He leans over her and half-whispers with a wink, "All people need is an excuse, sometimes." Then leaning back and moving to remove his underwear, he asks, "I'm gonna save my copper. What counts as silence? Gasps, grunts, moans, words? Breathing hard? Humming?"

(The surrounding crowd is chattering slightly, but hanging back.)

Ame grins and raises her voice to clarify the rules of the game. "Breathing hard and whispers are permitted! Any noises you make with your voice, verbal or otherwise, cost you the copper!"

"Why, that's no challenge at all!" He leans in and squeezes her ample breasts together so he can whisper, "I'll flip you, your breasts through the slime will be a good visual."

He leans back and makes a show of leaning rubbing his hands down her belly and up her thigh as he finishes getting himself hard, making sure people can see it. Then he grabs her legs and pushes one and pulls the other, twisting her around. "Come on, let's see that beautiful butt!"

And he shuts up and lines up and works his way into her, hands gripping her slick hips.

(The band in the background has moved on to various people getting the jungle princess in bed - and her turning the tables and dominating them!)

Ame likes this song, likes subverting taboos, likes this guy's ideas, and likes bringing sex out into the open of people's lives. This is fun.

Ame proceeds to show this guy her appreciation for his help by demonstrating why he shouldn't underestimate her skill. Even as she grins and beckons to the rest of the closest on-lookers, she shifts the slime around to give her leverage and moves her hips to meet his thrusts, bouncing against him as she controls her inner muscles to provide him sudden, unexpected bursts of pleasure.

That is surprising! He expected her to be good at this and is half-distracting himself doing breathing exercises, so manages not to gasp in surprise. The former showman who saw a way to have fun starting this party arches his back as he thrusts and lets the pleasure show on his face, even as he remains silent.

The crowd continues to mutter uncertainly, but most of them are staring and getting aroused. After a short while where the sound of hips slapping against her butt fight the musicians for dominance, someone else says, "Ahh, forget it! I've been watching you spar and wanting to do this all day, I'll pay two copper and moan all I want!"

The second guy digs in a bag for the coins, sticks them into the slime after a moment of hesitation, and drops trou right in front of Ame's face, already hard.

"That's the spirit. C'mon all you, the more of you touching me, the more distracted I'll be from winning the game~"

Ame grabs the second guy's cock with a laugh and wraps her lips around him. She starts bobbing her head, stroking his glans with her cheeks and tongue. She twerks her hips just right, feels awning-guy shudder.

The slime rearranges itself at her will, to her advantage, supporting her as she's eagerly 'spit-roasted'.

The man receiving a blowjob happily moans and groans at the sensations. People are hesitant to approach her, but two people have broken the ice and it's not long until someone says 'touching is free', and they start to crowd around her more, rubbing and grasping and fondling.

The man who started it all stays silent no matter what she tries, even when he cums, though it's a clear effort. He clearly has acting experience. He gives her a subtle nod before crowing at his 'victory' and challenging everyone else to do the same, and bowing out of the 'show'.

He earned that victory. She'll have to remember to do something extra nice for him later. He was a big help.

And then she is too occupied by hands and cocks to think about anything else.

She'll be occupied with a few pussies, too. Very few people 'win' the challenge, even the ones that bite down on twisted rags as improvised gags.

With only a mildly disapproving look, Debra the ever-vigilant organizer has a small bath set up for people leaving the orgy, to wash off the lube.

(A few people cheat her 'payment', figuring she's rather busy and not actually letting go of their coins in a bit of sleight of hand, or being very quick to try to hide the fact that they're only holding one coin, or pulling away from her and jerking off when they get close so she doesn't make them cum.)

Meanwhile, Elizabeth is boring and ordinary and unimportant. Magically so. The Wind of Shadow has seen to that. She approaches Alectai's wagon, thinking about how to get a peek inside. The man himself is carefully reading and taking notes, occasionally consulting a miniature abacus.

But when she leans against the wagon, something seeps into her - energies that had been building up in the wood suddenly crossing into her body. The Wind of Light thrumming uncomfortably through her, she startles and jumps as the ulgu mesh of Take No Heed abruptly dissolves. It's not directed, but whatever he's transporting is obviously in there, and obviously leaking considerable amounts of Light energy. Dangerous.

Recognizing the sudden guilt for spying and the desire to go out and bless the local plant-life or confess her worry to Alectai as Light influence pushing her towards her ingrained moral instincts, she shakes it off with a shudder. After a moment's consideration, she spends a few minutes drawing out the Light energy and introspecting after letting it affect her.

...It's undirected, not doing anything in particular, as best she can tell. Hysh magic is often called Light magic, but it's not the same thing as 'true' Light energy. This stuff is even harder to grasp than Hysh, and she never received any specific training for it. But she feels pretty sure that whatever the mysterious object does, it's not working on her through the walls. Maybe it's 'just' a powerful source of Light energy. A holy artifact, many would call it. Churches seem to like the Wind of Light.

She could go up to Alectai and tell him about the leakage, offer to contain it for him before it gets worse. Maybe she could find out more about the artifact that way... But, wait, that's stupid. She has to be very careful, given that murderous shapeshifters are around. What if one of the caravan workers is one? What if Alectai is one? ...He's probably not, or they wouldn't have had to hire him, but she can't rule out someone having infiltrated the caravan rank and file. She doesn't know them.

So she just goes to bed instead, tossing and turning with worry, and finds Ameron in the morning.

Ame was in her element last night, both literally and figuratively. She let the few 'cheaters' get away with it, rather than spoil the fun to call them out, but she took note of their faces, between filling surplus pussies and sucking surplus cocks with slime while her own hands and tongue and orifices were occupied.

Maybe there exists such a concept of 'too much sex' but she thinks it might actually be physically impossible to reach that point. After last night, Ame is just feeling uncomplicatedly happy.

In the morning, she relaxes lazily, floating half on half inside her Lube Slime, until she spots Elizabeth approaching. She finally gets up, casts the dismissal (evaporating all the Lube, leaving her, not clean, but cleanish), and pulls her clothes out of her pack to get dressed.

The bath has been broken down again by morning, and the caravan is starting to wake up around them.

"Let's take a walk and chat," Elizabeth says, sounding anxious.

"Sure."

Once she's fully re-equipped she follows Elizabeth out away from the wagons.

Once they're a good distance away Elizabeth sighs and says, "So. I hung out by the boss's wagon, and the Wind of Light was leaking through it, strong enough to affect me. I stuck around long enough to see if whatever-it-is was active and doing things or just sort of... Leaking, and it was just leaking. But whatever it is, is in Alectai's wagon, powerful, uses Light energy which is weird and potentially scary stuff, and is maybe kind of sort of unstable."

"That's not a lot to go on, but at least we know where it is and that it definitely isn't something innocuous?"

Ame considers for a moment.

"Alectai is... he's not the kind of man I can predict. Like, at all. Do you have a better read on him?"

"He seems like, just a merchant? It's just my read but it's all about money, and he does merchanty things with his money like buying those stupid poofy clothes and art, and trying to make more money."

Ame nods.

"That's the problem isn't it. We're not rich enough that he'd bother to lie for us. So even if we could just ask him about the item, the fact that we were interested becomes known. Possibly to shape-shifting assassins."

"Could ask some of his employees if he cares about anything other than money, if he has morals or principles that this could be dangerous to."

"Seems like a long-shot, but worth trying if we can do it subtle-like."

"Oh! If he's sleeping near this thing, it might be affecting him enough for him to notice. I don't imagine he'll take that well, if I mention I sense some magical leakage that might be affecting him..."

"Good idea. Now might even be a good time. Presumably the traces, if there are traces, would be the most noticeable right after he gets up."

"I'll just go do that then, yeah? I should try to get levels in code-writing or something so I can take notes about this..."

Elizabeth pivots on the spot and starts heading towards Alectai's huge wagon.

Ame adjusts her pack, which clanks and clinks with the wealth of copper she earned last night. It would be a lot less heavy if most of it was silver...

...she skips forward to catch up with Elizabeth, and walks beside her. "Little obvious," she mutters. "But I just thought of an excuse, ready-made."

Then, louder, "You think I can change some of this copper for silver at Alectai's wagon?"

"I mean, I don't see any more likely place to ask!"

A cook approaches her and babbles a question about fruit. "Later, sorry, I noticed something important. Be right back."

As they approach Alectai's wagon, it turns out the man himself is wearing a loose robe-like thing and doing some kind of exercise, possibly in the vein of martial arts. From the general flabbiness of his body this can't really be a frequent occurrence.

Ame greets him.

"Good morning. I seemed to be overburdened with copper. You wouldn't happen to have a money-changer on hand, would you?"

"Aha, of course! I need a break anyway!" Alectai nearly shouts. "Moneychanging is a service frequently needed for businesses with large amounts of small takes, and yours seemed quite successful yesterday from what I heard! I'll be happy to do this for a modest fee - let's say just one copper piece. Or possibly an exchange of services-" He twitches slightly, as if suddenly reminded he's not supposed to be interested in sex. "Ah! No, no, let's just stick with the fee. Just a moment."

He finishes his exercise over the next few seconds. It's definitely some kind of weird martial art. "I should really do this more often... It's harder than I remember. This way, please, let me get out my scales..." He heads into his wagon, breathing hard from the exercise. Elizabeth follows, frowning slightly.