artibeus

His placement in the womb had been by chance; further away from the blood flow, he had received less nourishment than his surviving siblings, and thus had been born considerably smaller than them. He was not destined to catch them in size, either. But he had not been forsaken in his development. He was small, but he had been gifted the strength of instinct and spirit, promising to rise to the challenges that inevitably faced the litter's runt. Mere hours after his birth, his mother would present the first one.

He suckled, filling his belly. He was jostled by his brother and then his mother's nose intervened to dislodge him entirely. His reaction was not explosive. He did not squeal nor immediately scrabble away in search of his former place. It was though he took a moment to think about the situation, as he turned his head slowly in one direction and the next. His mind was, of course, too primitive to think much, and it was his aforementioned instinct that gradually lent movement to his legs.

He crawled, pulling himself with his front paws. He tried to wedge himself between two warm bodies but had not the strength to shove them apart. Not to be deterred, he found he could crawl over them, and when he slid off of them he found a teat poking him in the snout. He turned into it and re-attached, to resume his feed.