Ouroboros Spine salumaruk ⇑

His bullish face had an additional haggard quality to it, as he emerged from the darkness of the trees to investigate the lake. As he walked Raimo shook the fur of his shoulders to loosen the muscles there, as they had gotten stiff while he had kept his watch. He had not slept much himself.

He tested the frozen edge with a press of one paw, then another. The cold was a shock to his pads despite how tough they had become from all of his mountaineering and the slight shock helped to revive an alert expression to his face. He drank of the lake water, lapping at the surface until the cotton-mouth feeling on his tongue had abated.