7 Ash 121
It was quite the interesting event when Dakkur heard about it. Of course the idea of bobbing for onions was pretty novel as opposed to the sweet apples which everyone so loved, it was the prizes which had Dakkur's attention. A few of his peers who had previously participated in earlier drowned onion games spoke fondly of their experiences; constantly dumping their faces into the cool water to get those onions, being forced to eat the onions most of the time although they had their own techniques of doing it. There were some good stuff there. But even better were some of the prizes which were shown to him. "And they are specially made year by year? Rare? Wait what?" He could not believe what he just heard. "People actually buy these things for their collections? You got how much? No way!" That was a lot of aven although there were two reasons which was explained to him for the price: the prize coming from a store which was notorious for deliberately making their challenge hard and the prize coming from the games of nearly a decade ago, long enough for less prizes to have survived until now and thus increasing their value through their rarity.The desire for winning a prize therefore was strongly entrenched in his heart. In the preceding days, Dakkur was already experimenting. Why else would he have gone out of his way to get a sizable barrel back into his home? Why else would he buy all those onions? To eat them? Could anyone even stomach that many by themselves? Nonetheless Dakkur it was not an upset stomach which Dakkur ended up suffering from; no onion went through his mouth just yet as he believed his stomach's ability to contain any onions he decided to stuff himself with was not something which could be trained or there would have been consistent champions, legendary players the other people in Zaichaer would be on the lookout for in their yearly games.
It was his eyes which hurt as he cut into all the onions to peel them according to the specifications he heard. The juices just spewed out the moment he cut into them and this was something all the participating stores had to do? To torture themselves to host a tradition? It sounded unreasonable so maybe there was some sort of onion syndicate or cabal behind the scenes using this event as an excuse to get rid of their excess onions or to force these stores to use their services but Dakkur could only rely on himself to peel the onions. if only there was some way he coul- oh wait. There was. He used to experiment with making gadgets and tools to help him in his digs and one indispensable item every gadgeteer needed was a good set of goggles. They protected the eyes from just about anything while maintaining perfect vision. Sparks from metal, acid from reactions, splinters from wood, shrapnel from accidents, sweat from the brow. The idea that it could not protect his eyes from the onion juices? Doubtful!
With the goggles protecting his eyes it did not take Dakkur long to finally peel all the onions he had and toss them into the barrel of water he had prepared. it was promising, as the onions in there were indistinguishable from one another. Then he put in an onion, tied to a string with an iron trinket on one end of it and then another of the same, a wooden badge tied to it tossed into the barrel carelessly. More onions under different conditions tied to random items which could be considered prizes were added in his experiment which he slowly documented. Oh yes, there was no way he was not going to win after this. The most common state with all the prize onions was that they sunk a little deeper into the water as opposed to the onions without. There were some results which were weird, like prizes floating up to the top because they were not heavy enough to sink in but Dakkur thought them the sort of outliers the participating stores would not use as it would make the idea of the contest ineffective.
The next day after work, Dakkur headed over to one of the busiest districts which he knew was participating in the contest. A less confident man would see the fact there were more stores spread around meant there were more chances for him to win but Dakkur on the other hand saw the large number of participating stores as being more prizes he could win. Not being able to win one prize? Such an idea did not even enter his head at least not until he realized something when he finally was in the field of battle. Listening to his friends about the contest, he took it for granted that the only element to the games were the onions in the water but had anyone actually specified all the stores were using barrels? No that was just assumed by Dakkur since it was also the common practice for people bobbing for apples but now with so many different vessels to hold all the water and onions in, his entire field of study in onion bobbing was thrown off.
And so despite his his best preparations, it all came back down to luck but Dakkur was not dissuaded. he went up to his first challenge and searched out for the smallest sign that a onion was being pulled down by its prize. Finding his best bet, he confidently dunked his head to bite into the onion and force it out with him. Yuck. Did he win? No. It was a dud sadly. "But, but, how? I was sure I got it. Are you sure there is even a prize?" Dakkur asked accusingly. There was no way he did not get the prize. He had to get something out of it and when he expressed it, his need to get his prize, he was shown he did get something; an onion stuffed into his mouth by an annoyed employee. Yuck.
Still unwilling to give up, Dakkur went on for another attempt in the next store. Another weird vessel but at least this time they used a really big one so he could put to the test the information he gathered in his experiments again. He looked through the onions floating in the water and saw this time there seemed to be a lot more being weighed down. Weird, so he looked to the ripples they were making. He hypothesized as there was that constant tension between onion and prize in the water forcing the former to keep floating and sinking, the onion with the prize would be the one making the most ripples in the water. Again with much courage and confidence, Dakkur dunked his head right in to fish out the onion he identified. Gross. The taste of these onions were not getting any better but he got it out! Another... dud...
This continued for... how many attempts? Enough attempts for Dakkur's face and throat to start stinging from the onion juices but fortunately the onion induced condition was not exasperated because he remembered his peer's old onion war stories at the right time. Or maybe it was because after he had dunked his face into the cold water so many times, his had already become numb to every other sensation. However his plan was set; fight through the stinging, numbing sensation and then bite into the onions hard enough to squeeze out as much of the juices he could into the water before dragging out the onion with him. His! Plan! Was! To! With all the effort he had to put in simply to get his face into the water, there were times his mouth simply froze at the wrong moment letting even more of the cold effect him. But was that going to stop him?
No, it was not going to stop him. What would stop him however was the fatigue getting to him both mentally and physically he froze up in front of the barrel. After a few seconds of just standing there, a child piped out, taunting him actually, calling Dakkur a big guy and asking if he was ever going to take his go. And then another kid behind that one impatiently got on Dakkur's case to just go which led to a chain of calls for Dakkur to just get on with it. "I'm going! I'm going!" No time for pretenses, no more time to make plans with his head too overwhelmed with the noise and the weird feeling to his face, Dakkur simply took a deep breath and got right into it; the first onion he got to he immediately fished out clattered- clattered?!
"I did it!" He got a prize. What was his prize? Oh it looked very nice and he was going to let everyone see it, like that kid who was egging him on just moments ago as he shoved the prize right into his face before promptly running away with it.
