"All right!" Gabrielle clenched her teeth. "Xena, will you please help me to catch a fish?!"

"Okay!" the taller woman said simply, brightly. She hopped to her feet. "Now then. The first thing we need to do is to get you a good lure." She moved to their bags by the campfire, and pulled out a small piece of hammered metal.

"I thought you said it wasn’t a question of lures. And what is that?"

"Oh, lures are important, Gabrielle," the warrior said matter-of-factly, as she worked to affix the thin, sparkly metal to the line. "And this extra piece from the new sword buckle I’m working on, should do the trick. That, and if you get out from under the shadow of those cottonwoods." Her tongue poked its way between her lips as she concentrated on the task at hand. "There!" she was finished. "Follow me!" and she led the way back to the rock where she’d left her pole. As the two women approached, they could see that Xena’s pole was nearly bent in two by the weight of... something, at the end of it.