Fancy Fanciful Fantasticality: Overture for the Overawed

Read this fantastic excerpt from an original fantasy novel series by Francessca Bella!

This aureate lady, Calista Soleil, performed not an ordinary duty in this place but a superordinary one years ago— then she took her talent to higher heights, Sunshinescence Port, where she continues exceling with accordance to prediction even now. There she has obtained her authority as Port Overseer, and there she assures that only rightful people make passage between Earth, overridden with savages, and The Principality of Sunshinescence, a paucity of their opposites, a paradisiacal hinterland.

She wonders what happenings from her past she can intake, digest, reinterpret, the good, the bad, and the ugly— all in the quest for a prettifying, self-enhancing transformation rather than an uglifying, self-injuring transmogrification.  The reputable Chromia Academy she seeks out with the most honest, admirable purpose.

I’ve not been here in so long, Calista thinks. I wonder what things have changed, since I left this precious academy so long ago. It always remained in my heart, for better or for worse, and I never realized it until I started feeling so empty and inefficient in my duties at the port. The quest for self-betterment starts here.

The formal, stoic academy gleams there, four-story tall, constructed of dark red bricks. Daedal architecture outlines the red-painted doors and windows, red velvet curtains concealing the internal activities. The red contours that once made her a crimson shade against the setting sun, a haunting one there in the distance, now transfer menacingly onto the building that carries such a devilish reputation. Many memories she made there, some light, but most of them heavy in their repercussions that negatively impact her life even to this day. Yet she lets the bright red lines draw her in anyways.

She ascends a flight of stairs made of uniformly cut brick squares to reach the entryway zone. It contains a set of double doors, both gold in color, sheen, and quality; colorific stain glass covers their upper halves, artisticated by geometric designs. The emerald green doorknob shines brightly.

She thinks, the past is the past, and any negativities that afflicted me then in the academy will no longer exist now that I’ve returned to make new memories. This time I intend to deliberately take those with me to the future.

 Stamping her feet lightly, she scatters off the dust from her traveled feet, Calista showing only calmness in her face.

Ring! Ring! A trumpet blares with the ringing of bells.

Do they ring for me? Calista wonders with amusement. Someone or two knows that I stand here, eager to meet this place and learn a new skill or a plethora, since mine have waned there at the port I work at.

Ring! She blinks; the noise triggering mechanism dawns on her.

Towards her feet she stares. The gray stones that constitute the walkway remain aligned, all but one, and it has sunk downward a full inch with the weight of her body, stood on since the first ring went forth to alert the keepers of the academy to her presence.

Creak! The golden doors turn inward, allowing her a preview of the interior entry room and a lady whom she has never met before.

“Calista Soleil,” the gray-haired woman calls out. “What brings you to this academy so far away from your ordinant post? No easy journey by any means.” Her orange outfit illumes her like a flame in a dark room.

The fantasticality, hair pearlescent in the streaming sunlight, narrows her blue eyes at the auld woman intensely as she stands inside the foyer, unsure if she should burden her with the detailed reasons for the compellation that brought her to such a place, her job, her home, her everything else relevant so long as she seeks a connection here with her past.

“Here I came to experience all the joys I once knew, to remedy the woes, and then make myself anew with all that I discover again about the academy, and what it means to learn, be a fantasticality above all things and all others that dare heighten, and to come and meet again the teachers before I make my way back home to visit my family.”

The auld woman frowns, antiquitous age now apparent as her body shows instability, hands shaking, mouth drooping, fists bawled in constant disappointment; when all that should make her happy does not, the Sun, the birds, the guest, and the happy world in front of them, upends her inner peace, turns her voice extra crackly. She squints, blue-black eyes dimming still.

“Don’t you remember me?” she asks. “Not just anybody, I’m grandness in the eyes of many and you too to name, Calista. I beseech that you call me by my name and make me feel like I made such a vast difference in your life that you can’t forget me.”

The young blonde stammers nervously, her mind racing for answers, faces, names, and places where she can accordingly connect to a meaning and please this woman who stands before her unstably. But much to her dismay, she sees them all as blurs, hears them as whirs, and remembers the places as those nonexistent but in dreams or fiction.

“So sorry, but I don’t remember anything about you. If in fact we did meet,” Calista says, voice shaky.

The auld woman puts on a smile, and the sunshine puts the sparkle in it too as she turns directly towards its radiance.

“Come inside,” she says, vocal cords haggard, “and we’ll forget all about this mishap at the front door. The Chromia Academy has far more to offer you than the scolding I hold back just as a consequence of denying you the knowledge you cannot find in your memory.”

“I can’t believe that your sparkly façade hides a mean character who will not actually help me figure out who you are.”

“Forget about it. Right now, that’s not important, and I find no interest in making it pertinent business at this moment.”

“Then I will figure it out later, no need for apologies.” Calista sighs.

“No need at all.”

They continue walking forward through a corridor filled with a myriad of rainbow colors from floor to wall to ceiling. The many windows add lightsome ambience that Calista appreciates tremendously, for it does bring her back to her more positive reasons for coming there to reassimilate with the feelings of what it means to strive there as a star and to soar above all others.

The sound of chanting, throaty and rhythmic, the words recognizable and clearly intellectual, gains resonance that the hallways, too hollow, only enhance. It grows louder; then the chamber, painted bright yellow, shows that a dozen students, wearing white uniforms, create the welcoming flux. A lightsome fella waves, inspiring Calista to join against the disapproval of her guide.  

“These students must teach the dictates of the Sun too, and they have learned them so well that they might as well go out into the furthest regions of Earth and teach them to the savages who have not seen any of its brightness since the Era of Depravity turned their ancestors into those barbaric creatures that the Sun still shuns to this day,” the woman says, staring optimistically at them.

“That’s fascinating. I can hear them, see them, and feel them and the power of the Sun growing strong. The very presence of it fills me and this chamber with its bliss and all-knowing sense of belonging.”

“The entire academy thrives according to the generosity of the Sun. It allows us to learn and spread wisdom. Something that many who’ve not been appropriately trained will be scolded for doing.”

Calista takes a seat next to the instructor’s desk where the auld lady sits. She shuffles aside some papers, haphazardly organizing a stack.

They continue to sing, filling the chamber with song while another group, equipped with musical instruments, adds in their own harmonious tones. Unlike the first group and to Calista’s surprise, they choose to not notice her, but it does not disappoint her, for she came here ultimately to see and learn more about the traditional academic areas nowadays compared to when she attended the Chromia Academy personally.