Many (many) years ago, when I lived in Florida, my cousin and I and a group of friends often entertained ourselves by making videos and putting on shows. Since most of us were singers and writers and actors anyway, it wasn’t much of a stretch to let our imaginations run wild, and we were always involved in some crazy, caffeine fueled creative project or another. One year, in the off season, we snuck on to the local Renaissance festival grounds (okay, we were trespassing – tomayto, tomahto) and filmed a crazy sort of fantasy/magic-and-other-worlds mini-movie in full props and costumes. Since half of us already worked for the Renaissance Festival at the time (albeit in the ON season!) we were quite familiar with the grounds and paths and buildings and knew exactly what and where we wanted to film.
One of our number (I can’t remember who) had introduced us to a piece of instrumental music called “Angel’s Flight” by Shadowfax, and the entire concept of the idea for the video came from the notes of that particular song. The story was simple – two sisters (my cousin Leisa and I) find a path hidden in the tall, overgrown grass of an empty field. Following the path, the sisters find themselves standing outside of an old, abandoned castle (hence our trespassing on the Renaissance festival grounds in the off season!). Wandering through the dusty splintered buildings of the empty village, the sisters explore, catching glimpses in the distance of knights with swords and mysterious strangers in Renaissance clothing (we raided our closets for the costumes and our friends for the extras) but when they hurry to find the people they are certain they saw, only the empty village and whispering woods are there to greet them. Eventually they come to a small cottage like structure (the empty sales booth of friends from whom we buy excellent incense to this day) and sitting on a wooden shelf is a snow globe with a castle inside it. One of the girls shakes the snow globe, and when the “snow” inside it settles, a scatter of glitter drifts to the rough wooden floor. As the camera pans back out, we see the sisters, transformed from two modern girls in jeans and t-shirts into ladies from another era, in peasant tops and flowing skirts and woven flower crowns (yes, we had those in our closets!) This time when they wander the “village” there are signs of life everywhere; a sword resting on a gnarled tree stump, scraps of ribbon and fabric caught on tree branches, and a white painted gazebo-like structure and a table laid with a fine cloth, and a feast of bread and cheese on pewter plates, and “wine” in goblets. It is possible that we opened and squeezed juice boxes into those goblets, I don’t quite remember. We were all over twenty-one, but we were already trespassing and didn’t want to compound the offense by having open containers of alcohol on property owned by the city. One among our group was a city employee, and apparently there was an ordinance.
In any case, the two sisters (who had clearly never read a fairy tale involving the fae) ate and drank the food and drink that was on the table and fell into an enchanted sleep (as one does). As they slept, a prince (my actual boyfriend at the time) stepped into the gazebo and placed a crown on the head of one of the sisters (‘cause THAT’s innocent and not at all creepy!) and when they awake, the one wearing the crown (yours truly) has had a costume upgrade, and is attired like royalty in a fine dress with long, flowing sleeves and (albeit fake) jewels, and the crown that the suspicious stalker… I mean the handsome prince had placed upon her head. At that point the second sister (my cousin) makes the quite reasonable suggestion that weird things are happening and maybe its time to get out of Dodge, but as they move toward the magic gate of the castle (to which we had helped ourselves) the prince reappears, holding his hand out to the princess sister and asking her to stay. The other sister, who has walked through the gate already, steps back through, once again an ordinary girl in jeans and a t-shirt, and basically bids farewell to her sister (who has apparently decided to stay in the magic woods with a random dude she had just met). With that, the second girl steps back through the gate and goes back to our world, as her sister disappears into the mists of time, reality, and the off-season renaissance festival grounds with the prince. The video does not address the foolishness of this, but as the second sister was of a practical bent, one can only hope there were eventual search parties and a missing person police report, but we never filmed a sequel. Speaking of the police though, we actually did get caught trespassing! A police car pulled in through the back delivery entrance of the festival grounds (we had left our cars parked in front of the castle, which just might have been what gave us away) and drove across the grounds toward us. When questioned as to why we were there, one of our number announced brightly “We’re making a movie! We’re gonna be famous!” to which the confused officer stared in consternation for a moment (I mean there we were in renaissance clothes with crowns and flowers and swords and all) before shaking his head and driving away, telling us to wrap it up and good luck with our movie. The final (after credits) scene of the video is the police car driving away with the theme from Mission Impossible overdubbed on top of it.
It was a crazy, funny adventure of a day (fortunately we did not get arrested!) but was typical of our shenanigans at the time. We were also fond of doing outrageous accents at local diners, harmonized acapella show tunes while standing in line at Disney, and improvisational theatre in grocery stores. Over the years, though, that piece of music has stayed with me, and I listened to it constantly while I was writing Silvermythe. It was also part of my writing music for O’Mara (though the Pirates of the Caribbean soundtrack and the songs of Jaskier from The Witcher predominated the background music during the writing of that book…) and it formed – along with “Art on Ice” by Edvin Marton – the background for the writing of The Legend of the Ice Prince as well. Now, as I write Bardmoor (the fourth book in the Storyspell series) I am using that music again, but as much as I am transported into an ethereal, magical, enchanted place by its beautiful notes and measures, I am also transported back to that long ago day in Florida, with my crazy friends, too much caffeine and a closet full of costumes (not to mention a tolerant police officer), and the untrammeled creativity of that time in my life. Dull swords and an unenchanted snow globe or no, it was a truly magical time.
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