Whitebark Stream Some say you can get hurt by what you don't know

Verx's voice sent the fish splashing further upstream, but any frustration Ephraim felt over that was erased when his eyes met the tall wolf's face. There was something about Vercingetorix that resonated with him—maybe because he was able to be taken seriously when he had to be without acting too serious. That was something Ephraim would have liked for himself, but being a kid, he had to try twice as hard to be taken seriously to begin with. There wasn't much room to just be himself when he was always trying to make a good impression, whereas Vercingetorix was wholly and unapologetically himself.

For that, Ephraim admired the man.

"Oh, well," he blustered, picking his way down to the bank in the direction the fish had gone, "yeah, I'm totally a pro at this, I'll show you how it's done." What was a little white lie, anyway? He'd been born on the coast, hadn't he? Surely somewhere in his genes was the blood of an ocean fisher, and he reckoned freshwater fish couldn't be much different. He just needed to find it and then it would be easy, he convinced himself. Who cares that genes don't work like that? As far as Ephraim knew, he could totally bluff it, get lucky, and impress Vercingetorix mightily. "We just gotta sneak up on it," he instructed, as if sneaking up on fish was as trivial as that, and crept forward along the shore.