Big Salmon Lake hooked on a feelin'

In the time it took Dingo to notice him and step nearer, Macintosh plodded deeper, until the water was up around his belly. Ah, yeah, that was nice. There was nothing quite like a cold lake on a warm spring day, except maybe a cold lake on a hot summer day, which was a taller order. The man's grey-beige ears pricked up when Dingo spoke in a tone that was perhaps sarcastic, but Macintosh met it with a lazy grin and no answer. Instead, he took stock of the lanky boy on shore, noting his reedy limbs and tall shoulders.

Dingo's dialect was something fresh and new to Macintosh, who latched onto it immediately. "Lake monsters only go for wet-eared whelps and younglings," Macintosh self-assuredly replied. Mac didn't believe in such things, though when he was little, ominous whispers of monsters might frighten him. The lake was home to freshwater eels and fish and water serpents and crabs and floating insects, but among them, there were no monsters.

"Pray tell, where do you hail from to speak in that manner?" Did Dingo even know he spoke differently? Maybe it was Mac who spoke differently. Why, Macintosh had never thought of that as a possibility before.