"Heey girl," I said a little awkwardly, a little put off by the chilly reception. "Uh, ready for your performance?" I asked.

"I guess," she said.

I've always found if you blast through icy terrain with familiarity and warmth eventually you can break down the walls of even the most guarded of introverts, so I grinned as if this was the most natural conversation I had ever had. "I've been preparing all month, I'm actually so excited to perform. I've got something really cool planned."

"Is that so?" She said.

"How have you been prepping?" I asked.

She shrugged. "It's just a formality anyway, I haven't given it much time or thought... there are more important things to worry about," she added cryptically.

"I guess."

I glanced out at the complex architecture of the interior basilica. The ceiling was easily at least three stories high. The room was incredibly long, extending over hundreds of rows of benches leading up to the apex platform where the bishop would probably stand to give his sermons on a Sunday. Stained glass depicting holy imagery ran down the length of the hall. Each window was high off of the ground, and so their real size was deceptive. They had to be much larger than they appeared. I wouldn't be surprised if each window was longer than my Mom and Dad both lying horizontally, feet to head. Sunlight shone through the east side of the room, leaving a mosaic of colours dancing across the aisles.

Even higher than the windows were intricate stonework details starting from the parapets over the windows and extending all of the rest of the way to the ceiling; features including columns, arches, gargoyles and other architectural details I never learned the names of because they were never mentioned in The Hunchback of Notre Dame movie. There was no single spot of stone that wasn't laboriously sculpted down to the most minute detail- a bit of a waste seeing as no one was ever going to see the work close up.

"Pretty spiffy place," I said, out of lack of anything else to talk about.

This whole strained exchange gave enough time for our families to congregate.

My parents hovered curiously. "Is this one of your friends?" Father asked.

"This is Viola Doyle," I said, purposely not actually saying yes. "Viola, this is the Earl and Lady of Brightbell; my parents."

"Doyle," Father said in recognition.

Viola's family gathered over as well.

"Well if it isn't Geoffrey!" An older man with auburn hair and a well-groomed beard said jovially. "Is it your daughter's birthday today as well?"

"Yes, it is," Father replied.

I curtseyed to Viola's family, all the while forgetting I wasn't actually wearing a dress and so was left clutching at a phantom skirt. "I am Briar, it's a pleasure."

"Pants!" Viola's mother exclaimed, "That's a new one!"

"It's Sihbarian," Mother said.

"Will you be doing a Sihbarian dance then?" The Countess asked, with surprisingly little judgement in her tone.

"I wanted to," I said in slight disappointment. "Mother cautioned me against it. The dance style wouldn't match the organ or the tune of the song."

"Yet you're wearing the costume," she replied, tilting her head curiously. The more she spoke, the more oddly childish and innocent all of her gestures seemed. I couldn't decide if it was cute or creepy. She seemed nice and harmless enough.

"Well... It has better mobility than a dress."

Duchess Doughty spoke up, "I'm not sure what she is planning but she has promised us a performance like nothing put on in this temple before."

The Doyles jumped in surprise and bowed. Lord Doyle gave a quick greeting. "Your Grace! It's good to see you! I apologize for not acknowledging you sooner."

"Likewise," Duke Doughty nodded, "and it's fine. Congratulations on your first-born's tenth. You must be proud."

Viola's father clapped her shoulder, "We're always proud of this one, she's the shining star of this family! Did you know that she learned how to read when she was only two?"

"Impressive," Duchess Doughty said. "My son was quite the bookworm when he was younger, but I don't believe even he started that early."

"Do you enjoy reading Briar?" Viola's mom asked. If it was anyone else, I would say this would be a shady thing to ask. Like an I'm-going-to-show-how-great-my-kid-is-by-using-this-other-loser-kid-as-a-foil but this lady honestly had the most innocent doe-like eyes. I could tell she was just trying to be friendly. She was that terrifying kind of unknowingly insensitive- again, another weird indicator of a sheltered girl with a lack of adult social awareness. I could see Gwen's mom asking the exact same questions but actually mean them as a way of putting someone down in their place.

"I guess... but like to move more," I replied truthfully.

"It's almost impossible for Briar to sit still for too long," Father agreed in a tone that suggested he was rather proud of this fact.

Not going to lie, it warmed my heart a little.

A pair of impossibly cute twins who were probably around four or five popped out from behind Viola and clung to either side of her skirt.

"Big sister Viola teaches us how to read!" The little girl said.

"We love big sister soooooo much!" The boy added.

"She's the smartest person ever!" The girl grinned.

Viola glanced away with a suddenly bashful expression, hugging her thick braid of hair. "Viola is so embarrassed! Viola's not that amazing~ She's more blessed to have such a great family! She loves everyone more than anything in this world!"

I stared at her in alarm. Gross. Where did this third-person talk come from? Was this supposed to be endearing? Also, how fake did that sound?

"Oh my," the Duchess said, "Such a loving family! I miss when my son used to be affectionate!"

"Viola would love to meet the son of such a pretty lady~" Viola said, her sparkling heroine eyes working double-time to win over the hearts of all of the adults in the room.

The Duchess chuckled. "An interest in boys already? I suppose you are of that age."

Viola's father's eyes watered. "Viooola~" he said, utterly distraught. "I thought you said you wanted to marry Daddy when you grow up?"

WTF.

The only solace in this weird freak show was that my parents looked equally perplexed.

"Is this normal?" I heard Father whisper to Mother.

"I don't know," she admitted. "We haven't had a normal kid yet."

Two church officials, a woman with straight blond hair and a man with black curls entered the room from a pair of doors off to the side of the Bishop's seat. Their robes denoted clerichood, a rather high rank in the church hierarchy... I think. I wasn't really well-inversed in the divisions of power in the religious sect. It wasn't a life path I was planning on following. From what I knew, it meant they were of noble blood and had light magic attributes.

They joined our large group with wide and welcoming smiles.

"Greetings!" The woman said. "I see both families have arrived now! I will leading the Doyle family through today's proceedings if you'd like to follow me."

"Of course," Viola's father nodded.

"Right this way," she said and guided the gaggle of Doyles through the doors the pair had originally entered from.

"Good luck!" I called.

Viola had disappeared through the door before I could tell whether she had even heard my encouragement, not sparing me a second glance.

#

The remaining man turned to us apologetically. "The Bell party will have to wait a few minutes, we would like to stagger the two group's movements through the ceremony."

"That's fine," Father said.

The cleric sighed in relief that we were reasonable. He probably had some difficult families he'd had to deal with in the past and I doubt they had ever had to gracefully handle two families arriving at the same time with two children born on the same day. There weren't THAT many noble households in Casselia.

I think he expected us to talk or something though which never happened. The Doughty family were that regal and elegant sort of people who never felt the need to speak just to fill in the silence and we all know how talkative my parents were. I definitely understood how our two families got along despite the rather large gap in our hierarchal positions.

We all just kind of stood there and I could see him getting nervous.

After a few minutes, the cleric caved and nodded. "Right, seems like enough time has passed.... probably." He opened the doors again and entered in. The room was actually a stairwell of sorts, with a wide spiralling staircase leading upwards. We climbed about a floor up and exited into another large, bleach-white room.

This room was a little different than the church part of the cathedral below. It was large, open and barren- resembling an empty wedding hall in size. In lieu of stained glass, clear windows with lighthouse-y panes revealed an expansive view of the ocean. A ways up the bluffs, one could see the castle standing proudly at the highest point of the cliffs. The whole vibe was very beach-resort in Europe. The floor was polished marble and devoid of any furnishings besides the massive organ that took up the entirety of one of the walls, literally built into the building's side. A cascade of pipes crawled up the wall like vines up to the ceiling, which, while not as high as the sermon room down below was still higher than a university gym. Thank the Goddess, my entire routine was hinging on high ceilings.

The hardest part in choreographing my piece for sure was not knowing the kind of place I'd be performing in. Plus also, I had little idea what a pipe organ actually sounded like in person. All I could picture was that Dracula song or that scene with Davie Jones from Pirates of the Caribbean. They had a pianist come into our mansion a couple of times to play the general tune for me but this instrument clearly wasn't going to sound like a regular piano. For one, it had five different sets of keyboards.

A handmaiden of the Goddess sat at the instrument's base and smiled at me when she noticed me looking. "I wish you luck."

"I wish YOU luck," I said, once again eyeing the behemoth up and down. How does one even play that many keys?

"If you are ready to begin Young Lady Bell," the cleric said, "Please stand in the center of the floor."

I pulled out a long crisp white ribbon from my mother's bag and I could see a few eyebrows raise.

"Is this your white cloth?" Duchess Doughty asked.

"Yes," Then a moment of uncertainty hit me. "It counts right?"

"Of course..." she replied. "It just looks a little... unwieldly," she said glancing at the way I had to wrap it around my arm just to stop it from touching the ground.

I'll admit, it was very difficult to find a semi-graceful start and stop to the routine where the ribbon wouldn't once touch the ground given how much larger it was than the length of my body. There were no rules in gymnastics about the ribbon grazing the floor and most moves kind of required it.

I made my way to the center of the empty room, ignoring the doubtful and concerned eyes of everyone else. I knew this would work. I'd practiced it a million times, it would just be a little awkward looking before I began.

I posed when I reached my position, I cocked one foot up en pointe. I held up my ribbon as gracefully as I could, even though the position kind of looked like how a zookeeper would hold up a snake. I held the stick tightly in my other hand, braced to begin

"Alright," The cleric said. "I suppose we can start then. First, a prayer."

Ug. This was just like holding a position in competition while there was a malfunction with your music.

He bent down his head and clasped his hands together. "Dear Goddess who birthed the first humans from her fertile soils. To she who hath guided them to rivers in which to drink from and taught us to live and thrive off of the lands we inhabit- another young girl stands before you today on her tenth year of your precious gift of life ready to accept your love and demonstrate herself a vessel of your grace and beauty. On this day, Briar Bell has prepared her own dance of the Goddess in your honour."

With that, he motioned the handmaiden to begin playing.

Immediately I was hit by the powerful reverberations of the organ. I could feel each note quiver through my body and stir my blood. My body hadn't felt sounds this powerful since my last Coachella.

I waited with complete stillness until my cue.

As soon a the key was struck, I pulled my arm from the loose ringlets of ribbon and allowed them to catch the air, spiralling larger until they encircled my entire body.

I made direct eye contact with my audience with a slight smirk.

I let the ribbon dance in a hypnotic pattern and watched eyes widen.

Then I took flight. I leapt, spun and Chasséd around the entirety of the large room using every inch of real estate. The ribbon looped around the entire time, wispy and weightless.

As the music climaxed I tossed it high up in the air and Chaînéd rapidly after it in tight turns before a split jump and a front flip all before the ribbon reached the top of its parabolic launch. I caught the edge of the ribbon and tugged it back down and the stick flew back into my grasp.

Oddly enough, this was the hardest part. After interrupting the flow of the ribbon falling from my toss, I needed to get it back in motion before any part of it could touch the ground. It was like losing the flow of a hula hoop and trying to rock it back. I spun my wrist furiously trying to get the ribbon to catch the momentum again.

Thankfully it picked back up in a twirl an inch off of the ground, so close the reflection could be seen on the highly polished stone.

I could hear breaths catch at how close I'd cut it.

I took a few more graceful steps, slowing down with the softening music before doing a final pirouette, my leg kicked up so high, my knee, touched my head. As I stepped out of the spin I allowed the ribbon to billow down neatly onto my shoulders, wrapped loosely around my neck like a scarf just as the final note rung out.

I tried to look chill as I sauntered back to my group, like what I did was no big deal but I suck at poker faces. I just NAILED that.

Truthfully it wasn't the best routine I had ever done, it certainly wouldn't have ever won any competitions but it was because I focused more on the dance aspect than the elements.

"That was fun," I said.

"You were right," the Duchess had agreed. "I really hadn't ever seen anything like that. It might have been the best Goddess dance I'd ever seen."

"Briar, do you even have bones?" Father asked in awe. "How are you so bendy?"

"I suppose this is what you're out practising in the other mornings," Mother said experimentally lifting and lowering one of my legs with wonder. "I had no idea you were this flexible, there are some interesting ways we could apply this to your dance lessons. I'd never thought of twirling a ribbon like that either."

"Well," the cleric said. "That was... good. Wow. Uh, I guess we'll just continue on then."

We advanced to the awakening room, another staircase up.

This room had the largest stained-glass mural of all, a single image of the goddess smiling down towards the center of the room which hosted a large glowing crystal orb.

Viola was still finishing up her ceremony. I knew we had intimidated our guide into starting too early with our general group stoicism.

"Now," the cleric accompanying her said. "Place your palms on the orb."

Viola clenched her fist for a moment in apprehension and then touched the glowing surface.

The mist inside the orb turned pink and shaped into a heart, the light shone brighter until it was almost blinding and everyone in the room gasped.

"A priestess of love?" The lady cleric said in alarm and exchanged a panicked look with our own guide. "But the Goddess only selects an apostle in times of war!"

Viola reacted before anyone knew what was about to happen. She turned her back swiftly to the stained glass mural and shielded herself with her white shawl just as the entire thing shattered inwards in pieces.

I closed my eyes in quick reaction but could feel sharp stings as broken glass scratched at my cheek as well as arms.

I glanced around as soon as the pelting cascade of rainbow glass stopped.

Everyone seemed fine but a little cut up.

A massive blackbird with glowing red eyes stood on the orb and shrieked like a Jurassic Park dinosaur. We all covered our ears at the gut-wrenching sound.

As it screamed, a sharp set of needle-like teeth could be seen on the inside of its beak. It wasn't a bird, it was a monster.

The sky behind it blackened and I realized too late it wasn't the colour of the sky but rather a swarm of smaller blackbirds entirely blocking the view out of the gaping window hole. They poured into the room en mass, our only saving grace that the window entrance filtered their entrance a little bit. The clerics immediately snapped to action and set up a light barrier to prevent the rest from entering but there were already quite a few that made it in.

Our guides couldn't help us as the birds began to attack the occupants of the tower.

I could hear my mother scream and I turned swiftly to see one of the birds furiously flapping and scratching at her arms which she had raised to shield her face.

Without thinking too much, I beelined for her and grabbed the bird by both wings and pulled back with all of my strength it screeched and cried out loudly for help and a few others came at me in its aide.

I tucked in, covering all of my vital spots and somersaulted over to the orb where the larger bird still sat. While I was laying on the ground the bird couldn't quite get at me from its unstable perch on the large orb. It's beak clacked as it bent down and attempted to bite at me, a few inches from my left ear.

I smacked my hand on the crystal surface and it glowed dimly. First, there were tiny streaks of red moving like the little flames of a lighter and then the red changed to little wisps of blue, a single snowflake falling like in the world's saddest snowglobe.

I had heard that Eden's looked like a gentle winter's snowfall so I guessed that my magic was much weaker. Probably not strong enough to help in this circumstance.

One of the smaller birds lunged at me and I gripped it's neck tightly to hold its face away from mine.

Its neck was too solid to be choked so I tried to summon fire. I didn't produce any flames but I could feel my hands grow warmer and warmer until my skin felt that warm sort of lulling wafts of heat you get when you're standing next to a campfire.

It must have burned him a little though because the bird began to cry out in alarm and was no longer trying to get at me but rather escape from my arms.

I let it go and deftly darted from the sphere away from the larger bird that could have easily bit my head off. To my alarm, he lifted off the orb and flew after me. On instinct, I grabbed a large chunk of wooden rubble and jammed it in its beak like a cartoon character would when they're fighting off a shark or alligator.