Splendificent

by Dacy Alex

  And missed.

  "You should have shouted LeBron," Giselle offered.

  Fleur’s pale blue eyes nearly flashed orange fire at the comment.

  Why must the most basic part of collegiate life be so difficult? Would poor Giselle have to go through Job-like trials to get her meal pass?

  Putting on clothes was apparently not a part of Fleur’s tour as she remained thonged up and sexed up throughout.

  There was a certain quality that Fleur walked with, but Giselle just couldn't put her finger on it. Almost with the weightless ease of Sonic the Hedgehog.

  Fleur probably would’ve dropped her with one punch if she knew Giselle was comparing her to a spiny mammal with no pants.

  As an art major and a girl with a lot of home decor pins on Pinterest, Giselle stared, awed and stunned at the hallway Fleur took her down. She'd seen extravagance in her own home, but now she was standing in a marble foyer with a Shakespeare quote stenciled in delicate cursive on the ceiling.

  "Hell is empty and all the devils are here," Giselle read the quote aloud.

  "Some of them anyway," Fleur remarked casually.

  Various paintings and ornate moldings of fang barring gargoyles dotted the walls. Yet one specific piece of artwork halted Giselle. On the canvas, layered sepia and brown brushstrokes formed a nude man, while green and gold snakes around him proposed an imminent death.

  "That's a Basquiat?" Giselle wondered, still rooted in place.

  Fleur's lips spread wide and big into one of her goofy smiles that Giselle found more adorable each time.

  "If it is, I can sell it," Fleur noted. "That’d cover two percent of my debts. I got a bad gambling problem."

  "Well, the first step to stopping your problem is admitting you have a problem."

  "Oh, I ain't gonna stop," Fleur stated calmly, as she looked behind the painting for a way to remove it from the wall.

  Apparently coming up short on a way to heist the painting, Fleur nodded as a gesture for Giselle to continue following her through the hallway.

  Fleur commented, "Anika says we can have all the food we want. I like vodka and the blood of my lovers."

  "That's… very poetic."

  "English major," Fleur said with a lazy shrug.

  The duo strolled down the hallway, Giselle marveling at the diamond-like wall coverings and colossal waterfall-like diamond chandelier.

  "Who donated this condo to Hemera?" Giselle had to ask.

  "Don't know. Don't care."

  "Can I ask what makes you all so extraordinary?"

  Fleur's pale blue eyes widened in shock.

  "What makes us extraordinary? Who the fuck you think you're talking to? Ain't no simple bitches here."

  Giselle threw up her hands half in defense, half in pleading for forgiveness, "I agree!"

  Fleur wasn't playing with no bullshit.

  "What makes us extraordinary? You might as well ask what makes Larry Bird the greatest basketball player of all time."

  After her LeBron gaffe, Giselle knew better than to remind Fleur that Kobe Bryant is the GOAT.

  That still didn't answer Giselle's question. But the emphatic delivery of the response had Giselle questioning why wouldn't they be extraordinary?

  Fleur resumed her tour and guided Giselle in front of a closed bedroom door adorned with cutesy rainbow stickers of various animals and strings of rainbow beads. Even the thong hanging on the door was rainbow-themed.

  "This is Dusty Blackwood's room. Here's the rules, kid," Fleur nods her head at the thong. "If there's a thong on the door, that means someone is fucking, and you're free to enter and join in, no permission needed. If there's boy shorts on the door, that means you gotta ask before you turn this ménage à -trois into a gangbang."

  "Are you kidding?" Giselle's jaw nearly dropped not just to the thirteenth floor, but the twelfth, eleventh, and tenth as well.

  "Yeah."

  "Thought so."

  "Dusty's at volleyball practice right now."

  Fleur took Giselle further down the hall where Giselle marveled at the wall installation of floating jewel boxes each encased with a diamond ax-wielding leopard.

  "So you're not at all curious who donated this condo to us? Like, how did Miss Lindgren get this condo exactly?"

  Fleur moved in on Giselle so close Giselle's nostrils were full of her scent. A scent of bewitching flowers. A scent of smoky, sexy, sensual notes.

  "How do you think she got this condo?" Fleur whispered. Breath sending explosions straight to Giselle's sex so hard she shuddered.

  And then Fleur pulled back with a goofy smile and said, "I'm just fucking with ya, new kid. Who cares how she got the condo?"

  The duo continued until a 40-something-year-old man staggered out one of the bedrooms. He didn't smell like he had taken numerable shots of Jack, but he moved like it. His whole body was disheveled, with his dress shirt undone, black hair a mess, and red lipstick marks around his face.

  As he passed by the girls with a sheepish grin and downcast eyes Giselle asked, "Who's that guy?"

  "Got me," Fleur replied. With a casual I-don't-give-a-shit tone, she informed Giselle, "The guys here love us."

  Fleur moved to a tasteful room contrasted with white walls, dark furniture, and unique light provided by movie-set spotlights. It would have been pleasant were it not for a rifle lying atop a coloring book.

  "A gun!" Giselle screeched loud enough for Fleur to wince.

  "Calm down, Mayor Doom and Gloomberg. It's a BB gun. Our corn-on-the-cob, banjo-strumming, moonshine-running, rainbow-thong wearing, volleyball-swatting, good ol' girl roommate, Dusty, left it. She likes to shoot at books."

  "Shoot at the books?"

  "That's what Southerners do. Race cars, love Jesus, and shoot books."

  "I don't think that's accurate."

  Finally, after all the mockery, cultural insensitivity, and outright insults, Giselle was led to the grand finale. The storage closet.

  "Your bedroom, my dear," Fleur said, as her big lips turned into a cheery smile.

  Giselle noticed the storage closet was empty aside from a box brimming with unusual trinkets.

  "I can't stay here. It's literally just a closet."

  "It's classically cozy."

  "It's classically cozy for a Maltese. I'm a human!"

  Giselle didn't know what did it, but something caused Fleur's lips to compress into a frown. The pale blue ice of Fleur's eyes burned.

  "I feel like if we were in a video game, we'd have negative sixty relationship points," Giselle bemoaned.

  "Fleur Flannagan!" came a voice from an unseen party. Accented. Almost theatrically so. Elegant with sumptuous undertones. Like nothing Giselle had ever heard before. "Your harassment of this child will cease at once!"

  Fleur's flame wilted, "Viking Barbie."

  Viking Barbie appeared as glorious as an angel from above. She was carried in by gorgeous powerful legs that reached up to a slender waist and a rock-hard ass. Beneath a luxurious, albeit too small, silk robe, a pair of juggilicious, as Giselle would term them, breasts filled out the outfit, bursting through the emblem of a dancing woman. Bright red lips formed in a cupid's bow, resting above a rounded chin and square jaw. Her hair had been fussed over into a blond bob of rolling waves. The way she looked, the way she walked, the air around her seemed like slow motion. If Fleur was a doll under a Christmas tree, then Viking Barbie was a goddess blessing The Empire State.

  Who the F is that?

  "Welcome, Giselle. My name is Tristabelle Elvrina," deep-set almond purple eyes appraised the newcomer. "If Fleur had only bothered to check her communications from Big Sis Anika, she would have known we would be receiving a perfectly simple girl."

  The way Tristabelle said simple sounded to Giselle like it was tinged with pity.

  "Simple?" Fleur hissed.

  "Simple," Tristabelle replied

  Barely looking at Giselle, Fleur stated, "You're in the fast lane, and you got a slow mind."
>
  "Fleur, I am obliged to think you the dimwitted one for not directing Giselle to the den the old owner converted to a fifth bedroom. Giselle, I shall show you."

  Tristabelle waved a long finger in such a magnificent way she could direct a man to stick his head in a woodchopper.

  "Opened the wrong door," Fleur said with a half-hearted shrug.

  This otherworldly beauty took the other two girls around the corner and through a pair of double doors--double doors that bore the same bejeweled ax-wielding leopard Giselle saw earlier.

  The grey infused bedroom reminded Giselle of Anika's silver hair. Nearly everything was shades of striking grey. The accent rug, the dusted ceiling and floor, cushioned seats, and the wall-length night sky painting were all one color scheme.

  As happy as she was to have a real room, and a stunning one at that, Giselle was distracted. Viking Barbie as Fleur called her, or Scandinavian Cleopatra as Giselle thought of her, had reduced all to insignificance.

  "You talk pretty, uh, different? Different good though! I talk like I was born in a portable toilet. You talk like you were born in a royal palace."

  "That is because I was. I am Princess Tristabelle Elvrina of the Elvrina royal family of Golden Land."

  Giselle was a calm and mature adult. She would not scream in amazement or squeal or break down in tears like she did when Gigi Hadid liked one of her comments on Instagram.

  Actually, fuck that. Giselle let out the squeal to end all squeals, her heart-shaped lips exploding with noises she never thought possible.

  The princess of Golden Land took it all with a pleasant smile, perfect teeth, perfect cupid's bow lips.

  Fleur just rolled her pale blue eyes and gave a "gimme a break" huff.

  "Wowie! Princess Tristabelle, I swoon!" Giselle exclaimed. "I don't know much about Golden Land. But I'm a Wikipedia master, as proven by my keen article writing skills about Rick and Morty."

  Giselle whipped out her iPhone and started pulling up Wikipedia.

  Fleur asked, "Are you that bad at social interactions that you'll slog through wiki articles rather than ask an actual princess from the country you're interested in."

  "Yeah, I totally am!" Giselle noted, too consumed with her article reading to be anything but honest.

  "Okay, here's what I got," Her blue eyes narrowed. "This article has multiple issues. This article relies too much on conjecture. This article does not cite any sources? W-T-F?"

  A perfect smile from the princess.

  "It does say you're located west of Norway. And your flag is..." Giselle had to squint to make sure her phone didn't betray her eyes. "It's just gold. No stripes. Just gold. Your capital is Elvheim. Your government..." Giselle squinted even harder. "Ahahahhaha! Wiki vandalism at work! No way are you actually a just hereditary monarchy."

  A perfect smile from the princess. Wide blue eyes betrayed nothing, showed nothing but cultured civility.

  "Ack! You already know all this crap anyway."

  Fleur smacked her forehead so hard she staggered.

  "We are but a small Scandinavian country of little note," Tristabelle said with a sweet small smile.

  The princess' long legs strode back down the hall with Fleur and Giselle trailing after her like royal retainers.

  When Giselle entered the living room, she was stunned by how picturesque everything was. It was something off of HGTV with rich cream-colored furniture, a movie screen positioned between two marble pillars, panoramic windows, and another crystal installation. This one was of a voluptuous woman extending her hands forward, her lone eye a red ruby on her forehead.

  "That is Maya, the Hindu personification of illusion," Tristabelle offered, as she motioned Giselle to a wide chair. "It is said she shows humans certain phenomena."

  Giselle fell back into the chair and squealed like she had just met Aquaman.

  "Holy crap! She is so smart! And she's a future queen? Staaaare!"

  "Stare at what, Giselle?" Tristabelle asked, leading Giselle to feel like an idiot in front of Her Highness.

  "Future queen?" Fleur scoffed, as she fell onto the sofa and flipped on NBA TV. "She's the youngest of ten children. She's a future chambermaid."

  Nine siblings! Giselle only had an imaginary sister, whom her mom put up for adoption.

  "So where are all the bodyguards to protect you?" Giselle's eyes searched for heavy weaponry, cameras, and hidden rooms.

  Tristabelle's titled her head ever so slightly, "Protect me from whom?"

  "From terrorists and stuff."

  There was a moment where Tristabelle's princess demeanor faded, her face trembled and her mouth crept into a smile. Then she merely said, "Giselle, my darling, it is the terrorists who need protection from me."

  Upon hearing that Giselle knew she was in the wrong building. She was far from an extraordinary young woman compared to Wakanda Norse Edition.

  The familiar sound of an iPhone cut through the conversation.

  "That's mine," Fleur grumbled, more focused on NBA Summer League highlights. "I gave my number to some asshole here. Seamus. Irish guy. Says he's a rapper."

  "SeaSeaSea!" Giselle shouted, gripping the edge of her seat. "His shit bangs!"

  Tristabelle declared, "Explosive bowels are no reason to exclude him as a smart match."

  Giselle sunk back into her seat, suddenly feeling the fool. Though maybe she had much American culture to impart upon this foreign princess. And much to learn from her as well. Studying in Golden Land for a semester brought a rush of excitement to Giselle.

  "Do you have a boyfriend or whatever is the royal equivalent?" Giselle questioned.

  Tristabelle gazed beyond Giselle with a smile. Once her eyes came back to Giselle she noted, "Why, I have many boyfriends and girlfriends."

  Whoa!

  "It is my family and my kingdom that are my loves."

  Giselle, you perv, think straight.

  "Giselle, your presence here is a most curious matter," Tristabelle started. "What brings you to this land of New York?"

  Now it was Giselle staring into the distance.

  "I wanna study art, I guess. And I guess I wanna start over. Not be klutzy Giselle who must ruin everything she touches. I want to be," Giselle paused, "extraordinary."

  "Splendificent," Tristabelle declared, clapping her hands together.

  "That's not a word," Fleur grumbled.

  "But I can't even imagine what you're doing at Hemera, Princess," Giselle gushed. "What could you possibly be majoring in?"

  There were a series of guesses floating through Giselle's mind. All of them hovered in the political science realm.

  "Not only am I the best swordswoman in Golden Land, but I am also the best of all beauty and elegance, so it's only natural I major in dance."

  Tristabelle's bow-shaped lips formed a smile that Giselle thought people would sacrifice their first-born to see.

  However, Fleur turned from her NBA highlights to make a disbelieving face at Giselle. One that was caught by the keen almond eyes of the princess.

  "Appalling!" Tristabelle stood her full 5'10" figure over Fleur. "You dare doubt me? I am the finest figure skater and exotic dancer in all the kingdom!"

  Fleur rose to meet Tristabelle's gaze, full lips forming a sneer, "Ha! Excellent exotic dancer? Figure skater? I don't see no ones in your purse or medals around your neck, Gracie Gold."

  Princess Tristabelle's bright red lips formed a snarl, as she stomped around a cream-colored ottoman.

  "What misfortune is it to have placed me in the same dwelling as you, Fleur Flannagan. I'd rather nurse a toothless prostitute than live another second with you."

  "Oh, wow, she even insults with dignity!" Giselle marveled.

  "Prove me wrong, ho," Fleur demanded, arms folded as she followed Tristabelle around the ottoman.

  "How?"

  "You can't produce ice in August, but you can damn sure shake that Swedish ass."

  Tristabelle's hands found her hips, and her lips formed a po
ut that Giselle snared every fiber of Giselle's lusty being. So much so that Giselle put out a choked cry.

  "If it is proof of my sexual powers you seek, then it is proof you best brace yourself for," Tristabelle declared in a way that sounded more like a declaration of hostilities.

  "I'm already running for my dildo," Fleur retorted with bemused satisfaction.

  Whoa! A private dance from a princess! This is better than my Princess Kate fantasies.

  "This is, like, totally every day for me. Girls giving me dances," Giselle lied. Badly. "So don't be intimidated, princess. I'm way used to this."

  The Bostonian muted the TV, then called out, "Alexa, play Three 6 Mafia."

  " Juicy J!" Tristabelle yelped with a clap of her hands. "A fine American bard!"

  "Yeah, yeah, we all know you fuck with The 36," Fleur commented.

  "Did you know each other?" Giselle wondered, their familiarity and comfort with each other was striking to her.

  "Anika got us acquainted," Fleur responded quickly as she dropped back into the chair. "Let's go, Princess Zelda."

  As the hip hop thumped, Tristabelle ground her torso while peeling her robe to the side, then hauling it above her stomach. Two large breasts were exposed just enough for drool to almost appear on the corner of Giselle's mouth. The sight of her glorious chest and Tristabelle's toned tummy had Giselle reduced to a dazed oaf.

  "Major points for under-boobs!" Giselle announced while having to wipe away drool.

  Tristabelle traced one finger up statuesque golden brown legs, demanding their eyes follow to her pelvis. With a semi-pirouette, Tristabelle deftly flipped off the robe to display a firm ass encased in a bejeweled thong.

  Even Fleur almost bowed in worship as Tristabelle did a handstand and spread those magnificent legs in an inverted split. The princess sent her ass into rocking jumps in ways Giselle wouldn't have thought possible. With unerring ease, the royal flipped her lithe body to the floor in a perfect landing of supreme booty. The bouncing of the honeyed flesh was hypnotizing. Giselle wanted to speak her delight but it came out like she was gasping for air— when she was really gasping for booty.

  "You say no to royal pussy, Juicy J can't!" Fleur exclaimed, kneeling behind Tristabelle.