“Who would’ve thought Lily would take the win?” Zophia mused.
Lynga grumbled. “This sucks.”
Loewe groaned. “So Lily gets the right to confess to Zenos...”
“Confess?” Zenos asked, cocking his head. “What’s this about?”
“Oh, um, well, it’s...” Lily stammered, waving her hands and turning bright red.
Carmilla bent down to pick up the discarded dice with another chuckle. “What a wondrous competitor you were, Lily,” she said with a proud smile as if to extol the girl’s valiant efforts. “I didn’t even need to lend you a hand.”
“Oh, Carmilla!” Lily exclaimed, moved.
Then, the wraith tossed the dice back into their original tray. The five dice tumbled around and eventually all settled with 1s facing up.
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
“Huh?”
Everyone stood there dumbfounded. Even Carmilla herself let out a gasp of surprise.
“Uhh...” the host Zonde began in confusion. “So, the winner is actually this translucent lady who just scored ten thousand points, Carmilla.”
Strange half sighs, half cheers rose from the crowd.
The women shrugged, smiling awkwardly. “This is what happens when you make up weird rules, Lynga,” Zophia said.
“I didn’t think anyone would actually roll all 1s without cheating,” Lynga protested.
“What was the point of our epic battle, then?” Loewe muttered.
“I think maybe that’s for the best for me,” Lily said, somewhat relieved. “My heart isn’t ready yet.”
Carmilla, when asked what she wanted for her prize, shouted with a hint of desperation, “Liquor! Bring me booze!”
***
The riveting competition had ended unexpectedly, and the rest of the night was spent leisurely enjoying the festival. Zenos and Lily were at one of the stalls lined up along the main street, munching on skewers to the sound of the lively festival music.
“Come to think of it,” Zenos said, “where did the winner of the games go?”
“Carmilla said she was attracting too much attention and went home.”
“Bit late for that, but all right...”
Most of the festival attendees were regulars at the clinic, so very few would’ve been meeting the wraith for the first time. Either way, it seemed she had indeed taken home her prize of fine liquor.
“Having fun, doc?” Zophia asked as she approached him with the other demi-human leaders in tow before circling him.
“Yeah. Thanks to you,” Zenos replied.
The women sighed as they looked up at the night sky. “To think Carmilla would actually win, though...” the lizardwoman said.
“I sure regret making up that one rule,” the werewolf lamented.
“It was a luck-based game. Can’t do anything about that,” Loewe mused. “Maybe it’s the heavens telling us it’s not the right time yet.”
“I had fun, at least!” Lily exclaimed. There seemed to be some sort of strange sense of camaraderie among the four.
“In any case, I’m glad everything turned out all right,” Zophia said. It had been the first-ever night festival held in the slums, and the demi-human women who had organized the event toasted each other in relief. “This year, we kept it mostly to our own people, but I wanna make it bigger next year.”
“I think everyone’s gonna be talking about this,” Lynga remarked. “More people will want to come next year.”
“The festival might become a staple of the slums eventually,” Loewe said.
“Maybe people from the city will start coming too,” Lily mused. Her remark was casual, but the atmosphere suddenly turned tense. “Oh, I’m sorry...”
Class was everything in this country, and there was a vast divide between common citizens and the poor. Though some weren’t as discriminatory, like Umin and Becker from the Royal Institute of Healing, they were generally a minority.
Zophia smiled gently and patted Lily’s head. “It’s okay, Lily. Maybe someday, right?”
“I can’t even imagine it,” Lynga said in an emotional tone.
“Maybe it’ll be the little ones like Lily who bring about change,” Loewe pondered wistfully.
