The Goddess of Luck

The so-called goddess of Luck has always struck me as the most suspect of the pantheon. Fortune is, by its nature, noisy and prone to hindsight. I have conducted my own small experiments: coin tosses, lots drawn, wagers laid over months and years, and while individual runs rarely show more than ordinary variance, the aggregate patterns around certain individuals are difficult to ignore. Consider Valin. It is not merely that he survives where others fall, or stumbles into opportunities at precisely the right moment; it is the way he reads a room. How he seems to instinctively sense people’s tempers and fears and then, without apparent effort, chooses exactly the right jest or gesture that shifts the outcome in his favor. One could argue that this is simply keen perception and empathy, but when such “coincidences” stack high enough, it begins to resemble a quiet manipulation of probabilities themselves. Much as it pains the rational part of me to concede the point, there does appear to be a measurable bend in the numbers and fortunes around those the priests name “blessed.” I dislike the word, but the blessings, it seems, have merit.