Silver Touched Soul

Chapter 24

The festival filled all the streets of the town around the pack house with stalls, music and colored lighting everywhere. If you got sick of the food and mini games available then you could walk to the end of the main road where the bigger rides and attractions had been set up over several fields. In other words, the festival was HUGE. That wasn't even including the camping grounds that had been set up to accommodate the huge number of werewolves.

"I thought there were only meant to be eight packs at the festival. Including ours, the Royal pack and the six other packs that showed up today?" I questioned Derrick. "There has to be at least 4,000 people here, which is more than all the packs total numbers combined, not just the members that are here. If I'm not mistaken."

"You are right." Derrick confirmed. "Shortly after you left for the Shallow Waters pack, a decision was made to open up the festival to the local humans. I'm glad that they waited as long as they did before deciding to let everyone into the festival, because if they had made that decision months ago there would be more people here than we could accommodate."

I nodded my head in agreement as I side stepped to avoid the two pups that were racing each other to the candy apple stall just down the road.

I was particularly surprised to see a natural wolf pup of the Shallow Waters pack race after the two werewolf pups. I hadn't realized that the two packs had integrated so quickly. It makes me proud to watch the pack I grew up in adapt so easily.

"So which one of you kids am I going to be beating in the hammer challenge first?" Beverly teased as I let my confusion show on my face.

"What in the world is a hammer challenge?" I asked as Beverly face palmed and Saffron looked guilty for not explaining what would be at the festival sooner.

"It's a machine that measures your strength when you smack it with a hammer. It makes the weight go up the pole and the person who makes the weight go the highest wins." Derrick explains.

"Sorry to break it to you, but I'm so going to kick your ass at that game." I jabbed at Beverly as we began to talk smack with each other in a friendly fashion. We proceeded to head for the area that had the tall pole and people smacking a raised platform with an oversized hammer that looked heavy, but wasn't.

The distance between our starting point and our destination was approximately half of the main street of the town. It took us 45 minutes to make what would normally be a two minute walk. By the end of it I found out that kebabs taste great, I'm going to learn how to make candy apples, fishing games are fun and I can't shoot to save my life.

"So are you ready to lose again Eva?" Beverly teased as she flaunted the two teddy bears she'd won in previous games to annoy me.

"Sure I'm ready if what you actually mean is you're ready to have that smile wiped off your face." I replied back to her. "Why don't you go first, age before beauty after all."

"Hey, that's not fair. I'm younger than you Eva." Beverly looked like she'd actually been offended which gave me a deep sense of satisfaction.

"Will you two stop bickering so we can have some fun?" Derrick finally snapped at us.

"Sorry boss." Beverly said while snapping to an exaggerated salute in Derricks direction before heading to pay and pick up the hammer.

"Sometimes I wonder why I put up with you guys." Derrick muttered under his breath but both Beverly and I caught it.

"Because you love us." I say as I position myself between Saffron and Derrick, sliding an arm through each of theirs and turning to watch Beverly so she knew all the attention was on her.