The courtyard was quiet again. That was how Ndaye liked it—mornings before the heat, before the noise, before the whispers.

She sat on a low stool, sorting small bundles of salt and rice into woven bags. Her hands moved without thought. She had done this work for decades, long before paper wallets and QR codes, before the draw, before the name Pegged meant anything to anyone.

The others arrived in pairs. Women, mostly. A few young men. They greeted her not as a leader, but as a rhythm—something old and trusted.

Each brought something: soap, millet, dried fish. Each left with a folded piece of paper and a lottery stub.

“What if they come?” one woman whispered.

Ndaye looked up. Her voice was even.

“They are already here. What matters is that we are still here too.”

At noon, she walked alone to the fishing quarter. A teenager met her under the awning of an empty kiosk. He handed her a phone—burner, preloaded with a single message.

“They are watching your name now. They do not need to arrest you to silence you.”

She read it once and gave the phone back.

“Let them watch,” she said. “We don’t need names to draw.”

Back in the courtyard, the draw was posted on the wall: four numbers, timestamped, signed on-chain. No one knew the math, but everyone trusted the result.

A girl jumped up and down when her number came up. She would get an extra bundle this week—nothing more, but nothing less. And it felt earned. Or at least, uncorrupted.

Ndaye handed the winning stub to the girl and smiled.

“Fairness isn’t always loud,” she said. “But you know it when it stays.”

The girl ran to tell her mother.

Ndaye turned back to the salt, and the rice, and the work that never ended.