The Chronicles of Alice Collingwood - Book 1: Strange Beginnings

Chapter 2: Two years later

White-Ash Valley, originally a small harbour town, built on the edge of an enormous lake while being completely surrounded and isolated by miles-upon-miles of woods, has since expanded over the years.

Since the town was originally founded by the six founding families, (Which are: the Aspen family, the Collingwood family, the Davenport family, the Dowling family, the Green family and the Price family.) the town started off with a mere total of thirty-four residents, but has long since grown to accommodate one thousand, four hundred and sixty-two residents in total.

White-Ash valley, although a wealthy town nonetheless, nothing out of the normal ever happened here. It had always been the same none-peculiar routine, people attending social events and gatherings hosted by the mayor and his wife, residents taking pride in their appearances and their homes, the odd garden competition popping up from time-to-time. Of course, Mr. Tweedy always won; his large beautiful rose shrubs were always quite stunningly impressive. He had roses of every colour, lined up and down the outskirts of his front yard, accompanied by the odd eye-catching garden ornament and small-to-medium sized arrangements of other flower varieties.

This town was full of secrets and lies, that's something many of its residents were fully aware of, but a lot of the secrets were just that... A secret. One of the endless secrets this town kept was that it was not just a town occupied by human beings but a mixed variety of supernatural beings from a number of different races too - each having successfully managed to blend in quite well within an upper-class human society, all living seemingly 'normal' lives when not behind closed doors.

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It was half 12 on a warm, sunny Sunday afternoon. Near the centre of the town, on Aintree Avenue, is the local coffee house, named: White-Ash Coffee.

It was the regular hangout for Alice and her friends. It was a great place to go and have a chat; Alice loved it for its cosy, urban-style atmosphere. She was there with her three best friends: Diana Dowling, Sasha Price, and Emily Green.

Although they had all been best friends since they were no more than toddler's, Diana and Alice were closer than the others, in fact, they were more like sisters. It was no doubt due to the fact that both of their parents had always been really good friends with one another so they were practically raised together.

They were all sat in their favourite booth, the one near the Coffee House's front-facing large opulent windows with a bright multi-coloured, stain-glassed edging, specifically the one next to the window on the left.

It was no accident that they preferred this booth to all of the other available seating that the coffeehouse had to offer, but rather because it allowed them the ability to observe everyone in their surroundings. Knowledge is power, especially in this town and they sometimes liked to listen in to the interesting conversations that came about every once in a while, such as recently, when they had over-heard, Mr. Dallas, on the phone talking about an affair he had been having. Of course, his wife and two children didn't know of this, but it was just one of the many secrets this town held.

The girls sat sipping at their coffee's out of their light blue chevron patterned-style porcelain coffee mugs, which had the coffee house's logo on the side, while they gossiped about perfectly normal everyday things that each new day seemed to bring as of late.

They came here that often and they each ordered the very same thing each and every time that they came, without fault, that the employee's of the coffeehouse who worked there even knew the girls' orders. Someone who didn't know them at all would presume them to have a caffeine addiction, but that wasn't the case at all. It was more for the social aspect than anything else, but also, the fact that they could have a conversation in peace without any disturbance.