Renaissanceitaly Stories

My name is Ife. I live in Firenze, a city of marble, rules, and watchful eyes. I am a student. I am a foreigner. I am a woman learning what it means to exist in a place that remembers me only when it must. These pages are not history. They are memory- mine. They hold the things I could not say aloud, the questions I learned to ask too late, and the moments that quietly changed me. I write of love as I understood it then, and of loss I did not recognise until it had already shaped me. This is not a story of arrival, but of becoming. Of what it means to grow when the world insists you remain small. Of the spaces between who I was, who I was expected to be, and who I am still learning to become. I write because marble forgets. I write so I will not. (In celebration of Black History month)

Darius is the perfect young nobleman in Aquaria: dazzling at tournaments and honouring fair maidens. But like Aquaria, he has a secret. On the glittering waterways and arched bridges of the city, the wraiths are seen. No one knows where they are from, but everyone believes they're only here to cause evil. Not that Darius believes this. Not since he meets a wraith called Xanthea when they're children. The spirit girl says humans are the evil ones. Boys like him grow up to waste money and deceive a hundred sweethearts. Darius finds it ridiculous and says he'll prove her wrong. But as he grows into a young man he sees that it's not the easiest thing to do. He's the son of Aquaria's wealthiest man, in a city where festivals and frivolity abound. You're meant to show off at duels and commission paintings of ladies. Xanthea's words haunt him as he becomes expert at both. Then the Firestone is discovered -the only mineral able to kill the wraiths. Darius is struck with two choices: keep playing Aquaria's chivalrous flirt or fight for the one person who brings out his true self.

"I could only imagine what it would have been like to live in Italy during that time. Walking in the gorgeous piazzas, seeing the birth of magnificent art, and no doubt eating all the pizza one could ever want. There was only one question that ran through my mind - how did I actually wind up in Renaissance Italy in real life?" Ilaria Accardi is a young woman with a dream of becoming an opera singer. She had the perfect plan - graduate from high school with honors, take private vocal lessons for at least 5 years, and then go to the most prestigious music school in Italy, "The Milano Institute of Music" to finally be the opera diva she has always wanted to be! There's just one problem - why was it taking so long for Milano to reply to her application? Rather than worrying about her future, Ilaria decides to discover her past. While reading a book on Renaissance Italy, she magically travels through time into the past - around 1600 C.E Italy. While navigating her new life some 400 years in the past, she meets some interesting characters. There's Francesco, the sweet and talented painter who has made Ilaria his muse and Roberto, the young, rich noble who has eyes for none other than Ilaria. Is it here, in a foreign country 400 years in the past that Ilaria can have her dreams of becoming an opera singer realized? And will she happen to find love along the way?