The Island With No Parallel

A Game of Saahd'man

They played cards and other table games late into the night, and Yunara was getting more excitement than she bargained for with their wins and losses. There were moments in the night where they were losing everything and were coming down to their last pennies. Then there were moments where they were winning more than Yunara ever imagined they would ever win. The night proved that it could certainly go one way or the other at any time, and it had Yunara at the edge of her seat all night.

The huge spending they were doing was certainly turning heads, that much was true, and had even started conversation with some of the clientele, which is what they were hoping for. Yunara just wished it didn't have to be in such a stressful manner. Though it wasn't her money, it still hurt just as much to see it blown away in these senseless gambles with ridiculous amounts of cash at stake.

It had become clear to every member of the club that the three foreigners were definitely wealthy and had to be of great renown in their own country. Yunara heard people whispering to each other and muttering their names on multiple occasions. They were getting curious, so perhaps the entire night wouldn't be a waste.

At the moment, they had just won enough to break even with the amount they entered with. Then Yunara's mouth fell open as Kailu took out half of their chips and pushed them towards the middle of the table she was playing, a game that seemed to consist of rolling oddly shaped dice that was much bigger than Yunara had ever seen in an oddly shaped bowl on the ground.

"Are you crazy?" Yunara asked her as the dealer handed Kailu the dice.

Kailu scoffed. "Try to loosen up a little!" Then she said in a lower voice, "Since we have to spend a lot of the cash at once, you might as well have some fun with it."

With that, she threw the dice onto the bowl shaped board on the ground like it was a skipping stone, and it started rolling around it's surface in a circuit, the bowl rocking around slightly as it blazed its course. The bowl had slots for the fist-sized dice to fall in all around. At that moment, Yunara realized that the object wasn't dice, but a hexagonal ball that had to land in one of the slots for Kailu to win. There were points assigned to each slot, the higher up ones with the higher points, and the slots on the bottom of the bowl valued at the lowest. The point of the game seemed to try to roll the ball in a way so that it slid into the slots higher up and stopped there, the very bottom of the bowl being marked as zero.

The ball rolled around the bowl until it stopped at one of the lower slots of the bowl, and the crowd that had gathered around to watch Kailu jeered, the dealer looking at her with mock sympathy as he collected her chips and fetched the ball from the bowl.

Yunara massaged her temples. "And how is this fun?"

Manuel stepped up and placed another hefty amount of chips on the table, though not as much as Kailu had played before. "Deal me in. I want to try."

The dealer shrugged and accepted the bet, allowing first the other men that had stepped up to play their turn first. When it finally came to Manuel's turn, he threw the odd ball in a similar fashion to how Kailu did. The ball rolled around the bowl, once again rocking it back and forth slightly, but this time it stayed put in a high position in the bowl, landing on a slot that read "100".

Kailu and Yunara screamed and hugged each other as Manuel won his earnings, and then pushed them back to the dealer. "I want to play again."

Yunara stopped "Are you sure? We're close to breaking even again!"

"I think I'm getting the hang of this game. You have to flick your wrist right for the ball to stay where you want it instead of just rolling around the whole time."