Look Into My Eyes

Chapter 1: Welcome to Corona

Corona: 10 am, 13th January 1778

It was a lovely day in Corona.

The bright and playful sun played its golden piccolo solo with a soft breeze as the accompaniment that whizzed and whipped past the people of Corona in the sort of pleasant way that keeps one's spirits up. So, all the people went outside on that merry day and were therefore pleased no matter what they did that day.

In the heart of Corona, Attila was making percussion music with his kitchen equipment as he made a fresh batch of his special black forest cupcakes in Attila the Bun and Monty waved jovially to the man with the helmet as he attended to Monty's Sweet Shoppe, both of which were packed full of cheery children and adults waiting for their treats both baked and sugary.

Nearer to the border of the Sun City, Feldspar was deftly working away at his customers' shoe requests, smiling so broadly that it seemed to the people who received the shoes that Feldspar's happiness had been put into the soul of the shoes making them absolutely but undeniably perfect: a rare occurrence for the cobbler who always seemed to panic and over-prepare for the simplest of orders.

Xavier was humming happily to himself as he welded a beautifully crafted iron frying pan that had ordered in advance by Rapunzel as her old frying pan had been a little battered by her recent journey to the Dark Kingdom, where she had had to fight of many bad guys with the aforementioned frying pan. Xavier had been told the story by Rapunzel herself and so felt glad that he was making the frying pan for Rapunzel. And he was doing his work- the thing he loved most- to help the most special queen the kingdom had ever had.

Although they were meant to be on border duty, Stan and Pete were giggling and playing a very childish version of Blackjack on a small wooden table near their assigned area to guard. In their game of Blackjack, everyone won because everyone got a number bigger than one. Ridiculous and certainly not the initial version of the game but the people going by knew it brought Stan and Pete merriment and so did not comment on their game.

The rest of the Guard, however, had to keep guarding Corona. What seemed to shock the citizens of Corona the most is that this really seemed to satisfy them!

However, in the more wild bit of Corona, the pub thugs weren't working -- most of them didn't even have jobs -- but were in the Snuggly Duckling, singing their own rendition of Ruthless Ruth's 'Listen Up' which included a lot of swearing, swaying, clinking glasses and falling bodies.

But it was okay because the sun was shining and the people were happy.

Not too far away, Lance, Angry and Catalina were playing a very fast game of gopher grabbing but there were no gophers. And Lance was the only competitor. A lot of people would've found this rather frightening but they sure didn't and happy people do what happy people want.

Even Mrs Crowley, deep in the bustling streets of Corona was smiling and skipping a little as she went to buy groceries for the castle. She, however, stopped being jolly when in the vicinity of townsfolk. If they saw her skipping, well it would be nothing short of the weirdest thing any of them had ever seen.

Even quite far away from the Sun City, in Old Corona, they were blessed with good weather, which pleased the people there as this meant their crops would survive even after the recent flood.

The kids in Corona ,both Old and New, frolicked around in the fields taking in the sun and using it to its full extent: playing it, hide and seek, making funny shadows on the floor and more until they felt tired and ran all the way home to get milk from their parents to cool themselves down.

It was midwinter and to get such good weather surely was a blessing from the Gods. Why not enjoy it while you could?

One of the only people not enjoying himself was the leader of Old Corona, Quirin. His son, Varian, had been away for a long time. The boy hadn't sent his father any letters past the first week and Quirin hadn't received any consolidation that his son was even alive.