the humans. Up until now She'd only heard bad things about them, and yet here was an act of unexpected kindness. Little was she to know at the time that this so surprising event was soon to become commonplace.