troll123: Lol idiot
troll456: F*cking airhead
linos.is.bae: I will kill u if ur Linos’s gf
themeatmandeli: You look just like your mom! #Mireille4Ever #FindBF2Day #BestJellyDonut4Ever
teddyclaus: Qt π
Instagram Live Transcript
Tai: Hi, friends! Guess who I’m video chatting with today?
Live comment: Is it Linos Arnoix?
Live comment: Linos? <3 <3
Live comment: U and linos are soooo cute I die. Prince & princess of Viloxin
Live comment: When’s the royal wedding? #TaiHimUp
[Tai laughs]
Tai: No! It’s not Linos Arnoix. We’re just friends. [Tai blushes] I can be just platonic friends with the most breathtakingly beautiful and deeply eligible bachelor in Viloxin. I’m seventeen, y’all. No, no—I’ve got an even better surprise. Here’s a hint.
[Cheery text notification sound BLINGS]
Live comment: MONTY!!! biffle goals
[Tai beckons off-screen]
[Screen splits, and on a second screen, Saxim waves]
Tai: It’s Saxim, aka Monty! My forever best friend. Monty, do you remember how we made friends?
Saxim: Of course. Because we would both lay down our lives for an admission letter to Hogwarts. Can you imagine studying there? Just the smell of the books—
Tai: Monty’s a Ravenclaw!
Saxim: And Basil’s a Hufflepuff dressed in Slytherin skin.
[Tai laughs]
Tai: We used to play this game—a total Potter rip-off—called the Miraculous Adventures of Basil and Monty.
Saxim: We thought Basil and Monty were fine British names.
Tai: They are! [Tai shakes head] Wow. Am I a little too proud of our spin-off? Maybe. But it tied us to each other forever. Good thing my parents finally let me read the books, right?
Saxim: You mean, good thing you snuck into the school library and stole a copy. I’ll never forget casting fake spells with you in the Stökéwood gardens.
Tai: Real spells, Mont. Always real. But wait, before we put people to sleep with our prepubescent inside jokes, can you please tell me about the delicious video you discovered? You promised you’d tell me. [Tai looks at camera] She’s been keeping it a secret from me. I wish I could squeeze it out of her through the screens.
[Saxim grins]
Saxim: Did you all know Tai and her sister were child actors? No? Okay, good, because they weren’t.
Tai: True, true. The family business was a no-go. That’s why I also failed chem, right, Monty?
Saxim: They weren’t officially child actors, but they were forced to film a promo video for the Viloki tourism bureau when they were respectively six and seven.
[Zooming in on Tai’s eyes popping]
[Tai bursts out into laughter]
Tai: Oh no.
Saxim: Oh yes. It’s a cult classic.
Tai: Monty. Monty! Mont—
[Film rolls]
It’s grainy, and as it opens, one sees two narrow backs on a stone wall covered in vines. Manon sits on the left, wearing the black turtleneck she insisted on wearing at all times, and Tai is on the right, wearing the mandated Viloki-green tank dress, with one of her mother’s Hermès scarves tied around her neck for modesty. The production team curled the girls’ black hair and pinned each lock, in what they said was an angelic fashion. But the girls really look like two ninety-year-old widows with bad dye jobs and perms.
Manon turns to face the camera. She has stripes of rouge on her cheeks and, if you look carefully, on her fingers, from where she tried to paw the gunk off.
“Fítsím,” Noni says, her brown eyes suspicious and forest-deep, the traditional hello less a greeting than a warning she had one take left in her.
“Fítsím!” Tai calls over her shoulder simultaneously, smiling wide.
“Welcome to Viloxin,” they say in unison, when a uniquely dated drumbeat begins and those words, Welcome to Viloxin, appear in acid-green script across the screen. Behind it, Tai cocks her hip while Noni tugs at the hair spray–stiff curls in her hair, and then they cancan out of sync.
“Viloxin is a very special place,” says an unknown voice-over actor, inexplicably imitating Sean Connery. We fade into a helicopter shot, panning over the furious riptides of the deep sea circling the island.
“Miraculously settled by a shipwrecked group of heretical artists fleeing the Crusades, Viloxin was difficult to access for generations,” he continues, as we move toward the Viloki coast, ravenous, foaming waves smashing its razor-sharp basalt rock cliffs.
“But those fleeing other countries knew they had a safe haven there,” he notes, as the camera approaches the small basalt houses that form much of Limatra. “Transportation advances breathed new life into the country in the twentieth century, and Hero Pharmaceuticals was born, alongside the Foix Institute,” he says, as we cross the sparkling skyscraper that is the Hero Pharmaceuticals headquarters—so large, in that small-city footprint, in the path of dormant Mount Vilox.
The camera roams past the Foix Institute and toward the dark, lush forests at the base of the volcano, where Stökéwood lies.
“The island of Viloxin will be the first place on Earth where good health and rich culture are a certainty, where self-actualization is within reach for all—”
Smash-cut to Noni and Tai in a field of foxgloves, waving at a camera far above. A group of smiling people in white lab coats and green Viloki robes join them, walking stiffly.
Tai and Noni squint into the sun, and then, singing the unofficial Viloki anthem off-key, they spin around and around until they drop into the undergrowth, breathing hard.
“Viloxin,” the voice-over booms as the camera zooms into their faces, both girls collapsed on the grass. “Where dreams live.”
The lighting warps and the frame freezes, turning the faces greenish-brown and paralyzing them: Tai’s in a childish grimace-pout, and Noni’s in a serene, wide-eyed stare, inside a circle of clapping scientists.
[Tai is speechless]
Tai: Oh my gosh. Look at my baby resting bitch face.
Saxim: I’ve never seen anything creepier. Did David Lynch film this? I love it so much.
Tai: You would! [Tai wipes brow] I’m sweating. Talk about a blast from the past. I’m going to be honest, Monty, I still don’t really know what self-actualization means.
Saxim: What were you looking at, at the end?
Tai: You mean, why did I look constipated? I think we were staring at my mama, actually. She was off-screen, dangling chocolates to get us to behave.
Saxim: That makes infinite sense.
Tai: This might be an overshare, but she was working on a secret project in the library—like, seriously, every day—and I was so happy when she took a break for this. Seriously, I remember being overwhelmed with joy.
Saxim:… Secret project?
Tai: I mean, let’s be real. I’m pretty sure it was White Fox.
[Tai looks at camera]
Tai: Hey, if any of you film buffs who are good at the internet find a copy of the script anywhere, slide into my DMs, okay? That includes you, Mama, if you’re watching.
[Tai winks, as Saxim’s smile freezes]
Tai: Okay, bye, y’all. Monty, I’ll call you back in a sec!
[Saxim ends video]
[Tai clicks the wrong button to end video]
[Tai sighs, and her face wobbles]
Tai: Oh my freaking freakity freak, what was that, Thaïs Foix Hammick?