The sun rose into the sky, giving way for a marvelous display of hues such as blue, velvet, cherry, and indigo.
Morning had its peculiar beauty about it by nature, but beneath its massive field, lay an array of countless sleepless inhabitants - creatures of the earth. Among these creatures, was the fabled sabre-tooth feline, the titanic wooly-mammoth, and a quizzical-looking being, a prehistoric sloth who bared non-retractable claws.
The trio was formed briefly ago, after the wooly-mammoth joined forces with the clumsy-like sloth and made a robust sabre-tooth tiger a new member of the herd.
The pack was on the horizon. Nothing would stop them now. Nothing but -
"Manny!" Ellie called out, sounding her trunk forcefully while she did so.
The mammoth was cut from his reverie.
"Ellie? What is it? What happened?" her mate scurried immediately towards her side.
"She's gone! Peaches! Our baby! She's gone!"
Her husband turned pale in five seconds.
"Gone? N-no, she can't be! Peaches was with me this morning, I saw her,"
Manny attempted a shot at calming his nerves meanwhile alleviating his lover under the pressure.
"What if someone kidnapped her?" Ellie worried, "Manny, this can't be-"
A pair of miniscule rodents suddenly made their way into focus, their paws leaving submerged pawprints within the snow. "Ellie! What's wrong? We heard you from all the way down there!" a twin from the opossum brothers demanded to know.
The brothers had gained the privilege to comprehend the wooly-mammoth since their younger years, but the worry expressed within the tone of their voice was evidence enough that they still envisioned this mammoth as one of their kind; an opossum sister, regardless of their genetics.
"Eddie! Crash! Have you two seen Peaches around?" The mother was beginning to enter into a state of paranoia.
Suddenly, a brief trumpet was heard from far away; Ellie's ears perked up immediately at this sound.
"Peaches?" both mother and father called out. They received no response.
"My baby!" Ellie panicked as she ran ahead of Manny, both parents heading in the direction the sound emitted from.
A ferocious-looking feline suddenly stood amidst their way.
"Diego?" Manny asked, leaving no room for thought as he almost trampled his friend to death.
"Whoa, watch it!" the feline hissed, making time as he scurried beside the mammoths' side.
"It's Peaches!" Manny yelled thoughtlessly aloud.
"What?" the tiger wrinkled his nose, uncertain of what the father was referring to.
"Diego, she's missing!" Ellie called back towards the sabre this time.
"Whoa, hold on," Diego stopped fiercely in his tracks, both mammoths hesitating to follow in suit.
"She was with me,"
This caught the parents' attention.
"WITH YOU?" Manny angrily trumpeted as he turned back and raced towards his former companion.
"And Sid! Peaches said she was hungry so we went looking for something!" Diego dodged an oncoming attack.
"Manny, stop!" Ellie screamed as she sought to tame her wild husband.
"Like you weren't about to make my kid breakfast!" Manny roared as he swerved toward his right, hoisting the tiger into a tight grip by way of his trunk.
As if on cue, a much smaller mammoth appeared before the mammoths-deemed-parenthood. Peach's father dropped Diego in an instant.
"Daddy, what happened? What's going on? Why are you hurting Diego?" Peaches turned cautiously towards her mother. "Mommy?"
The smaller quip of brown fur raced towards her mother, seeking protection beneath the female's trunk.
"Peaches, I" Manny looked apathetically towards his daughter; Ellie shot him a disgraceful look.
Peach's father retraced his steps as he looked apologetically towards Diego. The feline barely managed to escape Manny's clutches that time.
Without further hesitation and no say from their part, the mammoth father disappeared into the foliage.