Surprises of All Shapes and All Sizes, For a Price

It was bright. Very bright!

But the lights were so...pretty!

When they blinked into adjustment Silvia and Pooky saw the dazzling lights of multicolored torches in fantastic colors.

They might have felt reticent to go any farthr, except they saw a group of women...much like themselves.

They were varying shapes and sizes, wizards just having graduated, duchesses despoiled, but all of them were just about naked.

Not completely naked, mind you.

Each had at least something, and while some women looked annoyed, others ashamed, others flabbergasted, and some, strangely pleased, they all had the same odd custom of touching whatever it was they were holding, again and again.

The wizard, with only her hat, kept touching it nervously, as though to assure herself she still had it on.

a naked knight quivered behind a shield with what must have been her proud war sign painted on it.

Silvia dragged Pooky forward and got in line with the other nudie cuties, who one by one deposited their sole remaining possession for a pitiful handful of coins, before flipping one back into the booth and running through the curtain, which opening with a flash gave a quick shot of a riotous, laughing crowd and a disappearing woman.

Silvia played with Pooky's belly bar, not unlike what the other women were doing with their own possessions.

"Well, what have you got?", the man grinned at the drows, a rarity even here.

"Platinum belly bar!", Silvia declared triumphantly.

"SILIVIA, Noooo! Pleeeeeaassseeee....let me keep it."

"Pooky, we need clothes! We need cover!"

"Plenty of lovely costumes and clothes inside.", the man sold.

"See!"

"Silvia, pwease!"

"Well, the man scratched his beard, I suppose there is another way to pay...you could give us some kind of service."

"How much?", Pooky asked, desperate for a way to keep her belly's adornment.

"Depends on what you do...you can get a few coppers if you both shovel the dragon shit for the night, or if you have more interesting skills I'm sure they'd be worth much more."

Silvia looks from Pooky's puppy dog eyes to the gleam of the carnival barker.