Unfinished Tales

A Wonderful Week (Part 2)

It Never Snows in Liverpool

A deluge of fire hit the cabin as the plane was falling to its doom right after the uneventful take off from the airport. The pilot nor the FAs never said a word until it was too late. They were already on the ground. One person miraculously survived the accident, she crawled her way out of the cabin which had snapped in two when it smashed into the field roughly a mile from Llandudno. That one person was a child, just 12 years old. Her name was Madeleine Snowe, the daughter of wealthy nuclear physicists. Both her parents died that day, leaving her alone with her grandparents. The accident was given the name Firebird of Llandudno.

Just a month after the accident the girl turned 13, but unlike she'd imagined a month ago, that day was only suffering. She was sitting in her grandmother's lap in their beachouse east of Llandudno, just a mere 5 miles away from the place of the accident. She would always imagine what her life would've been like if her parents hadn't died that day. Back in Sellafield the town was in a certain special mood after the death of the two nuclear physicists; Thea Snowe, the chief engineer of the Sellafield Nuclear Power Plant and Nicholas Snowe, the head of reactor two. Madeleine never told her friends, she didn't even tell them that her parents had high positions at the power plant. No one actually knew who her parents were, and both parties had agreed on that. Since talking about the power plant is somewhat rude in the town, Mr and Mrs Snowe never wanted their daughter to grow up and be known around her friends as the daughter of the nuclear physicists. Madeleine had the same thing in mind, never wanting to be associated with the plant. So when her closest friends were asking her what her parents worked with, and why she never invited them over, she made up a believable lie. In her lie, her father was a pilot for British Airways, and her mother was a flight attendant at the same airline. To make it sound even more believable she told them that they had met at work, a perfect story, she thought. Some three years after the accident when she turned 16, she occasionally invited friends over, but only when her grandparents were out of town. Ever since the accident she had lived with them, they had taken care of her and treated her as their own child, she was greatly thankful for that. Madeleine had learned to live with her parents being dead and she had no intention of living a miserable life. She studied hard and wanted to get into Cambridge University when she graduated.

"If suffering brings wisdom, I would wish to be less wise," Thea said as she, George and Will were walking down the stairs. George and Will had left Ichika to find a seat at the library whilst they picked some stuff up from his locker.

"So when did you learn quotes, Thea?" George asked.

"She hasn't, she just read that somewhere and now she's quoting some random dude to sound smart," Will said.

Thea expected something like that to come out of her brother's mouth, always picking on her, but in a non-harmful way.

"But I sounded smart right, can't deny that."

"No, you have the wrong tone when you're saying it, you have to sound more philosophical," Will explained.

Thea didn't understand the word he used, philosophical, what does that even mean, she thought. But she didn't want to sound even more stupid, so she just played along.

George and Will took seats around the circular table. Ichika had brought drinks for them, some kind of iced coffee which according to George tasted awful, but he tried his best to hide it to not make Ichika angry. She took out a spreadsheet from her bag and started reading it, her handwriting was abnormally quirky, and really hard to read for someone who wasn't her. Will's laptop was covered in stickers with American car brands, like Hummers and Chevrolets. He'd recently gotten his license and had even been driving to school some days.