Once Clare and Ell showed up with water sacks that had what he assumed was bat milk in them, he saw all the girls' eyes light up.  The more intense stares than before as he took the containers made him pause.  He thought about it for a moment and decided to try something to keep them from showering him with the uncomfortable stares any longer.

<Alright, so...who wants to help me feed them?>

Almost all of them rushed towards him and gathered around so quickly he was worried they would give the baby bats heart attacks and kill them by accident.  Only Zaer and Lei seemed to remain back while snickering.  Zaer seemed to find the whole situation amusing while Lei was looking at only one person in particular as she laughed quietly: Sai.

Since there were six anxiously waiting girls and three bats, he told them to split up between them so as not to crowd them too much and literally scare them to death.  Then he went to each group and showed them as best he know how to be careful with them and feed them one drop at a time so they wouldn't overeat or use up all the milk on one baby.

Once the feeding was done he helped them help the babies back into soft webbing to keep them warm.  The bats were naturally nocturnal and should be the most active already but the malnourishment and strange environment seemed to have them more cowed.  Jelin checked the web wrappings to make sure they weren't too tight but wouldn't allow them to escape and called for bedtime.

The snuggle pile ended up being very awkward since most of the girls wanted to be in a position where they could see the baby bats as they fell asleep.  When Jelin finally fell asleep, they were still trying to constantly rearrange themselves.  When he woke up the next morning he found that they had somehow all ended up sideways in an awkward position with some of them trying to be contortionists.  They were all still asleep so apparently they found it somehow comfortable, too.

Zaer seemed to be awake as well, so he carefully made his way out of the strangely placed limbs and bodies, checked on the baby bats to make sure they were still alive, and then went with Zaer for a bit of a lonely breakfast.  Once they had eaten, he asked Zaer to try and bring some nutritious magic honey when she had the chance so he could try and mix just a little into the milk.

He went back into the room and tried to carefully wake Clare up without alerting the others.  As she sleepily woke up and begane to rub the sleep from her eyes, he sent feeling of calm through the link to her.

<Try not to wake the others.  I'd let you keep sleeping, too, but the babies need to be fed and only you and Ell know how to get it right now.  Ell already had a whole night of sleep skipped, so I need you to help.  Just be quiet and move carefully, okay?  I want everyone to have a good amount of sleep so we can all think clearly.>

Clare looked up at him blearily for a few seconds, then as realization struck her along with wakefulness she nodded and tried to carefully get out of her awkward position.  Once she was free she tried to move quickly but quietly towards the workshop.  Jelin followed her so he could see what they had done and maybe do it himself if needed.

Jelin watched Clare work on the wrapped up mother bat for a bit and once he thought he understood what to do, he left and grabbed a few different types of bugs from across the webs.  He wasn't sure what the best diet for the mother bat would be so he wanted to have variety.  He brought them back, let Clare see the bugs so she would have an idea of what he was doing, and started trying to feed the mother bat without being bitten.

Once he found the ones she responded to best, it got a little bit easier.  He offered what was left to Clare, who accepted it gratefully, and then helped her work on the mother bat so they could have three separate feeding sacks for the baby bats.  He kept pushing for a fourth as well, to Clare's slight protests, and once he had it he took it to the river and used his fingers to drip a few drops into it before shaking it to mix it well.  When he got back to Clare, he stopped her from starting to feed the babies.

<Let's use this for breakfast.  They've been malnourished for a while and are probably dehydrated as well.  We probably should have had someone stay up to feed them when needed, actually.  Anyways, I mixed a little water in this one to help them rehydrate.  Once this one is used up today, we can switch to the other sacks.

Once they've each gone through their own sack we'll use this one again.  By then Zaer should have helped me make a bit of a better formula to get them healthier again.  I might ask for you and Ell to help, too.  I'm thinking we experiment a bit and see if we can add some minor healing properties to a liquid like magic honey or bat milk and that might help them some.>

<Even if we succeed, I'd be worried about the healing still using up their life...>

<That's why I want to use magic honey.>

<Maybe.>

<Just try and keep a careful eye on their conditions.  We'll start with only a drop at a time.>

He and Clare continued feeding the bats carefully.  Mel woke up just as they were finishing feeding the last one and tried to hurry out of the pile to do it, too.  Unfortunately, that caused a lot of falling bodies and made everyone start to wake up which, in turn, just made everything a more tangled mess.

Once everyone was surrounding them, Jelin sighed and let them know that they missed the first feeding already, which made them seem a little depressed.  Once he mentioned that they would have to take turns watching them all day and feeding them, though, they got excited again.  He decided to add a warning not to push themselves too hard yet since he was still thinking about rescuing more of them later.

Since they seemed to ignore that last part he decided to ignore their protests to his order for them to watch over the bats with him.  Once he had the order set, he sent them off to eat breakfast and do their own work for the morning.  Once all of them except Mel had left, he told her she could watch over them but to call him if the babies woke up or seemed hungry.

He figured that it would be a good time to start dealing with the other bats.  He had no intention to prolong anything with them more than necessary.  There were about twenty or so bats at first.  After he had done a few experiments with magic, psi, his class, and some cores, the number had been reduced by about a quarter.  Mel called out to him while he was taking a break and thinking about what he had left, though.

He went to check on Mel and the babies and saw them squirming and screeching as Mel tried to calm them down, unsuccessfully, without touching them.  Jelin quickly found the hydrating milk and helped her feed each of them just a little.  She tried to feed them more but he had to stop her and explain that they likely didn't know when to stop and would keep trying to drink more until they died from too much.

Clare soon arrived afterwards to swap with Mel for a while.  Since he had Clare around already, he aske Zaer to drop by with a little magic honey for her to experiment on and while they waited he had her grab some of her own concoctions.  Once she was set up in the main room to watch the babies and experiment with some of the magic honey and one of the milk sacks, he started testing her concoctions on the bats in different ways.

He hadn't let the girls know about intravenous medications yet and wanted to know if some of the more important ones had different effects when used that way.  After testing plenty of those to the limits, he was down to half of the bats left.  A few more died from some extra magic tests and more yet again from attempts to mix magic and the concoctions.  He then started using the remaining five bats to test if he could use methods other than the link to try and bond them like familiars.

Before he got too far in those experiments, though, he was told that the baby bats had woken back up.  He went back to the main room and helped Clare take care of them until the baby bats seemed at least a little calmer.  He then checked on her progress and, although she hadn't had any resounding successes, she had made a few that seemed to take a little of her healing magic in.

He took those and went back to the other bats to continue working on trying to find different ways to form a familiar bond.  He didn't expect any of it to actually fully succeed, but he hoped there would at least be some kind of brief connection or something if he was ever on the right track.  He did accidentally cause one of them to explode when he tried to fill it with his magic, though.

Three of the remaining four died from his extensive testing on the several somewhat vaguely successful healing magic honeys.  The last one he tried to leave mostly alone in case they needed to test if something was safe later.  After washing off in the stream, he brought the honeys back to Clare and let her know how successful each was before it was time for her to swap out.

The rest of the day continued in a similar manner, except that Jelin stayed in the room with the babies instead of being a true terror to the bats.  Sai brought him lunch when she came shortly after noon for her turn.  The baby bats seemed to need to be fed about once every six hours at a minimum but seemed to be looking a little better by the end of the day.