Yeah. That sounds easy.

The forest is not a quiet place, so she doesn't notice the sound of heavy footsteps until one of them snaps something that sounds more like a log than a twig. 

"What is that - "

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH

Fuck. 

She makes a panicked horse-sound to get the mount to move, then aims her hand unsteadily at the dinosaur and throws the only lightning bolt she has at it.

GRAAAAAAAAAGH? 

GRAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!

("Back off.")

Élie has no idea what is going on but cannot imagine it's good. He could try a fireball – but that might make it angrier, and Naima seems to be trying to talk to it – he wishes he could teleport – he could – 

oh. 

He grabs Naima and uses his dimension steps to pull them both about a hundred feet behind the dinosaur. 

GRAAAAAAAAAARGH!? 

("The fuck?") 

It bends down to sniff the ground. 

She's trembling and terrified and going to try to stay very very still and very very silent and - try to slumber it...?

It drops. 

Well that gives them 42 seconds. 

"I don't know if I can run - "

"Okay, Okay, we'll just be very still – it probably doesn't want us anyway – " 

He starts a summon and six seconds later he's got a couple of sheep, which can start running away, very far away, that's it, that has to look like a better meal than the scrawny bipeds with the lightning bolts and the suddenly vanishing – 

.....graaaaaaaaaaaaargh? 

Very very still very very quiet.

Is it going for the sheep? He can't see from where he is, and he's certainly not about to go find out. 

Well she's not going to look. She will... listen. To whether there are footsteps and whether they sound like they're getting closer or further away.

Faaaaaaaarther? It's hard to tell – just how many seconds has it been – 

A fainter graaaaaaaargh. 

Okay. She waits until she thinks it's a bit further off.

Elie's summons don't last very long either.

"We should leave before it circles back around," she whispers. This entire situation has honestly left her more exhausted than previously, although the clarity that comes from being in a life or death situation is maybe helping. "Can I lean on you - "

"Yes – of course – this way – " 

Now that the sheer blind panic has worn off, he's noticing just how hard it is to move through a jungle without the use of one's hands. There are roots and hanging vines and a hundred other obstructions to compensate for. Naima leaning against him helps, surprisingly. The counterweight makes it just a little bit easier to keep his balance. 

Everything hurts. Every piece of her body is screaming that she's killing it, that the thing it needs her to do is sit still and rest and give it a prayer of knitting itself back together, but there's a dinosaur behind them and it's huge and it could circle around at any time, really, and her body is just going to have to trust her that she's managed to identify an even greater threat to its continued well-being than whatever is already trying to kill it from the inside out.

When they've made it a ways off - far enough that the pain is starting to win against the panic anyway - she trips over a branch and falls down, badly. She manages to make it back to a sitting position, but instead of forcing herself the last bit up, she just gives up and starts crying.

It's stupid and humiliating and ridiculous and none of this is able to make her care enough to stop.

Oh no.

Élie tries to think of something helpful to say. It's going to be alright? – Idiotic, they're lost in a jungle with a dinosaur chasing them and Naima has some unidentified tropical disease, he can't promise her that. I promise I'll raise your son the way you would have wanted? – Ugh, no, too morbid. I – care for your? No, no, no, no need to make this more awkward than it is, nope. 

So he just settles for sitting down next to her and gently rubbing her back. If she wants him to stop, she'll let him know. 

Instead of doing that she leans on him again and keeps crying. 

She feels like she has developed a very personal appreciation for why women really shouldn't be adventurers, over the last few days, and also all of the ways in which she has utterly abandoned every other thing she could have been to instead be this thing, which she isn't even meant to be, but she's poured so much into being this thing anyway that she's not sure it's possible to go back and be anything else. She doesn't even think they're going to die. She's just going to be stuck being this ill-fitting thing forever.

"You have terrible taste in friends," she murmurs, when the crying has quieted down a little bit.

"I – Naima, if it wasn't for you I'd be in Hell right now."