Welcome the animal thrill.

North of Horizon Ridge (even though it isn't in the drop-down list options). For @Kaworu !

The forest beckoned, but she would resist it. Whatever pull she thought this wilderness had, it was not as great as her fear of the unknown. So the dog paced in the field. The day was warm and the sky calm, without the blemish of clouds or the threat of harsher weather; yet she couldn't help but think, I miss the snow. Aupa was bred for it, and without the constant company of the northern wind, she felt... Lost. More helpless than ever. The bitch should have found comfort in the lazy days of summer - but she wasn't so easily contented. The wind still blustered across the plain. It pressed against her like an investigative hand - probing at her spine, perhaps to check if there was one there at all - and for a moment Aupaluktok did feel comfort. She was reminded of the way Man had once touched her. The memory was brief and weighted. A sigh then passed through her lips, and she continued to mosey through the reeds.

He followed the current of the sea breeze bound by to no real direction or obligation. But his traveled was significantly slower than when he’d began, his tall thin frame having to adjust to a smaller amount of food and the effort exerted to catch it. Not only that his nights and days blurred into a sleepless daze, while the dog was not keen to travel during the day, having collapsed from exhaustion the night before, he’d been left with little option. The field at the time was something he had intended to leave behind him, long before dawn in which he would find some suitable shady shelter.

But now rousing to his senses, Kawory discovered his own crumbled form rising out of the grass. As he moved to stand he winced—his back stung, having exposed himself out in the elements for too long. Pushing back the sensation of pain that stabbed at his mind he shakily found his feet beneath him and emerged to his full height.

She was mindless in her advance. Too many days had been spent on her own, without the tending of Man or her familiars. Kanosak was gone. The others - she did not wish to think of them or their fate. To dwell on their sacrifice would only invite the bile of her stomach to rise, and her stomach was pained as it was. Having spent the better part of the morning aimless and wandering, Aupaluktok was beginning to grow concerned. She needed food and she needed it soon - maybe water. Maybe a bath, but that was a luxury that popped in to (and then promptly out of) her mind. With a dip of her round face she began to sniff at the grass. It all smelled the same to her.. Green, alive, but as interesting as a pile of snow in the winter. Commonplace and without any value. She walked, she sniffed, she walked some more - and then with a dissatisfied groan, Aupa stopped. Her copper silhouette collapsed in the reeds, splaying out awkwardly but without issue, as if she were the only living thing on the planet. The beasts of the wild be damned.

When he moved it was in a daze, and he knew, even as the sharp sting of his back pulled him into brief tunnels of focus, that he was traveling towards some relief from the blaze of the season. The shore was too far off to satisfy him, and consciously he knew it couldn’t offer much relief. He thought then he saw trees not too far off but they sloped into the horizon too often and sprung back up from the earth as sharp reeds. Exhaustion left him clumsy, and then carefully restrained frustration pulled at his aching paws. His pace quickened and then he was sprinting across a sea of grass.

Tired as he was he was still amazingly swift even at a casual speed, and he gunned forward, unknowingly towards a heap of dog settled in the grasses as he'd once been. But he was only aware of her after a failed attempted to halt at the last moment and tripping on his own long legs instead, he rolled forward as if he were to crash.

And so it was that the dog found a target. At first when the creature came cavorting close she saw its white features, its pointed face and narrow build. Instantly she was aware of it - hungry for it, with the assumption that something with such a slight build was in fact a meal to be had. The creature straddled her with awkward steps, tumbled, and righted itself; in that time Aupa had rolled to her belly and sat with her head up and expression eager. A sharp bark broke through the stillness as she came to full awareness, and her pale eyes locked upon the deer... Only to realize it was not a deer, but something more familiar. Its scent was thickly hidden behind the wild aroma of the wilderness, but the trace of dog was unmistakable; even if it looked more like a deer than any hound she had ever seen. A keen whine was thus issued forth: inviting the stranger closer, if only for a sniff.