B'Elanna gazed at the animal perched jauntily on the rock in front of her, not quite able to believe that even in the spirit world, her mixed heritage of human and Klingon would find a way to, quite frankly, piss her off.
"You're my animal guide?" she asked incredulously, her hands tightening on her lap.
"Yes," the animal replied, its head cocked to one side in a gesture that, had it been performed by a human, would have been patronising.
"My animal guide is a ratty, little mongrel dog?" she spat, "What, were all the real animals already taken the day I got in line?"
"You can think what you want," the dog said, its deliberately airy tone suggesting that if it had fingernails to inspect, it would have been doing so carefully, "But they sometimes say in your world that we are a reflection of the human's true self. Perhaps your anger is misdirected, B'Elanna Torres."
It only occurred to B'Elanna after she had jerked awake from the vision quest to find herself being watched by a particularly irritated Chakotay, that the dog had jumped away a split second before she lunged at it.
He raised an eyebrow, a much put upon look gracing his features. B'Elanna shrugged, her fingers tracing the pattern on the stone in the medicine bundle.
"I don't think spirituality is my thing."