Slowly...

The darkness bean to lift its veil over closed eyes.


Timon felt movement.  Something stirring him form the deathly slumber he had sunken into.  A voice.  He did not hear it.  He did not hear what it said.  Yet, it was not in his own head.  It was beside him.  He could not hear it, but somehow, he just knew it was there.  The meerkat felt himself try to move, but his muscles were too weak and tired to do anything but wiggle just a bit and groan.  The next felling he knew was the hard scrape of dirt on his side.  He was being moved by the control of something else.  Again, Timon tried to awake himself and struggle, but it was just not in him.  Before long, he realized that he had stopped.  His eyes were still sealed shut, but he could sense light around him.  And the voice beside him.  After a bit, it occurred to him that he was on something that was moving.  It shook and made noise...

But the foremost sensation in his muddled mind was that of something warm against him.  It was on one side of his body and wrapped slightly around his back to his other shoulder and it was slightly propping up his upper body.  Warmth.  Softness.  He realized the thing wrapped around him was an arm.  Oh God...  
Timon, still weak and disoriented, moved his arm out and he felt it slide around a torso.  He clutched in to this warmth that held him.  He suddenly felt something he never thought he would again:  safe.  Timon laid his head against this body next to him.  Amidst the noise around him, he could hear through the torso the deep soft beating of a heart just beside him.  Tears ran down his furry face, though he did not notice them as he sank back into sleep, no longer with the spectre of cold death, but with the security and happiness he had shared in a caring burrow with a loving mother.

And to this warm, beating body he hung his universe that morning.