Miss Teen Actaea

Down by the Berens River

Miss Teen Actaea was a beauty pageant hosted in the rural city of Actaea for the past thirty-nine years. A competition for girls ages fourteen to seventeen, it was a televised event that focused on beauty, hair and gowns, swimsuit modelling and personal interviews. This year the prize was being given by the rare bookstore Minotaur Books and the prevention of whatever it was being burned by Ella Caine, the previous year's winner, was imperative to Katharine Sharp, as was knocking her off her high horse.

Katharine Sharp was fifteen years old and stood at a height of five feet and six inches. She was a slender, light-skinned girl with red hair that was long and straight and large, reddish-brown eyes. Her legs were good, her mouth cute, her face honest and she was overall fairly attractive. As a dress she was wearing a red sarong, a pair of triangular gold earrings, a red lei necklace, a red hibiscus behind her left ear and a pair of chunky white sandals with a thick sole, heavy buckles and wide Mary-Jane straps. Beneath her sarong, she already had on her swimsuit: a side-tie bikini with red and orange stripes. With her black purse hanging from her shoulder and a red dress with a tight waist, narrow shoulders and a voluminous skirt in her arms, she walked while her dear friend Henry Branagh carried her shoes, a pair of red heels that were short and thick.

Henry Branagh was the same age as Katharine and an inch shorter than her. He was lean and hungry in appearance with ruddy skin, red hair that was short and curly and eyes that appeared small and triangular due to close fitting lids and were mismatched due to heterochromia, the left being blue and the right green. His jaw was square, his nose big and hooked and his cheekbones sharp. To most people, Henry was not particularly good-looking, quite common, but to Katharine she would have taken Henry over the handsomest, tallest and darkest leading man in Hollywood North. His attire consisted of a red aloha shirt with a white floral pattern, white shoes, a red flat cap and glasses. 

This was there seventh day of knowing one another. Having recently moved to Actaea, Henry and Katharine had met each other down by the Berens River that Actaea on a day much like this. Hot and cloudless without a hope of rain. Since then, many strange things had happened from a fiery disc appearing piloted by an extraterrestrial named Moloch, Men in Black who wanted to bring the two redheaded adolescents to Moloch, the long dead wyvern Carchemish rising from the dead after sixty-eight years and more. To say that Henry and Katharine were very much hoping for a mundane was an understatement and their friends sixteen-year-old George Sheung Ku, his thirteen-year-old sister Alexandria Sheung Miao and Zac Riel and Marion Malka, both Miao's age, were hoping for the same.

The pageant would not be starting until 12:30 PM, but contestants were expected to arrive at 10 AM and so with Henry and their ground of friends did Katharine approach the stage that was being set up. The girls would stay with Katharine while the boys would go off until it was almost time for the pageant to start.

At a desk was a woman with a clipboard, no doubt with the names of all the contestants and before her stood that golden-haired gorgon Ella Caine. Immediately, Katharine heard Henry whisper in her ear, his voice a deep baritone: "Don't let her get to you."

Giving Henry a kiss on the cheek, Katharine replied: "Don't worry, Henry. I won't."

"How about tonight I take you dancing? You said you'd like to do that for our next date."

Smiling, Katharine answered: "That sounds wonderful."