Just Add Magic

Chapter 1

Narator POV:

The city of Gold Coast in Australia was a calm and welcoming place, it had kilometers of white sand beach, a diving, surfing and boating club, a concert hall, some clubs, a giant mall fit for both adults and teens, a small office center with sky graspers no higher than fifteen stories among which the Bennet Tower, home of the most influent and richest corporation and business man of the city, and raws upon raws of neat houses with lawns and gardens. Few citizens had their own swimming pool as the waters were warm all year long but those who did were among the higher class and tended to show it with more ostentatious houses and cars. Gold Coast City, like many other cities of Australia was a green city with recycling bins and solar panels visible on each blocks. Even most of the cars were electric.

All in all it was an attractive city to leave in for families. Those were certainly the thoughts of the Sertory family who had been living here for three generations already and of the Gilbert family when they had to move into a bigger home when they learned that they were expecting and once again it was what the Chadwick father and daughter duo as they entered the city in their mobile home and car many years after the birth of Emma Gilbert.

If i am concentrating on those three families in particular, the Sertorys, the Gilberts and the Chadwicks, its because their daughter, namely Cleo, Emma and Rikki were bestowed with a destiny greater than others. You see in their sixteenth year, on the very day of the arrival of one Rikki Chadwick in Gold Coast City, Zane Bennet heir to Bennet Conglomerate and a spoiled and selfish young man, bullied Cleo Sertory resulting in Rikki's Chadwick's intervention of high tailing with the boys boat. After piking up Emma Gilbert for a tour all three girls went to the sea and loosing themselves in the moment became stranded. With their only option being to ram to the nearby natural reserve island of Mako. The three spend all of the afternoon reaching it not knowing that the island had many secrets, among which one that would change their lives forever.

By the time they touched the beach the sun was on the horizon, and finding no reception on their phones, those fickle little piece of wonderful technology, they had no choice than to get to higher ground, cutting through the small jungle and taking a steep walk towards the dormant volcano that was Mako Island. It was as they crossed a river that one of them, Cleo, tripped and fell into a slippery hole/slope that led to an underground tunnel, twisting her ankle as she did so. Now none of the three girls knew each other that well, especially the newly arrived Rikki Chadwick, but all three of them had a good heart and neither wanted to leave the third alone.

So bravely and foolishly they went after her. More precisely Rikki went first and Emma, not wanting to be left alone in the darkening jungle, followed. All three of them followed the underground tunnel and found themselves in a large cavern with a sea water filled basin. The roof of the cavern was open, revealing itself to be the inside of the dormant volcano. Emma then proposed to swim out of the volcano through the underwater tunnel joining the basin to the ocean only to discover that Cleo did not know how to swim. Coercing her took so long that by the time she agreed. To follow the plan the moon, a full moon none the less, had aligned with the volcano at precisely Midnight.
Unknown to them the island was at the conjunction of seven, the most magical of magical numbers, lay-lines. This convergence of energy had created a chamber of nexus at their very intersection: the inside of the basin. But that was not all, the island itself was a mix of a meteorite with moon rocks fragments, dried lava and earth. The moon rocks did not only help converge the energy but also galvanized it. A fact that the girls would only learn three years later.

Midnight, the full moon, the moon rocks and the nexus. An explosive combination to say. One that carried much magics and repercussions. One that they were exposed to in the basin.
The description given by the girls of the initial event involves bubbling water, luminescent lights and the full moon aligning with the basin. This was the first of many times they would bath in the basin and the beginning of their friendship and secret.