The incumbent in his concrete cave.

The alligator had been the Night Mayor longer than anyone in the town could remember. And he was as surprised as anyone when the satyr put his name in the cauldron in the town centre at the opening of the vote.

The satyr would later tell a local reporter that he was, indeed, concerned about the more physical parts of the election posturing. “It is hard to outbite an alligator,” he said, “but I am sure I can do the legwork it takes to get it done for this city.”

It was barely a city but it legally qualified.

Even during the day, the almost-town was not the safest, or the most prosperous, or the best located, or even the most beloved by many of its residents. But it had plenty of potential. It was just plagued by the After Dark Council’s indifference.

The satyr had walked the suburban streets as they floated like glass above the ground, in places held down by the weight of the light from street lamps, cars fumbling along the soft, hazy bitumen. So after his nomination the satyr promised those wobbling drivers the money they would need for longer, safer night roads.

And as the satyr did put in the legwork, the alligator negotiated with the swamp unions for some more pushing power. To blockade the few black polling booths. The alligator with his wide jaw and polished white teeth had found the chimeras’ votes reliable and he was realising he had become complacent. So long established that he’d forgotten how to run.

He’d slightly raised night rates and had managed to scare the paltry collection of door-to-door tax collectors who could only begin after dinner to actually go door-to-door. But twenty-two thousand shekels is barely a town budget.

The alligator accepted that, if he did lose, the satyr would learn this lesson the hard way — with a budget crunch and the criticism of the Night Council and not much else. Just the realisation that dreams, and optimism, are expensive.

The alligator remembered his nomination. Filling the casual vacancy of the Old Tree after its roots threatened to spill the cauldron over as they gnarled and rotted. A smaller party had given him the nomination and he’d been here ever since. Presiding over a satisfied town. The satyr had been born afterwards.

And the Electoral Magicians told the alligator at the end of the campaign’s second Wednesday that the satyr had withdrawn two hundred ballots. That he planned to canvas and drum up support from the tired. The alligator roared and the satyr was sure he could hear it as he departed the town hall for the After Dark streets.

The satyr kept first to a light trot, an evening jog, as the lizards came from the drains and the pools and the ponds. The satyr saw them and heard their hisses in the dark, their scales slick on the pavement, and the chase began. Hooves clip-clopping along concrete that snaked left and right, up and down, pulling up towards the sky.

The city’s sparse, carparked centre gave way to the suburban fringe and the satyr bounced from light paver to light paver, a crocodile on his heels, the jaws snapping and salivating. Weaving through the rounded square gates of a small, thin park, a gharial lashing out at him from a dip in the grass. Teeth slicing across the satyr’s leg, tearing through fur and skin, not so deep but now hot and red.

The satyr limped along as best he could. Looking back to still see them all, behind but close. The park disappearing into the dark. Pavement winding up and around and away. A swingset suspended above him. A slide and all its pit’s sand globed beside. Light from a backyard two houses down…

So the satyr jumped the fence. Then another, then another, small flashes of red on landing, and found himself in the harsh white of patio lighting. And looking at friends gathered around a smoky table, smelling rancid, but with soft, curious eyes.

They saw the blood and the fear and they heard the scratching on the other fences in the quiet night and they took the satyr to the small space between the house and the fence that led to the small space between the fence and the next house. They told the satyr which way to run, where to weave, and how to not get caught. Where to find the next good house.

In return, the satyr gave them one of his ballots.

And then he climbed the fence, leg still oozing, and kept chasing. The lizards were stung by the light of the patio when they fell over the first fence and they hissed and kept to the perimeter, the smell of blood strong in the light air.

But in this way, with pain and help and the gift of ballots in exchange, the satyr journeyed through his town and collected votes. Not lying, not pleading, but asking for help and receiving it from a people willing to do so.

In this way, like the alligator had never tried to, the satyr discovered the town not as a collection of impermanent infrastructure line items but as a community of those more likely to come together. One whose warmth kept at bay a cold-blooded host.

As his ballots sealed, faded into ether, and returned to the Electoral Magicians one at a time, in the centre of the town hall, a fire burned and the cauldron bubbled 34 long terms over.