"Here it is" Athena stated, as Tyler stood next to her, the unusual duo had made it to the lake the wolf was talking about. The human looked over the lake, it was quite large, he could see that on the other side of the lake, there was a river connecting to it and in the middle of the water was a small island with a big tree on it, a giant boulder lay near it.
"So um, do you need to wash anything?" Asked Tyler. Athena Turned to him.
"No i'm okay, but i can see and smell, that you need to clean more than i do. I know that humans tend to wash more often than us wolves"
Tyler walked to the edge of a stone formation, the water only a few inches below, who knows how deep this lake really was. He turned back to the wolfess.
"Well, can you watch my back while i'm doing this, please?" Said Tyler, the she-wolf smirking before replying:
"Yes of course, i will keep my eye's and ear's out, you don't need to worry".
"Thanks" Tyler said, walking down to the water and taking his first steps into it, the water was cold of course, but thankfully the sun had warmed it up a bit so it wasn't completely freezing. Luckily, one of his ration boxes had some hygiene stuff in it, as well as some additional bits he was allowed to bring from home: couple of bars of soap, wash cloth, disinfectant wipes, paper tissues etc, wasn't much, but he had to make do.
He walked back out, setting his extra clothes and m4 down on the ground near Athena on the beach before taking his boots and socks off, rolling up his trouser legs and stepping back into the water, with a bar of soap, some liquid soap and his dirty clothes. Pretty soon he began trying to wash his dirty uniform, considering he didn't have much soap and other pieces to keep clean, he would need to use them as sparingly as possible, using only a little each time.
Hearing a splash from behind him, he turned around to see that Athena had jumped into the water herself, swimming around a bit before beginning to wash herself, cleaning her fur out. Tyler went back to doing his thing until he was finally done, he trotted out of the water and sat down next to his clothes, waiting for Athena to finish what she was doing whilst looking round the lake.
"I might as well do some more drawing while i'm waiting" Tyler thought, reaching into one of his combat trousers pockets to get his little book, but ended up pulling out his mobile phone.
"damn" he muttered to himself, he'd completely forgotten about it, with all of the things that happened recently, he really didn't think much of it, he flipped the case open, letting out a sigh of relief as he saw that the screen wasn't cracked.
He pressed the home button, the screen coming to life revealing the time, wallpaper and numpad, the clock showed that it was half past ten, so it was still quite early. Tyler typed his password in and unlocked his phone, soon he was scrolling through checking it over to see if everything was still working.
As he was messing around with his phone, he lifted his glance to the she-wolf who was running water through the fur on the back of her head, it resembled hair almost, but thicker and with several tiny decorative charms entangled within it, He could see what resembled a couple of braids hidden in her fluffy fur.
The wolf turned back to the boy to see what he was doing, changing her gaze to the object in his hands. Deciding that she was done, she stood up and started to walk over to the human, water dripping from her now matted fur. The wolf sat herself next to the human watching what he was doing on the strange object in his hands.
The sun had moved to shine onto the pair, shining warmth over them.
"What is that thing?" Athena said, pointing to the phone.
"Oh this?" Tyler replied, the wolf nodding.
"Well this is a phone, it's a good little thing I guess, pretty handy at a lot of things, kind of like having a swiss army knife in your pocket at all times".
"What can it this "phone" do?" said Athena.
"It can do a lot of stuff, I can talk to someone from a very far distance away" Tyler said, trying to make his sentences easy for the wolf to understand.
"Really, how far?" said Athena.
Tyler quizzed round in his head, trying to build a sentence that she could understand, then he finished it.
"I can can talk to another person from another land several miles away".
"Seriously?, that is certainly quite an amazing achievement, and done by something so small and dainty" Athena said, noting on the phones sleek and thin design.
"I know, it's very good at it, depending on the reception, and because we are in the middle of the woods I doubt there is any reception anywhere, not even back at that base, they're probably still using payphones" Tyler said, chuckling to his own joke.
"Excuse me, what?", Athena asked with a puzzled look on her face.
Tyler was about to explain what he'd said, but realised that even if he did, she wouldn't understand anyway and probably would ask more questions.
"Never mind, it's a long story" He said instead.
The wolf lifted her head, sniffing the air, then without warning, she stood up quickly and started to sniff the air a bit more.
"What is it?" Tyler asked, standing up as well looking around.
"Bad news, that's what it is" Athena said, growling a little as she glanced down to the human, who was looking up at her with concern.
"How bad is it?" said Tyler.
Athena didn't respond, she went and grabbed some of Tyler's clothes and other stuff before looking back at the concerned boy.
"Lets go quickly, they don't usually come here at this time of day" said Athena, who began walking back to camp.
Tyler grabbed and swung his rifle over his back catching up with the wolf, whilst he was walking back to camp, he couldn't help but think:
"What is she talking about, who's they?".