"Rome, your tie is sitting in your cereal." Belfast said as she strutted into the kitchen, her ginger hair flowing in curls, her pleated skirt rolled over twice at the top.
"Ugh." Rome picked his tie out of the coco-pops and continued with his maths homework which was splashed with chocolate milk. His teachers wouldn't be pleased. Paris rolled his sky blue eyes and reached for the last piece of toast. At the same time Vienna did, threats were growled, glares were wagered, and elbows connected with crockery.
Madrid ended up wearing her orange juice; Cairo and Egypt were splattered with jam and marmalade; and Rio was almost drowned in her own cereal.
The toast sliced perfectly in half and Belfast had to duck a flying butter knife as it shot so fast across the room it got wedged an inch deep into the wood of the cupboard. "Now both of you get toast." Sydney smirked and pulled on his jacket ready for work; a D.I. for Dutch Interpol.
"Bye sis." he ruffled London's hair as she entered the kitchen, arms full of fresh uniform pieces.
"Bye Syd." she called. "Okay. Belle, roll your skirt down, you're going to school, not a strip club." Belle scowled but rolled it down anyway, picking up her bag and stalking out of the kitchen as if on a catwalk.
"Rome, fresh tie, we don't want you smelling like cheese all day." she chucked a rolled up, black and blue and silver tie, at him, which he caught with one hand and stuffed his homework into his bag with the other, swapping the ties, he kissed Rio on the head and ducked out after Belle and Sydney.
"Maddie, shirt," She handed her a white Oxford blouse and the little mediterranean girl skipped into the downstairs bathroom to change. "Cairo, Egypt, jumpers." the two egyptian twins stripped their sticky jumpers off and snatched the ones from their older sister. Before grabbing their bags and dashing out the door.
Maddie returned from the bathroom and took off in the same direction, mumbling about an extra credit essay. On the first day of term. Oh yes, she was that girl.
"Paris, eat your toast, quickly. Don't forget your P.E. Kit." she pointed to the bag on the back of one of the mismatched kitchen chairs. "Vienna, try not to blow up the science department again. And hay-fever tablets." London slipped a small packet into the top pocket of her blazer.
"Rio? You ready?" London turned to the youngest of the Baker offspring. Then she rolled her eyes at the milk dribbling off her olive skin and dark eyelashes. Snatching a cloth off the counter, she wiped away the evidence, "Good as new, off you go." she handed her her rucksack and sent her after her siblings.
London sighed and began levitating bowls and plates, mugs and glasses into the sink, packing cereal boxes into the cupboard and made the cloth wipe the spills and splats up off the furniture.
Today was a good day. Her younger siblings had gone to school and her older brother Sydney had gone to work. Giving her peace to collage the walls with Belfast's old magazines, or brush paint onto unsuspecting canvases, maybe call Syd if she had a vision that required the law enforcement. Otherwise, she had a free day.
She'd sold fifteen paintings for respectable amounts in the last month, and a lady would call at one o'clock wanting to commission a piece for her living room. Her living room was purple.
Money wasn't the problem at the moment. The house was a gift from Rio's father, a billionaire in Brazil, who didn't want to actually raise his daughter, but he wanted to make sure she wasn't on the streets. Between them, she and Sydney were making enough money for food and to pay the bills.
"I wish you were here, Mum." she sighed heavily and filled the sink with hot soapy water, scrubbing the pots clean. Too bad it couldn't remove the oil stains from her hands and forearms; marks from hours in front of an easel blurring the lines between impressionist and replicas.
And suddenly she wasn't stood in the kitchen washing up breakfast pots.
She could smell rain. And not the faint scent of salt in the air when a storm was coming, the deep petrichor redolence of rain slowly seeping into stone; of damp leaves in the forests of Northern Ireland. It was night, she was in a city full of neon lights and marijuana smoke. Looking into a coffee shop window that was closing for the night. Busboys and waiters were clearing tables and stacking chairs. But one customer remained.
Dark wavy hair cropped short, broad shoulders, built like the rugby players the family crowded into the living room to watch during the six nations and the world cup, dark eyes and wide-high cheekbones. He was gorgeous. But his features were pulled into a frown, something that looked unnatural.
And then he looked up. Eyes catching something behind her. She turned to see what it was but... the vision disappeared, she was stood in the hot kitchen, hands wrinkling in the cold water.
Frowning, London filled the sink with fresh water and finished washing up. Something about the vision had unsettled her and she didn't understand why. This was always a problem for London, she didn't really care what happened as long as she understood the reasoning behind it.
Setting the crockery on the draining board, London reached for the notebook wedged between a jar of coffee and a stack of CDs. One of Rio's glittery coloured pencils was stuck in the spine and so, in green, London began sketching the vision out on one of the blank pages, something in the man's eyes she couldn't quite capture with her limited tools.
Snapping the note book closed, pencil marking the page, she rushed down the stairs to the basement utility room, which doubled as her studio, Belfast's music room and Rio's yoga dojo. She drew in sketch books, printed with pop art, washed with water colours, carved with charcoal and yet, something was missing.
Answering the phone at one o'clock - as predicted - she felt more and more paranoid with every copy of the vision she made. What was so important about him that made this happen? Never had a vision influenced her so much.
She was dotting a cartoon strip in pointillism of the coffee shop window in bold colours with fine nibbed pens when she heard the door swing open upstairs with it's usual deafening creak.
"You've been busy." It was Belfast. She came to stand behind London, peering over her shoulder. "Who's the hottie?"
"I don't know." London frowned a little at her sister.
"Yeah," Belle scoffed. "Because that's why the desks are covered in the same image of him and you used a canvas to paint him on. You don't do that with just anything, Lonnie."
Spinning in the desk chair, London lolled her head back. "I had a vision this morning. Just of this scene. I just couldn't understand it. I thought maybe if I could draw it, I could see what it meant. But I can't!" She threw her hands up dramatically.
"Well, let's think of the options." Belle said, moving to sit at the bench of her rickety grand piano. "Option number one, he's a threat, possibly here to kill us because we are connected to the savant net." London couldn't believe the calm professionalism in her sisters voice when she said this, but nodded anyway.
"Option number two, he's a passing savant, Option number two subsection A: possibly meaning nothing what so ever. Subsection B: He might be a future victim to a rogue savant we're working to take down." she nodded again, gesturing for her sister to continue. "Or." A smile crept onto her face and into her voice. "He's your soulfinder."
"I highly doubt that." London scoffed.
"Why don't you let anyone take care of you Lonnie?" Belle asked, throwing her legs over the bench to face the keys, her long pianist fingers running over the keys, flooding the room in blissful harmonies.
"What? I don't do that. Do I?"
"Yes." Belle nodded, repeating the same three chords over and over in a loop, like a record with a scratch on it. "You're not mum, you know."
"And I'm not trying to be." London got up and came to sit next to Belle on the piano bench.
"But you are. You could have done anything in the world. You could be painting in Puerto Rico, Sculpting in Spain..." She let out an exasperated sigh. "But you don't. You stay in Amsterdam, making sure the rest of us are okay. And we are. We can handle it, none of us know our fathers, Vienna, Maddie and Rio barely remember mum." Her fingers moved faster so that the chord changes were sloppy and the notes blurred together. Taking a deep breath she said,
"Rome and Paris are making garlic bread and pizza upstairs. I'm going to go check they haven't burnt anything." and with that she left the piano, the last notes still lingering on.