Swimming Up Stream

Ruse giggled at Bancha's excitement at her suggestion and she grinned as she closed her eyes and covered them with her forepaws just to prove she wasn't looking. "Alright! One... Two... Three..." she began to count, sitting on her haunches while she waited for her new friend to go find his hiding spot. She heard his little paws running off through the icy grass, but she tried not to listen too closely to which way he went so she wouldn't have a way to cheat. "Eight... Nine... Ten! Here I come!" she called, blinking her eyes open with a chuckle.

Getting up she started sniffing for his scent and looking for clues to find him. She also looked around at the land near the river, trying to see what he might consider a good hiding spot. There were some trees with hollows at their base and probably a few smaller dens that he'd be able to fit into that could have worked, but she didn't notice his scent going toward any of those. Eventually she came to a spot with a bolder that was surrounded by some holly bushes and a couple of trees. It seemed like this had been the direction he went, but it was a little more difficult to tell with the way the ice covered grass didn't hold his scent as well as it normally would. She ducked down to peek under the leaves of the bushes to try and spot his paws, but didn't see them right away so she quietly crept around the boulder and peeked past it, spotting Bancha hiding behind it and trying not to giggle. She grinned and hopped out, saying, "Gotcha!" She grinned and laughed, her tail wagging happily at their little game.

"Rusalka"