Immortalys

Chapter Fourteen: The Feast for the Withouts

The shiny elevator door closed smoothly and silently, and Willow felt the compartment start to descend. Unbalanced, she staggered into Friction and he tried to steady her. The two Immortalys officers who were their escorts stood casually against the sides, unperturbed by the quick movement of the elevator. Willow smoothed down some of the ruffles of her shimmering silver dress and turned to look out the back window. She almost fell over again as she stared out over the city, for it seemed like she wasn't in an elevator but on bird's wings.

What a view it was. When earlier the sun had been glaring in at such an angle that it had deterred Willow from looking outside, now the sun was setting on the other side of the Capitol and the whole of Immortalys was aglow. Blue twinkling lights peppered the homes and shops below, gleaming through trees and reflecting off the indigo lake. In the distance the landscape was a deep purple, lit up at the horizon with the last of the sun's striking orange light. Willow began to appreciate the view that the officers got to look at every single day, especially the ones who resided at the very top of the Capitol. At that moment, in her breathless state of awe, she could not remember why she had wanted to leave.

The elevator reached the lobby floor and the two officers let Willow and Friction exit first. Willow, however, could hardly move forward as her eyes were instantly distracted by all the decorations lining the walkways and the people filing in from outside. She blinked in a silent stupor. She had thought her dress was crazy, it being a random silvery one that just happened to be in the closet of their room on the second floor, but it was not nearly as peculiar as the ones belonging to the citizens of Immortalys.

Some girls wore short dresses and some wore long ones, and nearly all of them had some sort of accessory or design that made them truly singular. One young teen with strawberry-blonde hair was wearing a black dress with strange armor-like projections on the shoulders; the whole thing sparkled like diamonds despite its dark color. Another woman wore a long dress that had multiple layers of many different colors, topped with a strange layered hat with a feather in it. Near the door, a very tall girl wore a medium-length dress patterned with dragon-like scales, and had some sort of scaly headdress on that flowed seamlessly out from her silver hair.

The men were not any more normal. Willow saw Friction shaking his head slowly as it dawned on him that he, wearing a dark suit jacket and slacks, was the most ordinary-looking of them all. A man walked in sporting a rose-gold suit coat that looked as if it were made of the finest silk, with buttons of pure white. A boy near him had some article of clothing on that was dark blue and extended from his chin to his knees, and was buckled at the waist by a shiny, silver belt.

Willow kept peering around at all the eccentricities as she and Friction mingled with the crowd. She noticed that even though these people had very strange tastes, they tended to coordinate with their partners, and overall they looked quite good next to each other. She and Friction, Willow thought, were the ones standing out in their utter normalcy.

As the crowd of laughing and talking people flowed easily through the lobby and towards the Feast-room, Willow decided to stop staring at people and focus more on the decorations. Whoever had organized them had really gone out of his/ her way to get countless plants of all different varieties and put them in the most stunning places.

Perfectly trimmed trees had been potted in beautiful, intricate vases on both sides of every door, and above the huge double doors that led to the Feast-room there were vine-like plants with tendrils hanging into the doorway. Even within the lobby's high ceiling, there were plants terraced around the windows where human reachability seemed impossible. Willow shook her head slowly, knowing full well that somehow somebody had gotten up there to place over a dozen plants that would only be looked at for five minutes that night.