After successfully crossing the frozen waters of the lake Niki had scampered far away from them where there was solid ground beneath his feet. Water just did not agree with him, nor he with it, and so the immense relief he felt upon arriving in a forest where tall and majestic sequoia trees had rooted themselves into the soil was insurmountable. This was where he felt at home: amongst the trees and the critters that lived in and on them. He was used to the crunch of leaves under his paws, though with the often snowfalls lately it was more of a squish between his paws as he walked through the slushy snow that was not quite fluffy. With due time he would barely be able to walk through the snow with his shorter legs so he made the most of it, scampering through the trees as best as he could without slipping over onto his face.

The white yearling came to a pause as he emerged onto the scene of a babbling brook, frozen at the moment but looked as if when it was not frozen would reach no higher than his stomach as he was particularly stouter than most wolves where it would reach to roughly about their knees. The stream bed looked younger than the forest around it as evident by the still slightly rough stones and gentle slope of the river bed, but that did not make it any less dangerous. Cautiously moving closer to the edge, he looked down at the ice, carefully wiping a paw across the surface to brush the snow off. A frown made its way onto his maw. The ice was too deep for him to crack it and be able to drink some water, and he had already learned his lesson of licking the ice itself to try and get any drop of liquid when he had been younger. Padding along the edge, Niki scanned the ice as he went seemingly upstream - though for all he knew it could be downstream - to try and find a spot where the ice was thin enough to break underneath his weight.