Idyllville Mysteries #5
"The 'Real' Reels; Or, Durante: Across Time"
In the days before Anastasia Durante was gallivanting around with the Idols, her leotards contorting with her body into brand new and strange shapes only someone who could heal any wound could recover from, she was a film star. And the daughter of a film producer, but she considered herself a film star before that.
A TV and television star, to be exact.
She starred on Inglevision's Astoria Lane, which was a dramedy about a fictional neighborhood in the Bay Area city of Fort Merchant, northeast of Idyllville and Idyll Island. It came on every week for about an hour at a time, and although it was set in Fort Merchant, it was filmed in Idyllville, because almost everything was in the Kingdom of Inglenook.
Her father, Arturo Durante, usually had nothing to do with it, and preferred films with large budgets and not much in the way of decent writing. In fact, his films were typically poorly-reviewed, but somehow drew enough attention to keep him and Anastasia living modestly well, in both their mostly-temporary housing in Idyllville and their longer-term, though rarely-stayed-at mansion in Fort Merchant.
He had developed a poor habit of dealing with the Underville while making his films, and although no one technically knew that, many people suspected it anyway. Much of the crew were nobodies that no one else would ever see again, and many of the cast members were the same. He even employed glamour technology to guise their faces, although this was something other producers had done as well.
In the Underville, these kinds of things happened. Lady Bluebird, who ruled that part of Idyllville for much of those decades in Inglenook, had ingratiated herself and those in her care into the film industry early on, so you could never really make a film without their involvement unless you really knew what you were doing.
Arturo liked to think he knew what he was doing, but nonetheless, there was one film he had made that no one would ever see again.
He had actually made it without the Underville's involvement, thankfully enough, but it was a personal shame to him. It depicted the history of the Silvani people along the coast of Inglenook, but with such fervor and such dispassion that it had, in retrospect, come off as deeply cruel and unjust; insensitive to their true plights, in fact, and so he had had the thing buried and locked away shortly after releasing it.
All reels had been destroyed, except for a select few, which were mostly kept in the safes at both of his primary dwellings. No one knew which reels were the "real" reels, but most people wanted to see them just for the sake of having seen the one lost film by Arturo Durante. If he had anything to say about it, they wouldn't! And he had done pretty well for much of his life, until the reels disappeared one night.
The reels were gone for only a few instants, but it was long enough for him to notice. Someone had taken them. Someone had managed to copy them somewhere, he was sure of it; and he would get to the bottom of it somehow.
The vanishing haunted him for quite a long time after that. He barely even left his home, and set up warding spells and all sorts of traps to further the protection on those cursed, blasted reels.
After his trial began in 1980, he would have less and less time to investigate, but he still hoped to figure it out one day.
Anastasia never knew about it.
From her perspective, her father had just grown cold and distant.
She was always hoping to reconnect with him, but of course, after her own vanishing — to the past — to 1937 — she wouldn't get the chance for quite some time.
As she lived on as the Everlasting Girl, she watched much of Idyllville continue to evolve and develop. It was happening for the first time from this perspective, and in a way, for the first time for her too, although of course she had already grown up in the world Idyllville was becoming over the course of those decades.
That was the strangest part; watching businesses that had long since been closed for her growing up, now exist with their doors wide open...and then shutter over time, and become the ones she knew. Growing old, business-owners just couldn't keep their shops open much after too long, and Anastasia wasn't in the position to purchase them and keep them open for anyone, so they shuttered up and faded away, and Anastasia was forced to watch them go.
She learned after a while that a part of her faded with them, just as well. Although there was always more to discover about herself, and more parts of her identity to be found, in a way, the thing about immortality is that you find out that parts of you are always dying, every single day, and you never realize it until it's too late.
She would finally meet her father again, many years later, shortly after she vanished from 1980 for the first time.
She looked the same, but handled herself differently. With a greater weight, a focused, intense gaze.
He was still on house arrest as his trial continued, both self-imposed and otherwise.
They barely spoke, the entire night, or that was what their recollection of the night later on told them, anyway. But they had much to say to each other, and much they wanted to say and couldn't.
The journey for one to get back to the other had taken far longer than it should have, and although one hadn't changed, the other had changed too much.
Arturo was happy to see her.
She was happy to see him.
But their night, as always, came to an end, and in that end, they were only left with more stories to tell, and nothing else to show for it.
Fɪɴ