Welcome to Gaia! ::

River handed over the gray pieces obediently, then turned and moved to stand on one of the boards, facing the other one.

"All you have to do is toss them," she explained with a smile. She tossed the first one, frisbee-style, and it landed on the board, bounced slightly, and skipped into the middle hole. A look of disappointment crossed her face, and she tried again with her second ring. It landed in the third hole; her third ring, however, hit the edge of the third hole, bounced, and landed in the grass.

"Thirty points," Jayme announced, stepping forward and picking River's rings out of the holes.

River smiled and turned to Miyuki. "Your turn!" she said, not at all fazed by her score.

"Fifteen points!" Jayme exclaimed with a warm smile. "Pretty good for a first time! Do you want to give it another try? Make it two out of three?"

She winked at Miyuki. "You can't let River beat you that easily."

"I sure do!" River beamed. "I love this game! Besides, it wasn't fair the first time - I've played this game plenty of times but this is your first time! You should get to practice a bit first, too."

"That would be fair," Jayme agreed. "If you'd like, go ahead, Miyuki."

"Twenty points," Jayme told her, kneeling to pick up the rings. "River!"

River stepped up on the board, her eyes narrow with concentration. She tossed her first ring. It landed on the board between the second and third holes and slid forward, stopping right on the edge, teetering ever so slightly over the brink.

With a frown, she tossed the second ring. This one tapped the first one, nudging it into the third hole, and then followed it in.

Her third toss pinged off the side of the second hole, sending it careening off towards the grass.

"Forty points," Jayme said in an apologetic tone as she collected the rings again. "Your game is off today, River."

River shrugged. "Some days you have it, some days you don't," she said simply.

Of course, it was more than just that - she was quite good at the game - as her second throw had shown - but she didn't want to outdo Miyuki by too much.

"Normally I do better," River replied, though she smiled at Miyuki's compliment. "Maybe we should try something else, something a bit more evenly matched?"

She looked around. "Or we could grab a snack, or it looks like they might be starting one of the races," she suggested. "What do you want to do?"

"Sounds good to me," River agreed readily. She looked around, trying to find a game that had chance as a factor. There weren't really a lot of them, the elves prided themselves on having mostly games and contests of skill rather than luck.

"What about over there, Nineko has something set up where you can win prizes," she finally pointed at a table that was near the well. "I think you have to pick a tile out of a box and if you win you pick something, and if you don't then you put it back."

River giggled. "Yes, and then a snack," she agreed. She led Miyuki through the crowd and towards the well, beside which Ulrich had set up his own little table. There were carvings all over the table, clearly done by himself, and on one corner of the table was a small wooden box.

"Good morning, girls," he greeted them cheerfully. "Care to try your hand? There's one winning token in the box, and the rest are losing tokens. Just choose one and see if you win! If you do, you can choose anything on the table as your prize."

River grinned at him. "I bet you put in more than one winner," she told him. "You like people to win!"

Ulrich laughed at his great-granddaughter. "Are you kidding me? I need these prizes to last two days!"

River grinned at Miyuki. "Okay!" she agreed heartily.

She reached into the box of tokens and rummaged around for a bit, finally pulling one out. It was the size of a small coin and had a single rune on one side - a complicated rune that read "Win!"

"I won!" she gasped, absolutely amazed. "Wow!"

Ulrich laughed. "Go ahead and choose a prize, River," he chuckled at her apparent amazement. "But first, put the token back in the box so that Miyuki has a chance, too."

River grinned and put the token back in the box, mixing it in carefully, before taking a step back and watching. "I'll wait until Miyuki chooses a token to look," she told her great-grandfather. "Then if she wins, too, we can look together!"