“Unicorneas?!” Mena said aloud as she read an elegantly printed invite filled with cursive. It was marked with a beautiful design of a white horse with a rainbow horn and an equally large singular eye.
“Yep,” Janus responded. “You came at the right year, Mena. Last year, Gemini didn’t even have an interschool homecoming, it was a plain one held in the gymnasium. Now he seems to be pulling out all the stops!”
“Wowie Zowie!” Mena exclaimed. “What do we even do with them?”
“We ride them of course!” Janus responded. “The ballroom’s ceilings are extra high so it’s easy to fly on them for the Unity Ceremony.”
“Unity Ceremony?” Mena asked.
May gushed in her deep voice. “That’s when one of the boys from the other school invites us to ride his Unicornea steed in a ‘dazzling formation of love and beauty,’ like the invite says.”
Mena sighed and rested her head in her hands. She imagined Fabias dismounting a one-eyed stallion and asking her to take place in the unity ceremony. As her thoughts got dreamier, she thought she might float away on them.
“The best part…” Janus said with a wink. “Look at the bottom of the invite.”
Mena shook her head free of the daydreams that bound it and looked down. “Classes are canceled for the rest of the week. Students are expected to attend ballroom practice instead!”
“Miraculous magicaps!” Mena exclaimed. “This day just keeps getting better and better!”
After breakfast, Mena and her friends made their way across the courtyard in the center of the Dream Castle. Through cobblestone pathways, promenades and verdant hedges, they stood before an enormous stained-glass window of a queen with a crystal gown. Half her face was painted with white makeup. Beside her was a king with a golden crown that resembled a jester’s hat, and a young woman in a purple suit of armor. Each of them shared the same pallor as Gemini, and the same dark bushy hair. After marveling at it for a short while, Janus lead Mena and May through a pair of arched doors at the far edge of the stained-glass windows, and once they were inside, Mena’s eyes nearly popped out of her head and her mouth gaped.
The ballroom was the size of a small colosseum and each of its three levels was made of solid golden. From the gemstone lined pillars, patterned and painted in complex tapestries, to the ceiling, an enormous painted sky featuring a Gemini in the nude (his crotch covered conveniently by an interweaving cloud) and numerous cherubs who looked suspiciously like members of the Lollypop Labour Union in tiny wings and white diapers, Mena knew this place was truly fit for the party to end all parties. Everyone filed in from the Groundborns to the Solborns and the Lunaborns, all standing in a small crowd. Mena saw from the way everyone else stood with a balance of excitement and trepidation that this was going to be one of the biggest nights of the year.
Large wooden doors opened, and Gemini paced inside his face half-painted white but otherwise sporting his signature purple suit. Caligari, Carrie, Stellaris, (fortunately looking much better from last night) Gaia and Lol Pops entered. The headmaster stood proudly before his academy of trembling young girls and said proudly, “Welcome to our first session of learning poise, grace and exquisite manners. I’m sure it will be a fun learning experience for you all and…”
The doors creaked loudly open like a thunderclap and everyone gasped. Parading inside on heels patterned after lightning bolts, was a woman of an indefinite age. Mena believed she could be anywhere from 30 to 60 but her radiant blond ponytail, spikey and jagged like electricity, a formal gray pants suit that was still low-cut to make Carrie stare lustfully at her, and large thunder and lightning shaped jewelry defied anyone to guess how old she was. As she clomped in on her heels, she carefully adjusted her fashionable glasses that covered intelligent green eyes and said in a deep husky voice, “Gemmy baby, I don’t believe you’re handling the introductions properly. Learning poise, grace and exquisite manners is not a fun learning experience. Like respectability in this cold, unforgiving world, each one of these teeny tiny larvae is going to have to slave to earn it....”
A sly expression came over her face as she surveyed the front row of aspiring sorceresses. “Especially if they ever hope to be a match for my perfect gentlemen.”
Mena swallowed loudly, the ensuing gulp echoing through the silent room like it was trapped in infinity.
Electra snapped her fingers and in a burst of lightning, two piles of books appeared in her hands. “First things first, if we want to master poise and grace, we’ll have to do the old “books-on-head” routine. Nothing says poise like having 15 pounds of books on your head! Any takers?”
“Oh moi, moi, please,” Marie called out, raising her hand between Ashlan and Laetitia.
“Excellent!” Electra said, and she called the dark-haired elf up to the forefront. She stood proudly before Electra as the thunderous woman floated the books over her head.
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“Alright,” Marie said, “Drop zee books!”
Electra did just that and the books collided right with Marie’s head knocking her right to the floor. Marie groaned and muttered, “Ohhh moi head…Sacre Bleu…” as Electra screamed, “What kind of light head are you if your head can’t support a few books?”
Everyone would have laughed, but Electra’s righteous fury kept them silent.
Gemini timidly added, “Maybe you should start with two or three books rather than six.”
“Oh,” Electra said, raising her head and adjusting her glasses. “I think you’re right…. Next?!”
Nobody raised their hand this time, only staring timidly at Electra with fear in their eyes. “Well, if no one is going to stand up like a real woman, I’m obviously going to pick one of you.”
Electra’s green eyes surveyed the crowd for potential candidates. Mena’s knees trembled. As satisfying as it was to see Electra drop the books on Marie’s head, Mena knew that if she was picked, her clumsiness could get her in even more trouble. As Electra’s eyes shifted from person to person, they headed closer and closer towards Mena and it prompted her to hide behind May’s bulk. “How about you!” Electra said, calling directly at May.
“Muh-me?!” May stammered, but Electra quickly brushed her off.
“No, the one hiding behind you, you lout! I wouldn’t have noticed her if she hadn’t decided to dodge my Perfect Woman draft.”
Mena emerged from behind May with her head hung low. She knew this was it. It was time to be embarrassed.
“Don’t drag your feet like you’ve got a tail between your legs,” Electra exclaimed. “Hurry up on up here.”
Mena lightly jogged up to Electra. She was even more intimidating than Caligari, who at least had traces of a soft side. This woman was much larger than her, and Electra’s personality was even bigger.
Electra held her hands together and with another thunderclap, three books appeared in her hand. “You are to walk—no strut— with your head held high, across this ballroom from one end to the other without dropping these books. And you are to do so like royal blood runs in your veins—carrying yourself with elegance, poise and dignity.”
“O-o-kay,” Mena said, and she immediately cast her eyes at her rivals. She regretted doing so because Laetitia had a sadistic fanged smile and tiny pupiled eyes, begging her to screw up.
In another thunderclap, Mena appeared between the crowd and teachers on the edge of the ballroom. The books weighed heavy on her head and wobbled even without movement.
Mena swallowed hard, feeling like they’d fall off with her first step. Mena hastily took her first step forward, and the books wobbled to the left. She immediately jerked her head right to keep them from following. She already knew she looked like a fool. The ballroom stretched further and further and she had only made one small step. How in the world was she going to do this?
She looked to her right at the teachers, and noticed something. Caligari was whispering into her hand, and as she did, a small bubble was forming by her mouth. When Electra looked away, Caligari released the bubble and sent it flying right towards Mena’s head. When it popped, she heard Caligari’s low voice. “I don’t know much about poise, elegance and dignity, but I do know about balance. When fighting, it’s better to not think about every move, but simply what you’re trying to accomplish. When you focus more on your destination rather than every step and motion, you’re more likely to succeed….and…” Caligari added “Don’t forget to breath…”
Mena immediately breathed out, and a large amount of tension dissolved within her. She had not realized she was holding her breath until Caligari pointed it out.
Mena looked straight ahead to the end of the ballroom where Gemini stood. “I want to get over there,” she said, and her feet started moving.
Locking onto a destination, Mena stopped focusing on the books on her head and moved onward. She ignored Laetitia’s glares on one side, and Electra’s on the other side, instead imagining that straight ahead was the only thing that existed in the world. Her feet moved back and forth, one right in front of the other, and as she got closer and closer, she remembered her breathing too.
At last, she was there. Mena turned around and realized the books had fallen off her head three-quarters of the way there.
Mena hung her head in shame, but immediately Electra applauded her with her painted hands. “Child, I never would have guessed such a runt of a girl would carry herself across the floor like that. It almost seemed like you were possessed!”
Electra bent over on her knees to look Mena straight in the eyes. “Are you sure you’ve never done this before? Because that was more than I could have ever expected out of a girl on her very first poise practice.”
“No…no…” Mena said, in a daze. “No, I haven’t.”
She looked around at everyone. Janus and May gave broad smiles and applauded her, while Laetitia and the now lucid Marie turned aside in disappointment. Mena finally looked over to Caligari who gave her a surprisingly sly wink.
Mena realized she had done the impossible and avoided total embarrassment. A small smile perked up on her face as she walked back. ”What is your name, dear?” Electra called out.
“Phenomena,” Mena said back. “But you can call me Mena for short!”
Electra bellowed loudly. “Outré Mena! Outré Mena! That’s how the rest of you female larvae should do it!”
Mena could not resist grinning when she got back to May and Janus who both praised her greatly. For the rest of the poise practice, she relaxed and realized that many of the other girls were not doing half as good as she was. By the time they were done, Electra was exasperated. Still, she called out loudly. “I just want to tell you girls,” she said in your deep voice. “You may think you are done, but you are never done in the world of poise. Tomorrow, we will do the book on head treatment again but this time…while riding a Unicornea!”
Everyone gasped, even Mena. How would that even be possible? It would be thrilling if it wasn’t so utterly terrifying.
Mena left the ballroom that night with a flurry of thoughts going through head, and as she walked through the starlit sky in the hedges and the promenade, suddenly, she felt a chilling force pull her aside into a hedge.
“Hey what gives!” Mena exclaimed, but she saw it was Caligari, her ghostly green eyes glowing in the dark.
“Shh,” Caligari said, “I wanted to ask you something.”
“What?” Mena exclaimed. “Couldn’t you ask me like a normal person and…”
“I can’t ask you this out in the open.” Caligari gave a small smile and whispered quietly in Mena’s ear. “How did you like my phantom possession technique?”