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Swentzle had only just managed to guide Hamza beneath the trees when a piercing shriek sounded above their heads. Hamza groaned, tossing his head uneasily. Swentzle moved to quiet him, and then peered up through the branches, squinting slightly to see. There was another cry, but before he could locate the source of the noise it was gone, and Swentzle was left blinking and shrugging it off. It was most probably a bird of some kind, spotting its dinner. He began unloading Hamza's back, taking off the bags that contained his supplies and laying them in a neat pile against a tree.
Swentzle had only just finished his self-assigned task when footsteps reached his ears, and he looked through the now-steadily falling snow to see a red dog, covered in snow and heading toward him. He blinked at her, rubbing at his eyes with the palm of his hand, but the snow was playing tricks on his already poor vision, and he ended up simply dropping his hands to his sides and closing his eyes to keep from straining them. Of course, this meant he couldn't really do anything, but after backing up until he rested firmly against Hamza's side, he felt safe enough.
The dog spoke, revealing herself to be female, and Swentzle performed an odd little half-bow as he processed her words. Greetings. My name is Swentzle, I recently joined Ichika--just a few days ago, in fact. He had yet to fully complete the joining process, he'd been in too much of a hurry to get out of the wild, but when he returned from this trip he'd fix that.
and when you're fingers ache remember you were born for this".
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