"No matter your problems, face them with a bright smile and a bucket of chocolate ice-cream," nana once wisely told me. At the time, I was barely twelve and thought that I could summon a unicorn if I just believed in myself.
A decade later, despi...
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Maeva's point of view.
I open my eyes to a burnt smell that raids the room and kills the much-missed fresh oxygen. After calling my parents several times and almost spitting my heart out in the process, no one replies and so I groan as I find myself forced to get out of my beloved throne. It feels so nice, though, to be sleeping on my own pillow and to snuggle in my favorite bed sheets. I refuse to be alienated from my cloud-like mattress! We've only just been reunited.
'Get out of bed, already! What if the house was burning down?!' Alright, I'm up. No need to scream, you're literally in my head!
Sprinting down the stairs, I find no one there and so I follow the cloud of black smoke which leads me to the almost imperceptible kitchen. Bumping into nearly every single piece of furniture and appliance, I finally make it to the oven, turn it off and smack its door open only to triple the thickness of the cloud choking me. Tears begin cascading from my eyes and although I keep my mouth shut with my hand placed on top of it, the dark gas seems to have dissipated into my now burning lungs.
A couple of minutes later, and after I barely manage to open the windows, the atmosphere clears up a bit and so I reach into the oven to find whatever it is that was being incinerated. Placing the tray on the island, I take a look at what seems to be some disk-shaped pieces of charcoal which almost instantly reveals the identity of the calamity cook.
My mother's always loved cooking, but sometimes, one's love for something is not enough. For some strange reason, she thinks her mother, my lovely nana if you will, had passed on her distinguished cooking skills to her which is very unlikely, if you ask me. Endless are the recipes she's spent hours following, and guess who the poor martyr of a guinea pig is?
I still recollect this one time where she jumped in front of the tv, interrupting the movie I was watching (right when the protagonist was running to the airport to confess her love to her crush – yes, I'm a sucker for clichés, sue me!) just to make me taste the pound cake she had baked. She was so mad when I refused to eat the bite that almost bent the fork when attempting to cut it. Long story short, I ended up cleaning the entire kitchen and baking another cake for she had proudly promised to bring an edible desert to the school's bake sale.
"Mom, where are you?!" I shout as I make my way to the backyard. Sipping on a tiny ice teacup topped with loads of mint and lemon, mom nonchalantly sits in her chair, legs crossed and laugh resonating in my ears. Is she not aware that she almost burnt the house with her supposedly golden cookies?
As she spots me staring at her from behind, she raises her hand and motions for me to join her Sunday morning gossip session. Peaking at the lady seated next to her, I can see that Isabelle has barely changed. Unlike her poor husband who seemed to be two steps away from deep depression from when we stumbled across him yesterday; she sure hasn't skipped her beauty sleep. Proudly sitting in her A-line white dress, her pinky is raised as she merely sips a drop of her almost untouched drink.
