The start of something new

Iris: Officer dickhead

"That is so unfair!"

"You snooze you loose!"

"You're too good at this."

"Bedtime for the little one."

Noah and Luca snickered at Jordans comment. They were playing UNO. The time was a quarter to eleven. Jordan had promised one round more than they had initially planned. Iris said she needed one more round to win. As expected she didn't win this round either.

Iris didn't like the way Jordan still announced when she needed to be in bed. She thought she was old enough know to be in bed by a reasonable hour without being told to go to bed.

"I'm so wining over you next time Noah." Iris banged her fist against her chest in a gorilla gesture way of seeming bigger.

"Ha! You've said that since you were six. You're never beating the king of UNO." Noah did the same gorilla gesture as his sister.

"I wouldn't know, I've never played against the king of UNO before." Iris snickered as she watch her brother comprhend what she had said.
She always found it funny how slow her second eldest brother could be at times.

"You brat!" Noah's voice boomed. He walked towards her with long strides. She giggled as she fell back on the couch she had stood up from a few minutes prior. Noah grabbed the side of her stomach and started tickling her. Iris squirmed trying to get out of her brothers hold.

"Jordan! Help me." Jordan looked at his sister fondly. It wasn't often these days that she would grace them with her presence, surely not her giggles.

"You made your bed, now you have to lay in it." Jordan chuckled as he kept watching. At some point he had to let his sister out of her misery, but Luca beat him to it.

"Guys, shut up and watch this." Luca had turned on the TV to look for something to watch. He stumbled upon the news channel. He turned up the volume for the rest of his siblings to hear.

Jordan understood right away. It took Noah sometime, but he got it. Iris was still trying to understand what she was watching. Jordan sat down beside Iris, while Noah moved over to sit beside Luca.

Jordan felt like he was a little too far from his sister. Subconsciously he pulled her over to him so she was sitting on his lap. Iris melted against her older brother's protective hold on her.

"Isn't that the same—" Iris sentence fainted out at the end.

"Yes, it is the same cruise mom and dad was on." Jordan whispered agains her hair. He felt himself tighten his hold on his sister as if she was going to disappear any minute.

Before Iris could ask any more questions the news anchor spoke about the situation they watched on their TV.

It was a video most likely taken from the air by a helicopter. The video showed two big cruise ships colliding with each other. One bigger than the other. All the lights on the small ship went out, while smoke rises up from the cruise. The big ship seemed to be doing okay. It was not many complications with that one.

"Where mom and dad on the small ship?" Iris asked. Jordan was suddenly hit with realization that his brothers nor him self had talked much about what happened to their parents. She was very young when this happened.  She had gotten the basic information, but in contrast to her brothers she had never seen this tape from ten years ago, whereas her brothers had lost count on how many times they've seen it.

"These are the pictures you could see everywhere ten years ago. This is the tape taken a few minutes after a small American cruise line collided with a much bigger Asian cruise line. The crash resulted in thousands of injured passengers. 120 people were declared dead, while six passengers have still not been found.