As the sun took its final bow, sinking behind the horizon with all the subtlety of a stage actor who’d been told this was their last performance, the surrounding trees—clearly overachievers—formed an over-the-top archway that practically screamed, "Look at us! We’re nature’s version of the Royal Albert Hall!" This was, naturally, the ideal setting for something dramatic, like the sudden appearance of a portal to the 17th century—or possibly just to the nearest loo.
Meanwhile, inside a grandiose dining room that had clearly been decorated by someone with a fondness for green wallpaper and heavy chandeliers, a group of people who looked suspiciously out of place were engaging in the fine art of talking absolute twaddle. They were dressed to the nines in outfits that would make any costume designer weep with envy, and were clearly under the impression that they were participating in a highly important dinner party. In reality, they were probably extras who’d wandered off the set of a Jane Austen adaptation and into some bizarre Monty Python sketch.
Above them, the chandelier, desperate for attention, was doing its best impression of a disco ball, flickering dramatically as if hoping someone might notice how utterly fabulous it was. The conversation below ranged from the mundane to the utterly pointless, as the guests valiantly attempted to out-bore one another with tales of the latest scandal in high society—spoiler: there wasn’t one.
All the while, a portrait of a young woman, who appeared to have been plucked from a completely different century (or possibly a different reality altogether), gazed down upon the scene with an expression that could only be described as “mildly exasperated.” Trapped in her frame for centuries, she was clearly unimpressed by the lot of them and was probably wondering why no one had yet noticed that she was, in fact, the long-lost heiress to a fortune in rubber chickens.