The Bird and the Wyrm

I followed you as you walked to the edge of the platform and placed the cannister down onto the wood then pressed down a button at the very top. Thing, spindly legs suddenly detached from the body of the cannister and swung down to hug the ground, providing more stability.

"Lucky is resource, just like everything else. You’re born with some, you grow some, and you use some. It can also be harvested." You twisted the top half of the cannister and a number of lights around the edge lit up.

"There’s an inscription on it."

"Yes. It’s designed to only siphon off a little luck from non-human, non-sentient entities in the immediate area."

"I see..." I said. "But if you take the luck of the fish, say, then won’t that mean that they’ll all get caught and eaten and then there will be no more fish and then it’ll ruin the, uh, ecological cycle?"

You smiled. "Well spotted. But what this canister does is take equally from everything in the vinicity. For most creatures who here, they’ll live their entire lives here as will those above and below them in the food chain. If I take five percent from both the fish and the bird-"

"Then their relative luck will be unchanged!" I concluded.

"Correct," you said.

"What about the birds though? Don’t they migrate or something?"

"They do, that’s why I try to only harvest luck a few times each season and from different places. That way, I won’t overly affect once particular species."

I fell silent. "Seems a bit... exploitive, don’t you think?"