Lukilo startled his son into jumping, and the not-quite-random sprinkle of notes that had been coming from the ukulele in question broke off with a jarring chord.
Keo twisted around on the hood of the car, saw his father, and turned his back again. “‘Cause,” he mumbled, his voice thick. Lukilo’s eyebrows arched.
“Didn’t Hine ask you to clean upstairs?” he asked, leaning against the car and crossing his arms over his chest.
Shrugging, Keo went back to picking at the strings on his ukulele, sounding out a faltering melody. Lukilo withstood the assault for all of three seconds, before he sighed and thumped the hood of the car. “Move over.”
Keo scooted to the side, leaving room for his father to hoist himself onto the car next to him. Lukilo was uncommonly slim for a Kamean, but Keo even at twelve, already took more after his mother, thick-framed and decidedly more than solid. He’d been wearing short-sleeved shirts lately, Lukilo had noticed, and now, today, he’d dug out a pair of jeans that were a bit too short.
Not a good sign, but Lukilo wasn’t surprised. He held out his hand, and Keo handed over the ukulele. Lukilo paused when he saw the tear stains on Keo’s face, and sighed internally.
“Watch my hands,” Lukilo told him, and slowly started to play through the same melody he - guessed - Keo had been trying to play. When Lukilo was done, he passed the instrument back, and coached his son through a couple loops of the song.
When Keo finally seemed to have it (more or less), his sniffles and tears all dried up, Lukilo propped his hand in his chin and asked, “Can I see it?”
The wrong chord jarred on Lukilo’s ears, and he winced, but not as badly as Keo, who shrank into himself and mumbled, “See - See what?”
“Keiki, you’re a bad liar.”
“Auntie Nanoni says people are really bad at telling when someone is lying,” Keo retorted, and Lukilo grinned.
“Auntie Nanoni was lying.” Lukilo tagged Keo on the shoulder. “C’mon, you really didn’t think you could hide it forever, did you?”
Keo hesitated, looked over his shoulder, and then slumped, setting the ukulele to the side. Lukilo had expected something on his back or shoulders - maybe even his chest - but his eyebrows shot up his forehead as Keo pulled up his shirt, and showed a brilliant neon blue tattoo curled around his stomach.
Lukilo whistled. “Boy, for someone who’s terrified of spiders, you really aren’t a coward.”
Keo blushed, embarrassed and pleased at the same time. “I - I want to be strong.”
Lukilo gave Keo a light smack on the side of his head. “You want to be dead. Your hine is going to bust you up.”
“Don’t tell her,” Keo begged, dropping his shirt. His eyes welled up with tears again, and Lukilo wondered when his son was ever going to grow out of crying at every inconvenience. It would solve most of the problems Keo kept having with his mother. “I just - I-I-I really wanted it.”
“You don’t get inkspells just because you really want them, Keo,” Lukilo said. He ran a hand through his hair. It was the neighbor girl’s fault, he was willing to bet. She’d gotten hers the second she showed a single spark of magic, and had been hounding Keo into it ever since. “Are you going into magery as a profession?”
“I - I don’t know -”
“Well, you are now,” Lukilo said dryly. “Auwe, keiki, you should’ve waited.”
“Hine wouldn’t let me!” Keo said, scrubbing at his face. “Neither - Neither would you!”
“I would when you were older,” Lukilo shot back. “I could’ve talked Hine around it. Who gave you your ‘aumakua, Keo! Do you even know them?”
“Yes!” Keo clenched the hem of his shirt in his fists. “It was - It was the kahuna.”
Lukilo frowned down at Keo. It was better than some random inkmage in the back of a restaurant somewhere, he supposed - and neither his nor his wife’s families were bursting with mages. If Keo had waited, and Lukilo had managed to bring his wife around, they’d probably have gone to the kahuna then.
But the point remained, that Keo had gone and changed his natural magic into something irreversible, and -
“What did you give up?” Lukilo almost didn’t want to ask.
Color rose in Keo’s cheeks, and he looked down. It was a long time before he spoke, and when he did, all the exasperation and frustration Lukilo felt melted away.
“…Oh, keiki.” Lukilo slid off the hood of the car, running a hand through his hair. Keo sniffled, and Lukilo heaved a sigh, before he turned and pulled Keo into a fierce hug, nearly pulling his twelve-year-old son right off the car.
Keo hugged him back a second later, just as tightly. Lukilo stared over the top of Keo’s head towards the house, wondering what he was going to tell his wife. Pele, their son was an idiot. Good-hearted and well-intentioned, but an idiot.
He pressed his forehead to Keo’s a moment later, then pulled away and adopted as stern a look as he could manage.
“I won’t tell Hine,” he said, “if you tell her yourself.”
Lukilo cut him off and added, “And, you have to show me your ‘aumakua.”
Keo’s open mouth snapped shut, and he wiped his face on his shirt. “…You really wanna see it?”
Lukilo punched him in the shoulder. “Of course!”
The grin was slow in coming back to Keo’s face, but he finally lit up, and nodded, sliding off the car. “You’re gonna love her,” he promised.
“Her? I thought spells didn’t have genders.”
Keo blushed again, fiercely, and added, “They - They don’t, but - but it feels like a she.”
Lukilo grinned and slung his arm around Keo’s shoulder. “Yeah, okay, lolo. Let’s go clean up your room, and then you can show me your ‘aumakua.”
“Okay.” Keo fidgeted with the hem of his shirt as they started walking back towards the house. He looked up at Lukilo, and asked plaintively, “Do I have to tell her tonight?”
Lukilo stared at him, then laughed. “No, we can wait until tomorrow.”
