Maize

After going through her rounds of the Corn Festival games, she ended up snagging two different plushies as her trophies. It was for the best that she had gotten her photography out of the way before delving into the carnival. Now she had her arms rather full, hulling her camera gear in her backpack and squeezing both plushies in an inadvertent headlock as she walked. She had her personal camera in one hand and allowed herself to indulge in some cornbread on a stick in the other. It looked like she had walked away triumphant.

However, she didn't walk away from the Festival with her spoils and decided to linger around to see the Corn Festival drawing to a close. It was a fun afternoon and she made memories of that with a few quick pictures taken. This had been a wonderful distraction to the dread that seemed to linger close by, it was a pity that this joyous feeling wouldn't last forever.

The girl was sitting by herself. I had seen her earlier, playing the ring toss with her brother. Now he was at the basketball hoops, while she watched from a distance.

"Why aren't you playing?"

"I'm not good ad basketball. I'm too little. "

"Says who?"

"Bobby."

"I bet you can win."

She have a defeated shake of her head.

"All you have to do is hit the hoop. It doesn't have to go in. Do that and you win this."

I held up the unicorn. She didn't seem optimistic, but decided to give it a try. She tossed the ball as hard as she could, while her brother watched with folded arms. The ball bounced off the rim and I handed her the unicorn.

"Good job, kid."

She smiled broadly and laughed, as Bobby glared with a hint of jealousy.

A moment later, I walked away to see what else was happening.

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Edit: Waited to verify roll
[Day Three - Late Afternoon] All Fun and Games, Glamour Harvesting, Manipulation + Empathy: 5d10o10h8 1

It was hard to miss that large unicorn that Marlowe was holding and the conversation he was having with the children. She begrudgingly laid down her spoils on a bench and bit down on the cornbread stick so that she could have hands to take out her "work" camera once more. There was a moment coming and she could already sense it, which was an intuition that came with candid photography. The conversation exchange managed to get her enough time for her to prep to take a picture of the girl taking the shot with her brother close by and then triumphantly earning a unicorn. That was a cute genuine moment to capture on camera. She wasn't sure if it was actually going to be worth anything. Maybe it'll end up as a meme one day.

After Marlowe walked away, she raised her hand to wave him over to where she was standing with her various things. She plucked the stick from her mouth before talking. "Hey, Marlowe! That's pretty generous of you!"

"I have too many at home already." I chuckled. "You seem to be enjoying the festival."

"Too many unicorns at home, huh?" Imogen said on an incredulous note, hardly seeing where unicorn fit in the detective's life. She supposed maybe if he dreamt of electric sheep and unicorns. "You must have quite a collection, I bet."

She turned her head to gaze down at the pair of plushies and she was starting to put away her work camera back in her bag. "Hah, yeah, well. It's something to do around here and I'm not saying that in a bad way. It's good to see the town actually get together and come alive, it makes for good photo opportunities too. Here I thought I had to wait to Sunday to see this many people in one place. I might have the excuse to skip church now but I think Sleeping Beauty might come after me if I do."

"It's in better hands with the girl and a little happiness can go a long way." I explained. "I believe Maize has some darker parts to its history, it's good to see that something joyful has come from it."

"That's probably the biggest gold star I've ever seen, to be honest." She held up a hand to say something before Marlowe could respond quickly. "Not that it's a bad think but you don't know that for sure."

"And what gives you this idea about darker parts?" She asked, tilting her head.

I waited until we were more isolated and lowered my voice. "I checked out one of the fields and found a bone, a changeling bone."

There was an elongated pause from Imogen as she almost seemed to wait for a punchline. It wasn't too long ago that she was chatting with Tiffani in the fields after found bones, she didn't know they were changeling bones.

"Fuck!" Imogen said at first before she forced herself to lower her voice. "Was it recent?"

I shook my head. "I don't know, but I don't think so. I looked into the bone's past and saw a vision of the changeling's death. The corn was different, limp and rotten. Some sort of red fluid seeped from it. The changeling was manacled and helpless. And, someone cut them down."