Thirty Days to Discover Yourself...

‘The Wickedly Lovelies’; a group of dreamers, lovers and friends. The eccentric twins, Quinton and Clinton; the sprite-like girl, Sienna; the imaginative writer, Sawyer; the boy that hides his pain, Aleksey; the playful dancer, Skylar; and the blossoming artist, Addison. They’ve known each other since they were in grade school and have dreamt together since then. Their dreaming continued all through their schooling and followed them to the same college. At the tail end of their second year of college, they dreamt up an adventure for their summer.

“We’re going to a far off land,” Sawyer announced, waving her pen in her hand as she spoke. The girl never went anywhere without some sort of writing utensil present in her pocket. She looked down at the pad of paper in front of her on the library table.

“For a month,” Skylar added, nodding at what her friend said. The two of them comprised the original idea and were pitching it to the rest of ‘The Wickedly Lovelies’ a week before they all were let out on summer vacation. They’d met at a table in the back corner of the school’s library, away from anybody else that happened to be studying or reading.

“But we can’t decide where to go, right?” Aleksey asked, smiling at the two, already knowing the answer.

“Exactly,” Skylar nodded.

“But we wouldn’t just want to make this decision for everybody, so we want everyone’s opinions,”

“Where should we go?"

“I've got a list of places I thought would be fun, but we’re definitely not limited to just these,” Sawyer said, sliding her pad of paper into the middle of the large oak table.

“What have we got here?” Quinton asked, grabbing the pad and reading it out loud to the group. “Rome, Istanbul, Sidney, Florence, Bangkok, Reykjavik, Berlin, London, Hong Kong, and Hamburg. I don’t know about the rest of you guys, but I'm liking the aspect of Florence. Italy’s always had a soft spot in my heart.”

“Where’s Reykjavik even at?” Addison asked, pursing her lips in thought.

“Iceland, right?” Aleksey pondered to nobody in particular.

“Yeah, Iceland; the green one,” Sawyer agreed.

“Huh?”

“Iceland’s the green one and Greenland’s the icy one. That’s how I remember the difference between the two,” she chuckled. “But I myself am quite fond of either Sidney or Florence. Berlin’s always interested me too.”

“I think we should go to Istanbul or Florence,” Clinton added, looking around at the rest of his friends, awaiting their thoughts as well.

Sienna played with the flower on her bracelet as she spoke up. “I like anything in Italy or Germany.”

“Florence or London; I've always had a bit of a fascination with both cities,” Skylar said softly, brushing a piece of hair behind her ear.

“I know Quinton said that Italy has always had a soft spot in his heart, but Italian men have had one in mine,” Addison laughed. “Rome or Florence for me.”

“Anyone else notice a pattern here?” Aleksey asked, smiling to himself. His friends looked clueless, so he continued his thought. “Everyone has either said Florence or Italy in general as one of their choices. If we’re going by majority, Florence wins, I’d say.”

“But you haven’t voted for anything yet,”

“I was going to suggest Florence anyways. I do quite love Italy, and Florence kind of intrigues me for some reason,”

“Then I suppose we’re going to Florence,” Sawyer smiled, clapping her hands together.

“How are we getting there though?” Quinton asked, furrowing his eyebrows.

“My mom said we can use her frequent flier miles since she accumulates so many of them with her job,” Skylar said, looking around at the table. Her mother was an international consultant for a very large company and traveled to a different city each week, all across the world. Her company pays for the flights, and she accumulates a great deal of miles because of that.

“She doesn’t mind us using them?”

“No; she said we’d get much more use out of them than she ever would,” the girl shrugged. “She travels so much when she works that she just doesn’t enjoy flying or traveling of any sort outside of that. I think I asked her about ten times to be absolutely sure she was fine with it and she told me that if we didn’t use them, they would probably never get used.”

“Well that’s just amazing then!” Sienna exclaimed, a smile brightly shining on her petite face.

“We’re going on an adventure,” Addison smirked, obviously very excited about this while idea. Everybody was highly excited about the trip; who wouldn’t be?

“To a far off land,” Clinton said, smiling as well. The group of friends knew even before he finished speaking that he was only saying half of his thought and that his twin brother would finish for him. That was a common occurrence among the ‘The Wickedly Lovelies’.

“To Florence, Italy,” Quinton said, a smile to match his brother’s on his lips.

“But we have to promise each other something,” Sawyer chipped in, leaning forward as if she were physically rejoining the conversation as well as orally. “We have to promise each other that even if we meet new people and end up not as close as before, we will not stop being friends.”

“I don’t know if we could come back and not be friend,” Aleksey said. “We’ve been friends for so long, and nothing has ever come between us before. I don’t think we have anything to worry about, honestly. We might meet new people and make new friends, but we won’t let anything come that far between us. We’re ‘The Wickedly Lovelies’. We’d never become anything less than that.”

“I agree with Aleksey completely,” Clinton nodded. “We’ve been so close for so long that nothing can ruin that.”

“So we don’t really need to promise that,” Sienna shrugged. “It’s a given.”

“But we should make another promise,” Skylar started. “This is a vacation, right?”

“Of course,” Aleksey agreed.

“We don’t want to come back from this great of an adventure the exact same way we are now, do we?”

“What do you mean?” Quinton asked.

“I mean, we should come back from this with something we’ve never had before. Not necessarily something materialistic, but just something we’ve never had before and that is completely new. Each of us should find our own thing, too. I guess kind of like finding ourselves. We should come back only once we’ve each discovered our own selves.”

“I really like that idea, Sky,” Sawyer smiled at her friend.

“I do too,” Addison agreed, nodding her head. “We should find a new sense of ourselves while in Florence. I think it’d be good for my art too.”

“Inspiration comes from everywhere to anywhere,” Aleksey said. He had a feeling that he would finally learn the meaning to life he has been searching for for so long. But he didn't know that he wasn't the only one that would find that out by the end of their trip.

“Then it’s settled, yeah?” Sienna asked. “We each have to discover ourselves in a new light.”

“It’s settled,” the twins said at the exact same time, smiling identical smiles.

“We should start planning then,” Sawyer suggested.

“Nah, we don’t need planning to have a good time,” Addison shrugged.

“We’ll make it up as we go,” Aleksey smiled.

“I think I like that better anyways,” Sawyer laughed.

“Good,” Clinton said happily. “Things like this turn out better unplanned.”

The group of dreamers all smiled at each other as they realized that their plan was going to turn out better without planning. They were all ready for a vacation like this, and we all very much excited for theirs to start. A week from that time and they would be on a plane, heading towards Florence, Italy, ready to embark on a fabulous adventure to a far off land.