Chosen Bride of the Seven Dark Princes

From a side entrance, Anaïse Paroles came hovering into the center of the amphitheater on a clear glass pod.

Candi gasped with surprise.

Anaïse was usually a clear light blue shade of glass but at this moment, she was a colorless glass woman riding a colorless glass hover pod.

Her lack of color was visually stunning. She looked like sculpted ice!

The visuals zoomed in on her beautiful clear glass face. Anaïse's familiar cute pointed nose and small mouth came into view. Her large glass eyes blinked and looked around as she waved to the crowd.

The audience clapped and cheered as she emerged. They could hardly wait to see what she was going to wow them with!

A thick glass block the size of an 18-wheeler truck descended from somewhere above and settled onto the platform. It looked like a block of clear frozen ice, saw bladed into a perfect rectangular form.

Anaïse's hover pod took her to the glass block and dropped her off on top. She stood there for a moment, still and unmoving.

Candi laughed. Anaïse looked like a tiny ice woman sculpture on top of the huge ice block. What in the world was this woman going to do?

Suddenly, the sound of Strauss' Voices of Spring emanated from the speakers.

For the first few strains of the song, Anaïse stood still. As the song began to build, she started prancing around on top of the glass.

It was not a dance per se, and she was not trying to dance. She was moving around the glass block with precise motions and practiced ease, using it as her medium to sculpt her art piece.

Her hands worked their magic, pulling here, pushing there, and stretching the clear glass into all sorts of fantastical shapes. She was treating the glass as if it was taffy candy and creating a new environment from the very spot she was standing on!

As the music continued to play, Anaïse continued her sculpting with precision. There was no wasted motion and no mistakes.

From her fingers, mountains began to form on either side, as valleys began to sank in various spots. She made rocky cliff ridges in the back with pine trees and large boulders. In front, she placed smaller trees and a few houses scattered on the valley floor.

Taking a gob of glass, she ran across the block, draping it down onto the lowest areas to create a brook running through the valley between the tiny houses.

Her skillful hands created a waterfall from the top of the largest mountain, captured in a frozen single moment of crashing down onto a small pond at the bottom of the cliff face.

From her hands grew willows and bushes along the pond and lake area. There was even a tiny bridge across on small section of the brook.

"Oh wow, she's good!" Candi laughed and clapped as Anaïse continued to work.

It was a marvelous sight to see an artist as precise as the glass woman was, working such a huge project in such a short amount of time.

"Hmmmmm." Dante rumbled in his throat, keeping his lips as still as possible on Candace's nape so she would not realize that he was surreptitiously kissing her.

He was not even bothering to look at Anaïse's art work. His focus was all on Candi and her cute and funny expressions and sounds of surprise and joy as she watched the glass being sculpted.

Candace had not moved away from his embrace, which was encouraging to him.

He was grateful to find that she was accepting and even welcoming to his few restrained advances on her but he did not do much more than hold her as she watched the show unfolding below them.

Dante was clear about one thing. He was here to support her, not to make things more discombobulating for her and fluster her right before her big event.

There would be a time for them, Dante promised himself, but he had not achieved the kind of success he had by rushing into something without a plan.

Now was not the best time or place for him to make love to this ravishing woman.

She had to maintain her focus for the event which would be coming up soon, and Dante respected that single-minded focus. It was also how he did his best work and he wanted to give her every chance possible to succeed and achieve her goal.

Before them, Anaïse had created a glass masterpiece. As the music reached its last section, she hopped upon the pond she had created and began pushing with her feet until it was flat as a mirror.

And then, as the music moved into its finale, she began skating on the pond as if it was winter time.

By the time the music reached its crescendo, she was at the center of the pond, twirling like an ice skater spinning on ice.

As the last thundering sounds of Frühlingsstimmen op 410 died away, Anaïse lowered her body into a skater's bow, ending with her arms outstretched and prostrated.

WAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!

The crowd roared. This was simply amazing and something they had never seen done before in their lives!

She was not just a woman who could work glass. She was a sculptor who worked in real time and with the kind of speed that only an accomplished mage artist could do.

Of course, ice skating like that was the cherry on top of what this woman was capable of doing and the crowd loved it!

"Oh WOW!!!" Lorem Ipsum's voice could be heard above the roaring of the audience.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! This was truly a remarkable accomplishment! What a master artist our Avgo Female Anaïse Paroles is. I have never seen a glass sculptor at this skill level before in my life!"

As Lorem Ipsum continued to work the crowd, he moved back into the limelight, chattering and throwing jokes to make the audience laugh.

Behind him, the event workers removed the glass sculpture in the background, with Anaïse Paroles still prostrate on the pond and looking like part of the frozen sculpture.

Her time to shine was over. The glass platform was now cleared and ready for the next Avgo Female.

"Ladies and Gentlemen! I am seriously looking forward to the next Avgo contestant who will be joining us shortly." Lorem Ipsum held up a hand.

"To take advantage of this momentary pause, I'd like to remind you again to tune in next week for our Magic and Illusions event."

The crowd cheered in anticipation.

"Yes, Ladies and Gentlemen. It is the one most anticipated event of the Avgo, although to be honest, we've seen quite a bit of magic here today!"

More cheering. More yelling.

Lorem Ipsum laughed, waving his hands up in the air and shooting purple sparks into the sky for added special effects.

"And now, without further ado, Ladies and Gentlemen. Please give a warm welcome to our second finalist, Jenna Natoli, from the jungle world of Calendula!"