The Dark-Haired Neighbor

Moira and Severin had lived in their small little house on 304 Peace for over two months and Aslan had comfortably moved in as well. They finally had a routine and the aura of dreamy discombobulation was finally beginning to lift as everything felt more like life and less like a vacation to a hotel. The three of them, helped mostly by Declan and Austrey who were the nearest familiar faces, had been shopping for food, enjoyed a concert by some music majors they would be with in the fall, and were introduced to the campus on an even greater level. Moira and Severin had even gone home for a week at the end of July to gather a couple more things from home and to spend a week with family before the fast pace of college would overtake them and prevent them from visiting again until December.

It was now the third week of August and time for the dreaded shopping for books. Aslan groaned as he looked at the mass of books he would need for his various classes and sat on the couch in a heap.

"Ugh, I bet I'll open all of these like once..." he mumbled, "so many books..."

Moira and Severin had their printed lists as well and looked over them carefully, both envisioning the lovely street of school shops in their home city. As the three of them sat on the couch, watching the shadows of leave rustling in the wind behind their butterfly tapestry for drapes, Severin began to sing a familiar tune under his breath.

"...O Moren Kingren har Ynà, Moren Kingren nan Yn Toch..."

Suddenly Aslan sat up and looked at him quizzically.

"Is that... the Jadali national anthem?"

"Maybe," Severin replied with a smile.

He laughed and all three of them began singing in harmony-

"Y Dach nan nw Yn Teracor, Y Tabh nan nw Yn Loch..."

They ended with a lovely rendition of improvised arpeggios and harmonies and with that Moira stood.

"We'd better get our books," she said, in Keòen.

"Yeah yeah... let's go, I guess," Aslan replied, stuttering as he talked too fast.

They all stood for a minute, stretching lazily, before Moira finally took initiative and practically pushed her brother and Aslan out the door, herding them down the street, thankful that the bookstore was just down the street. They passed a blue car with a local license plate reading MICHAIR and did a double take.

"Did that license plate say Michàir?" asked Moira happily.

"It sure did! I wonder if they're Keòen or just happened to choose a good foreign word to put on their car."

Before they could see who was inside the car sped away down the campus road and out of sight. They sighed and continued ever slowly towards the campus bookstore, their feet dragging as if weights were tied to them. It was very hot outside and not one of them felt like going to the bookstore to collect all the things they would need. When they finally arrived they were happy to be in the cooler air and set off with newfound energy to see who could collect their books the fastest so they could be out of there.

"Ha. Here's all the music stuff. We need all of these," Moira declared, pointing at the entire shelf before their eyes, piled high with brightly colored books and dotted with the names of various teachers. Grabbing books as they slowly walked the length of it, Severin paused when he got to a small card reading Sorela, S. R.: A History of Music, 8th ed. He gasped excitedly- "Look! It's Dr. Sorela! There he is right there!"

"Oh come off it Severin! You're acting like a first year when they walk past Mera's statue in Leena Square! You can be giddy when we spot him the first day of class!"

"Oh all right," Severin said, slightly disappointed. The three of them checked and double-checked their lists and once they were sure they had everything they needed they made their way to the cashier line marked by a large sign overhead that read SCHOLARSHIPS FUNDS. Because of their location in Kiillaana (bordering the ocean on the east coast for all three), they got scholarships that covered books and school supplies. As soon as their handfuls of books were rung up and paid for with their cards, they set off searching the rest of the bookstore for things like notebooks, paper, pencils, and the like.

"Hah, we need staff paper!" exclaimed Aslan, in a badly masked whisper. They all giggled and had a great time as they turned getting school supplies into a fun little scavenger hunt, speaking directions in Keòen and pretending to be the old school mentors with warm smiling faces who helped children get the supplies for school in Jadali.

An hour had gone by and finally they were walking home with books and supplies in hand. They raced home, mischievously pushing each other along, the whole time giggling. Finally, they stumbled through their front door and took all of their new things to their rooms. Severin and Aslan casually tossed their bags at their beds, causing most of their new books to fall out onto the floor. Moira, however, had gently emptied her bag and was ordering everything neatly on her desk. As she heard the unmistakable sound of Severin's books sliding all over the floor she rolled her eyes. Boys, she thought.

It was still mid-day and not much was going on, as the start of the new school year was still one week away. The house grew quiet, except for Severin and Aslan's occasional laughs (Severin had joined Aslan in the living room), as their new books were opened and being read. Moira had been reading her books over carefully, for she didn't want to miss anything the first day of school. She wanted to have at least a general knowledge of the sorts of things she would learn so that she could participate in discussions. However, her theory book seemed to make little sense and as she flipped through it she just got more and more nervous about it all.

Finally, after she had finished flipping through her new sight-singing book, Moira arose and walked into the living room where she found Aslan and Severin giggling and singing excerpts from their own sight-singing books. They were too busy to even notice that she had walked in and it wasn't until she spoke that they realized she had been standing there for a while, arms crossed, waiting for them to notice her.

"I think we should practice our instruments," Moira said, interrupting their falsetto rendition of Excerpt #26G (A Catin folk tune), "We have auditions on Saturday for orchestra, you know." She began pulling the audition music out of a lovely canvas bag hanging on the hat rack and continued, "Besides, this stuff on here is kind of challenging... at least for us," she said, gesturing towards her brother. "It prolly is for you too," she said laughingly, looking up at Aslan who had a look of 'what-a-wonderful-idea' on his face.

"Well, I guess we should reawaken our sticky keys," Severin said, stretching loudly. He disappeared in his room and reappeared a moment later with his flute case. Aslan was already down the stairs and soon emerged with his large bassoon case. While he dragged a chair into the living room Moira and Severin were already getting their flutes together, making sure everything was aligned just right. They had remembered to take music stands from home so they put them facing the large window and began to play some low notes, getting some air through their instruments. Aslan took a bit longer, as he wandered to the kitchen to fill up a small cup with water, in which he placed 2 reeds. Finally, long after Severin and Moira had practically warmed up, Aslan was finally ready to play.

"You silly double reeds!" Moira said, laughing, as she watched Aslan scoot his chair all over, positioned the strap on his chair just right, and finally sat down and spent another few seconds making sure his reeds were good to go.

"Got it!" he exclaimed finally. "Let's rock this out!"

They began running through all of their audition stuff and playing random songs and etudes for each other. Before long, their audition materials were starting to really sound good and they began to critique each other. They were getting so into their music that they hardly noticed that almost two hours had gone by. Some of the pieces were familiar to them and they began to play their parts in time with each other, laughing the whole way through.

Suddenly, there was a knock at their door. None of them had noticed that two young men had been listening to them and were waiting for the right moment to announce their presence.

"I wonder who that could be," wondered Moira as she opened the door. There, standing in the frame, were two college boys. The shorter of the two had long, dark brown hair and gorgeous dark eyes. He had on a red shirt and blue surf shorts and was holding a binder. The taller guy behind him had a long, flat, narrow face and short, wiry brown hair. He was smiling and was also wearing surf shorts and a red shirt. The shorter of the two spoke first.

"Hi! We heard some lovely music coming from here so we decided to pop over and ask if y'all were music majors," he said, with a heavy Vetonian accent and with kindness on his words. "We're your neighbors, by the way, and both of us play too!"

"Yeah! We're indeed music majors!" Aslan said, happily, bassoon in hand.

"Is one of you Nathan Surcaston or Lleyton Charles?" Severin asked.

"Oh, no. That's not us but we've heard of them," the taller of the two boys replied. "My name is Pierce Burman, but everyone just calls me Percy. I play horn and will be doing Audio Production here."

The shorter one then introduced himself. "The name's Hugo. Hugo Kelley. I suppose people call me Huggo or Kelley-Belly. I'm actually also majoring in Audio Production but also Music Performance if I can stand to tack that on. I play viola and also trumpet."

"Wow! That's awesome! Come in and have a seat on our couch and let's chat!" Moira said as she led them in and to the couch. "My name is Moira Lochgren and," she looked down at the flute in her hands, "I play the flute."

"I'm Severin Lochgren, her-brother-not-husband, and I too play flute and a bit of percussion."

"Well I'm Aslan Loch and I play bassoon as you can see here" he said as he brought his chair up and sat so that he could see his guests.

"Wow, all of you have really cool accents," said Hugo amused, "are you all from Jadali?"

"Those two are," Aslan said pointing at Moira and Severin, who had taken seats on the opposite couch so that they could face Pierce and Hugo, "but I'm from Kile Point, which is really close to Aiibaatland. Different state...ish... but I do have lots of Jadali blood in me and can speak the language."

"That's so cool!" said Pierce. "Technically I'm from here but my parents are both from Taigana and I'm obviously Tellish so there you go. Hugo here just has some Vetonian in him."

These two boys were quite entertaining and for the rest of the day and deep into night they talked, becoming good friends in a short amount of time. Before they finally left to return to their home, they had all discovered that were in quite a few of the same classes, Hugo was from a town called Electric Beach, both those boys were freshmen and from the same local high school, they all loved nature, and had a dinner schedule set up so that one night a week one of the two houses would prepare dinner for the other. As they left for the night, all three living at 304 Peace were so very happy to be starting school with even more familiar faces.