*continued from Kalahan's page*
"My mom's gonna ground me if I'm not back to the house and call her by ten," Ken reminded Kala and she nodded with a grunt. They continued to dress up in their respective stalls in the back of the band room, right along side half a dozen others who had the same idea. With their final class being Marching Band, most of the kids wanting to trick or treat that night didn't want to have their whole costume on during classes, and just brought their outfits and assembled them after the final bell. No practice on the field that afternoon meant they didn't have to worry about being pressed for time. But many events were scheduled in town on Friday, rather than Sunday, the actual holiday of Halloween.
Ken and Kala figured they could hit some of those carnival rides on the boardwalk, and then take the Hop (their local transportation experts - small sized dragons, taxi service with a scaly smile) up into the neighborhoods for some good old fashioned candy-grabbing. He actually thought that Crescent's Halloween events were more fun than his home town of Wonder's: while they definitely had the 'trick' part down, it was such a small community that trick or treating was... well, dull, even in comparison to a place like Crescent.
Though his home was up in the hills in the town of Wonder, Ken was residing with Kala Han and her family down in Crescent while attending Carramba. His parents decided that he was in need of more mundane education since he was unlikely to directly move into a magical career. He had chosen to take a few magical-type classes, but was encouraged to diversify his education as much as possible. Of course also, he is ... not the brightest bulb in the box, so most of his grades will be middle-of-the-road. But that's never really been an issue for his folks. They're not the 'tiger mom' type, besides he has two overachiever siblings. They would compare him to them, but right about the time he was born, the stereotypes of such parenting started being shown off... It hasn't stopped his mom from being quite demanding, but not necessarily all about straight-a's.
Since finding that violin upstairs as a kid though... He was obviously good at music from the very start. Neither of his parents had much use for the thing, it had belonged to his mother's grandfather apparently, and though it was carefully packed with a bunch of his other items (he had been in, what, world war 2?! was that what those medals were?*) no one had thought to examine it or sell it. To them it seemed neither precious nor unusual. But to Ken it was like a glowing beacon of ... something. It was his wand, his focus, calling out to him. His siblings had already found their wands (which was a bit embarrassing when your 6 year old sister has got a wand and at nine he hadn't yet), so this was nice!
When he'd touched that bow to the violin's still-taut strings, something woke in him, and it had never rested since. He was a musician at heart, not necessarily a wizard - but magic and music always went hand in hand for him since that day five years ago.
They'd gotten dolled up and headed out to the boardwalk, choosing to hang out with that same group of music club folks - they were a wild and wooly bunch (particularly the sheep girl!) and got a lot of cheers and honking as they crossed streets and went the few blocks away to the beach. Thankfully neither of them needed to worry about getting hot and sweaty in their getups. Even with their stuff still tucked into backpacks, Ken had studied a lot of such spells and cast one on them so that they shrunk to the size of pocketbooks, and could easily be disguised as part of their costume. When the night was over, they'd revert to their normal size and weight. Ken kept nudging Kala to find herself a wand or something, then she'd probably be able to cast a similar spell herself.
Honestly he wished she'd take some of his other classes, she always wound up helping tutor him what with her being the brains of this operation. He provided the fun and clever ideas, the 'what if we-'. Ken was exceptionally good at cleaning up his own messes after doing 'fun' things after all, and almost always had those things cleaned up before his mom found out.
The afternoon was not windy, but it was a little on the chill side. That was ideal, they got in a bunch of broad-daylight antics and fun at the boardwalk just as planned. In fact someone actually recognized that Kala was in-character as 'that creepy hot cowgirl from that one tv show'. Was it a touch on the embarrassing side when an actual Nøkken paused as he was performing on one street-corner to compliment Ken's outfit? Yes, but also awesome (well, he thought it was), and with the urging of one of the other kids, arranged for him to come to the Mythological History class for a seminar or talk.
As the sunset started to turn the skies various shades of violet and purple, pink and indigo, the group began their march toward the neighborhoods and hills. The Hoppers and their many colorful carts and rickshaws were busy that night, but they still found three that would work fine for the group.
** Continued in story!**
*note that while there are events that are similarly named between our world and Twoarth, WW2 was shorter and did not involve any nuclear weapons going off at any time, however ground war was fought in a number of countries that ours didn't have, including mainland USA, so it was true, his great grandfather enlisted the moment he could in 1941 and helped quell a number of incursions just south on the Baja California peninusla - which on Twoarth is a part of California
Zekiran
Ken Acebedo
