Well, as you can see, I have finally put down my fishing pole and made it out into the world. It was Dawn’s idea. She said I’d been spending too much time with the fish.
Actually, what she said was ‘Caden, you’re starting to smell like one!’
I love my sister, I really do.
No, really… actually, I do love her. We’re twins and she just gets me. Yeah, I like to fish, and learning about fish and stuff like that, but there is still more to life and lately, I’ve been lonely. D reminded me that there was a whole world out there that I hadn’t explored yet. A world outside the plants and bugs.
“You just need to get out more,” she told me, as she was dragging me off to a talent night. I have no talent, so I just told some lame jokes and chatted with the cute mixologist.
The following weekend, she dragged me to a party at the Ruins. I’ve never been there before, and I really marvel that my sister knows all this stuff! We grew up together. Mom and Dad never did this kind of thing, so where does it come from?
Probably the same place in her heart as my desire to live near the beach in Sulani. Maybe someday… maybe.
This is Violet Baudelaire. She’s one of the girls I met the night of the talent show. We seemed to hit it off and I invited her out to lunch. The next day, there was a Romance Festival, just in time for Love Day. We went… and I thought it would be the start of something interesting… but through a series of unfortunate events… well, Violet and I decided that we were better off as friends.
And that turned out to be for the good. You see? I recently decided to go to the Magic Realm and start training to use my Magic. I never have been particularly interested before, but something was telling me to do it. Mom says that when you get that intuition, you just need to follow it. See where it leads. So I went and met with the Sages, who gave me the Rite of Ascension and then a couple of lessons to start with. I am now set on a path to become a Spellcaster.
While I was in the Magic Realm, I took the time to tour Glimmerbrook. Our family is from there, originally. The home stands empty today because my grandfather moved away and never came back.
I was about to leave when I heard a voice behind me say “they’re gone.”
I turned, and there was the most beautiful girl … young woman… I have ever seen. “Who’s gone?”
“The Caines. The used to live there until…” she started telling me the history of my own family, only like I’ve never heard it. How the Caine family was one of the older Magic families and it was a shock that my grandfather, Austin, could barely do real magic. And then he was gifted with a Vision, and it seems, what I took for granted and something meant to dictate my life, was actually this miraculous thing in the Magic Realm. Not everyone gets Visions.
“How do you know so much about them?” I asked.
She pointed to a house across the trees. “My father grew up there. I’m Aleah. Tomax Collette’s daughter.” She considered me closely and seemed to realize that this meant nothing to me. “Since we’re introducing ourselves, who are you?”
“Caden… Caden Caine.”
She laughed. It was a beautiful amused sound. “And you let me go on talking about the Caines and you are one?”
“I’ve… never heard to told quite like that before,” I told her. “It was fascinating… and educational.”
“Well, Caden Caine of Famous Caine Family, let’s what else we can do to educate you,” she laughed again. I was beginning to fall in love with that sound. I hoped beyond hope that this was the beginning of something special.