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Chapter Text

It hadn’t exactly been a smattering of rain when she’d pulled up outside the house; not that it would’ve mattered a great deal if it had just been a simple drizzle, the weight of it was like being subsumed by the weight of an ocean. It hadn’t been in the least bit fair – tantamount to losing her own daughter to a world of nightmares didn’t sound right in her head nor heart but neither were capable of denying this insidious reality when Luz had ascended and evanesced before her eyes.

“Oh...” Camila felt sick in her stomach, “oh, mi niña”. She thundered into the house with little effort to consider where the rain ended and her tears started; bundling into the bathroom, she unloaded all that visceral and unwavering dread and anguish into the ceramic bowl and permitted more tears to follow suit.

Camila let slip her waterlogged coat over the furnished rack. The weight of rainwater at the hems meant it immediately dropped off the rounded hook but Camila had no interest in replacing it and so just left it there. Even with every step in making a mug of tea to soother her fettered nerves, she was a jackhammer someone was trying to muzzle with a giant pillow, quaking and generally uneasy.

She glared forlornly into the swirling vacuous brown liquid when her attention was caught by Vee, sequestered in the most shadow-laden corner she could find, retreating back into an immature pasquinade of Luz’s visage, the very same mimicry caught on that maniacal flat-earther’s illegal recordings. The visage didn’t have Camila launch into a tirade or any other anger-induced outburst; she merely sat, her faced consumed with sullen indifference, and pushed out a chair from under the table to sit at, an invitation for Vee to join her.

Vee allowed her reticence to slip away as she joined her facesake’s mother at the table. The entirety of her now rounded eyes were watery – not without excuse, her disguise had those peculiar horizontal tear ducts that needed facilitating in addition to her own natural vertical ones.

Such a dratted silence before Vee, keeping abreast of Camila’s own taciturnity and thus retaining her own voice – lapsing into Luz’s mother dialect would’ve been a disrespect too far given the face she was bearing – to not alarm her, elected to cut it.

“C-Camila?”

Camila didn’t stare daggers back at Vee. She was a vet, she was trained enough to know a victimized individual when she saw one, through mannerisms if not through physical ailment; she never believed that animal and human strife were exclusive. Distress was universal, no matter how it was shown.

Instead, she dismissed the quakes that were running riot through her nerves and lofted her hand over her daughter’s- her houseguest’s own. She didn’t turn her eyes away from her over-milked tea quite yet but found it in her to respond. “I’m so blind”.

That hung.

“All the time you were living here as Luz, I never noticed. Each time you were in my arms, I couldn’t tell you apart from my real daughter... but now I’ve got my hand on yours, I can feel it.”

Vee looked down at the facsimile of Luz’s hand she’d adopted. She turned back to Camila.

“You’re skin is so cold and sodden, you’re pulse is beating in two separate places and when I run my thumb over the crest of your fingers...”

She demonstrates with utmost gentleness.

“...your hand doesn’t nuzzle into mine like Luz’s does- did. Every time, without fail.”

They were close reaching a point where Vee would break into tears again before Camila released the grip of her mug and turned to face her. Once again, no daggers; only the big wet eyes of a mother looking into the face of one whom she has no choice but to love, scooping up the hands of this bizarre, inexplicable little creature in her own and pulling them close to her quivering lips.

She spoke in little more than a whimper so fragile, a feather could have fractured it. “Your home, this demon realm...” a wince, “I must know, is my daughter safe?”

Vee felt her stomach turn; of course Luz wasn’t safe, not in the thrall of that soft-spoken, tyrannical martinet.

“Luz and I... we had a chance to talk before. Before I got caught in that guy’s trap.”

“But is she safe? Is she going to be attacked by monsters or eaten by some unimaginable horror?”

“Luz told me about her life on the Boiling Isles. She told me she has protection, something bordering on a surrogate family that took her in when she was lost. And I can tell you that she couldn’t be any safer living with Eda the Owl Lady.”

“Eda the...? Who is that?”

“The most powerful witch on the Isles. A outlaw who rallied against the tyrannical rule of Emperor Bel...”

Vee bit her tongue for she could plummet any further into the rabbit hole, a point that Camila, regardless of her undisclosed hysteria, politely and respectfully didn’t push.

“The point is, she’s not alone; whatever dangers she might run into in my world, she has people there to keep her safe. You know, it’s funny; no human has been seen on the Isles before Luz came. Nobody thought they could be capable of performing magic – you’ve got a very special daughter, Camila, one of a kind even. The first human witch – she may even go down in history.”

Somewhere through her little heartfelt monologue, Vee’s eyes had strayed from looking Camila head on but her tears had retracted, unlike Camila’s, which were streaming from her eyes like a cracked tap. The only disparage between a sob of despair and a sob of pride was the brief moments of quiet laughter breaking it up.

A hefty sniff and the tears fell away; Camila spread her arms in a invite for Vee to enter them before they closed around her.

“What... what about my...?”

Vee, still contained in Camila’s embrace, pulled back enough for room to gesture over her face in a motion that asked if she wanted her to drop the disguise.

“I somehow think Luz would want you to.”

The arrangement henceforth was no different to the way it was at daybreak; a demon living in human form residing with the Dominican-American mother of the girl she’d adopted the mien of.

Camila set down her phone on the bedside table, circularly rubbing her faltering eyes with her fingertips.

“Oh, Luz...”

The phone strummed on the wooden table beside her, some asinine alarm she’d set sometime beforehand and not seen fit to delete. The glazy phone screen sloped in front of her eyes.

Mija

26 Unread Messages

Now

Camila’s heart almost froze in motion; she tapped on the notification and there were at least a dozen recordings sent by Luz over the last month or so, peppered in amongst at least 20 other messages ranging from “maybe if I send a video. hold on” to “dulces sueños mami”.

Her earlier demurrals set aside, Camila scrolled up to the earliest video and pressed play as the real Luz’s face filled the screen in all her adorable felicity.

“Hola, Mama! You haven't heard from me in a while. It's been a week and a half since the petrification ceremony. A week and a half since I...[laughs] destroyed the portal home. I had to. Emperor Belos was going to kill Eda if I didn't hand it over-“

Camila perused the video in segment and inspected it intently; admittedly, she found herself partially endeared by the little greyish muskrat-looking creature calling himself King, though she did think that was a rather ostentatious name for such a diminutive figure. And Luz did seem to be affectionate towards it, or him rather. He wore a collar but he didn’t seem to be like a pet – he was almost brotherly, if such a word best suits such a farcical affair.

“A-And look! I have friends to help me. / I'm never letting you go! You're never returning to the human realm! / He doesn't mean that. / Yes I do!”

It was simply too endearing to not force the corners of Camila’s mouth into a calming grin.

“Hey, King, did you know that apple is a hat? / Really? / King! Hey, no! King!”

A pensive and stern scowl took over, “If that woman ever tries they with my daughter, oh, ninguna cantidad de magia podrá salvarla!”

“This week we're bounty hunters. Next week we could be anything. So, Mom, please don't be scared. I'm growing more and more every day, and I'm gonna do my best to become a full-fledged witch, and get home to you safe and sound. Te quiero, Mama. Te lo prometo, regresaré a casa pronto.”

The partially opaque play button reappeared over Luz’s determined features; Camila sat perturbed but not disturbed, she couldn’t allow herself to be shaken. But to deny her inconsolable rue would be a fool’s exercise. She run her thumb along the rim of her phone screen, “Mija, what could’ve been so bad that you choose the live in a place like that?”

A large sniff signalling the recollection of composure and dignity, Camila swiped the initial entry and sifted to the next one.

She was in for a long night.

“Hi Mom. It’s me, Luz, here again! So, bad news, I kinda got kicked out of school. Actually, did I ever mention I got enrolled at magic school, ‘cos it’s so cool. Good news is, I managed to get back into school again. It was all some big, overblown ploy by Amity’s awful parents to teach her a lesson or something but Willow and Gus didn’t deserve that. Oh, I haven’t told you about my friends, have I? They’re amazing; Gus is so enthusiastic about the human realm, Willow has some awesome powers with plant magic and Amity is the most beauuuu...”

The vowel hung in the on-screen air for a moment or two while Luz’s cheeks were promptly subsumed with perhaps most the remaining blood in her body.

“...tifully talented abomination student I’ve met! Heh-heh.”

A brief pause.

“I’ve said too much. Guuuhhh-hey, how’s about I get Willow on to say a few words to you next time I record at message? How’s that sound? Love you too! Bye! Nyeh-“

In Camila’s experience, Luz did have a tendency to waffle and break off into lots of tangents before reaching the point she was trying to make, not to say she minded. There wasn’t a single part of her little girl she didn’t love, but never in her experience was Luz ever so hasty to reach the end of a thread of conversation. Chatting was almost her second favourite thing to do, one beneath reading those Azura fantasy novels.

The next three or so videos were the expected waffle but they were all so informative – and all so mortifying. Giant slimy abomination things, acidic seas, honeybees that literally burned, a mentor that could transform into this enormous winged monster at anytime with a sister who could do the same. But she looked at Luz’s face in every sort-of vivid description and regalement and wasn’t seeing a fish out of water; Luz had, for lack of a better word – blimey, had fatigue taken a toll of the woman today – and to all intents and purposes, evolved.

Her fantasy world wasn’t holding her back here, she’d not only thrived but also flourished and matured and she wasn’t only seeing her lost little girl as she progressed through these videos but a burgeoning young woman with the friends that Camila had always intended to help her make when she sent her off to camp. The very same camp that she now realised Luz had never actually been to.

“Hola, Mamá. So, it took a while but we’ve got a day off school today. Something about the lockers all contracting a contagious chest mold or something. Anyway, Principal Bump called off all lessons today so I can finally introduce you to... dun-dundunduuuun, Willow and Gus! / Woah, so actual humans can see me through this?! / Well, that’s the idea- / Hello humans! I can’t wait to hive-five every one of you I can find. / Well, I’m sure they’ll be ready for you. Willow? / Hi, Miss Noceda. I’m Willow. You have an awesome daughter, she’s my best friend! / Hey... / She’s our best friend. / Thank youuu. / Aw, you guys.”

The quick-beated chatter and friendly revelry struck a chord with Luz’s mother, “Oh mi palabra. They’re just ordinary kids like Luz.”

On the screen, the boy was trying to construct some kind of comedic set up with his magic, a sort of blue ring he’d draw in the air with his finger and made things appear; it probably only wasn’t funny because he’d done it wrong, Camila assumed. The girl, Willow, demonstrated her powers next; a little green circle in the air and a series of vines coiled around her wrist and journeyed up her arm before forming a astonishingly beautiful coronet of flowers perfectly fitting her forehead.

“She has friends,” Camila told herself, “real, genuine friends that care about her and make her happy”. Almost like leaving a microphone open for immediate succession, Camila didn’t continue the thought there and then because Luz’s voice was back feeding through the speakers.

“Sorry about that. A fire bee came in to ‘pyronate’ one of Willow’s flowers and Hooty noticed and it all just became a whole thing. But anyway, if you do eventually see this, Mami, please don’t worry. In this world, Willow, Gus and I are an inseparable team and they’re just as willing to help me find a way home to you. I would’ve brought Amity here too but I think she was a bit unavailable today.”  

‘You mentioned this Amity in one of these previous videos,’ Camila thought to herself, ‘the “beautifully talented one”? ‘ She smirked to herself before taking stock of having done so and mentally ridiculing herself for internalising a monologue in which she teases the daughter that isn’t even present.

“The thing is, mom, I’ve not seen Amity for a few days. I know she’s okay but I think she’s currently a bit too uncomfortable to be around me. You see, I found a diary with details that might help me get back to you, before it was eaten by a mouse that very luckily had a magic power to play it back for me. But Amity helped me get the diary and...”

Camila had already started to peg the pretext for Luz’s reticence.

“It’s become pretty clear to the other’s that I’m not doing too well at hiding how much I want to see her. She’s smart, classy, powerful... beautiful. And the other night, sheeeee kissed me. Right here. Oh, man, this is gonna sound so cheesy but it honestly felt truly magical, like I could suddenly levitate. I know it’s gonna sound stupid to say this about a girl who only a few months ago was my enemy but-“  

No amount of thinking or motherly intuition was needed to divine where this was going.

“I think I like her, mom. Actually, no, not ‘think’, I know. And it’s not ‘like’ either; I’ve fallen for her. And I’m just going to have to hope that when I have mustered up the courage to tell her that, she’ll say yes because, despite what the other’s might think, I have noticed how flustered she gets around me. She likes me too, mom, and what I’d really like to happen is for the next time I talk to you about Amity, I’ll be talking about my girlfriend.”

A tap on the pause button and the room was silent; “So in this demon realm, you have made a life with this surrogate family, found two incredible friends-“ she raises the picture of Amity that Luz had sent to her a while after the video came through “and fallen in love.”

A familiar sullen silence came seeping through in the form of tears again.

“And all this a world away from me...”

The dulled vibration that had previously been amplified by the wooden bedside table shivering against her chest drew Camila’s attention back to the phone. A new message, another video from Luz.

No, not Luz. That woman from whom Luz had been learning.

Eda.

The background was dark, the video was badly framed and it was clearly being recorded by somebody who didn’t know what they were doing and was clearly doing their best to emulated something that they’d only seen previously.

Camila pressed play.

“Hi,” the video began in a quietened voice, “Luz went off to bed early today, I guess waltzing around that dimensional nowhere tuckered her out somethin’ nasty. But I could tell when we pulled her back through that there was something she wasn’t telling us. I don’t know if this video will reach you, Luz tells me none of her’s have, I guess I’m just hoping some residual magic from the busted portal gets it too you.” 

Camila wasn’t quite speechless but was slowly approaching the point of it. She slammed the screen into pause with her thumb and strolled into the bathroom, lathering her face and forehead in cold water from the sink so she could at least tell tears from water when it started again. Replacing her position on the bed, she resumed.

“I can’t see you or speak to you myself, but somehow I’m confident that you’ll hold me in low esteem for your daughter being stuck here. Trust me, sister, I’m not telling her this but I do – I’m doin’ it right now. She’s stranded in this place ‘cos she was too close to me when my borrowed time ran dry; I took too many liberties when she still had the means of safely returning to you. But for all I’m accused of by the brainless chumps living in this world, I sometimes think my biggest crime is my allowing Luz to care about me.”

“This girl was guaranteed to change the world from the second she walked in and, dang, she’s certainly done that. Got her friend Willow a better life at school, she’s helped the other kid a bunch o’ times, brought some light into the life of that girlfriend of her’s and brought out the person she honestly was. And as for me... well, I only had King when she showed up on my doorstep worried that I was gonna eat her. But, and I know I’m not her parent and I’m not ready to tell her this yet but maybe I will someday, she’s since become the daughter I never knew I wanted. She’s saved my life, got me back on good terms with my sister, given me a family that I never realised I wanted for so long because I was afraid of the harm I could cause.”

By this point, Camila had been rendered speechless, or at least speechless in the sense that she’d been biting down hard on the edge of her tongue and not realising until it got sore and she released it.

“Luz is still sound asleep but I should still probably take this back to her. I basically wanted to say that your daughter couldn’t be in safer hands. She’s got me, King, Hooty, her friends, even Lilith occasionally, and we all love her immeasurably. I may be powerless but I will work myself into an early grave to get her home to you. It’s my responsibility she’s stuck here – she gave up the only transit between our worlds to save me – so I’ll go to whatever lengths I have to go to for her. I’m not her mom, I know that and I know I’ll never be that, but I’m gonna be every bit the mom I can be until I can get her back to her real one; I mean, as her real mother, you should know, there’s no lengths you won’t go to for your kids’ happiness.”  

If there was any more, Camila had to wait to hear it because her phone screen was suddenly subsumed by a black screen indicative of a flat battery. She glanced over at the clock, reading a blaring red ‘5:30’ on it’s reflective face. No more cue was necessary, Camila simply slumped into the foetal position on her bed, head landing square in the centre of her pillow, her line of sight perfectly aligned to get a good shot of the picture of Luz she had propped up on the side while, should she have turned her head, she’d have a perfect view of Vee, sleeping gently on the bed she’d been granted leave to rest it.

Camila took the picture from the table and clutched it tightly and motherly, “I love you, Mija...”

“We all love you.”

Chapter Text

“This weird, ethereal plane full of inky, cosmic cubes that let her see through reflections;” paraphrasing aside, that had been a rough approximation to how Luz described to Eda and King just what she’d spent all that time blundering blindly around through on the other side of the torched remains of the old portal door.

As a teenager, when Eda had first discovered the door, the other side first appeared to her as some kind of oozy goo before forming into the landscape of the human world. It had been so long, that miniscule aspect of the experience had in the years since simply slipped away from her. Every time she’d opened the portal in the interim three decades was always just a straight threshold to her retreat dimension.

“You’ve noticed it?” she gingerly muttered beside King’s ear whilst Luz wasn’t paying attention; she’d called up Willow, Gus and Amity on the crystal ball to clue them into the developments of her recent escapade.

“Noticed?” It wasn’t a question, not through intonation at least; King clearly knew to what Eda was referring – how cagey Luz had been on each reference to her mother all evening long.

“She’s been doing it all evening. Every time we’ve talked about her mom, she clams up, goes all spaced out and tormented.”

King looked back over to Luz but kept his voice low, understanding the importance of discretion in this matter. “It’s not like Luz to keep secrets, especially from us. You think something else happened while she was in there?”

“I think,” Eda fondled the remaining shreds of Amity’s titan-blood-smothered glove between her thumb and fingers while she was sure King wouldn’t notice, “I think there’s something weighing her down. Something’s got that kid’s head and heart fighting for dominance. I mean, look at her, she looks close to collapsing.”

“Think we should ask her about it?”

“Let me. I think mother issues are more my domain, don’t you think?”

“Good call”.

Eda jostled her way around Luz’s conversation, catching snippets of discussion where she was still clearly skirting around details; if she can’t profess her real struggles to Amity of all people, then who? She plucked up Owlbert from the armrest and wordlessly requested he magically change the times presented on clocks around the house. After a little coo of protestation and subsequent rebuttal that Hooty will just have to put up with it, Owlbert complied.

“Hey, Luz! Look at the time, you out to get some sleep. You’ll see your friends at school, night you guys. Byyyeee!”

Luz just gawped at Eda in abject disbelief, “Eda?!”

“You’ve had a long day, kiddo. You need to sleep, badly.” She was being gentle speaking and had both her hands resting on her shoulders; Luz was given the surprisingly comforting luxury of Eda stroking her upper shoulder blades with her thumbs in a soothing motion. “Now, you’re going to bed if I have to carry you there. In fact-“

And then she did just that, taking Luz under her back and knees and carrying her up to her room; her pupil allowed her head to loll into Eda’s chest as she was lulled by the gentle swaying that accompanied each step she took. On Eda’s end, it beggared belief just how light Luz was when she was exhausted, or perhaps it was just a different emotional imperative at play here. Whatever the case, Luz’s obvious muscular tension had clearly lessened to virtually undetectable by the time Eda had lowered her into her makeshift cocoon.

Eda presumed Luz had finally succumbed to her poorly concealed wooziness because the next thing she said was noticeably one of those aforementioned instances of her biting her tongue before letting it slip, “Thank you. Owlet is gonna miss living here.”

Now, Eda was and had never been under any illusion that when Luz made it home, she’d return to living with her mother, but the way she was talking, or rather rambling, right now awoke this rather primal dread in her stomach that something her mother had said had certified that she’d never come back.

She wanted to call this some misguided form of reasoning or a straight leap to conclusions but the last few months had fostered within her this innate but refined sense of motherly intuition towards this girl.

“Luz? You still with me? What do you mean?”

The hauntingly hollow smile daubed across Luz’s cheeks was a patently explicit clue that she’d already drowsed off. Eda swatted Luz’s words between her teeth, trying to chew them into something discernable; “’Owlet is gonna miss living here’, huh?” she mused in a muted tone, “Well then, baby bird, mama’s gonna find you some peace of mind.” Most uncharacteristically and quite possibly on an impulse she hadn’t realized she’d been suppressing, Eda planted a kiss on her student’s forehead and crept around her slumbering form to clamber out of the window with bizarrely no dignity but utmost silence.

“Hooty!” she called down to the front door in a whispery-shout, having crawled on all fours across the roof, “Light’s out!” and squirreled back the way she came. “And be quiet about it!” she hastily added before Hooty’s quotidian gossiping started a house fire.

True to his honest word as an ageless house demon, all the candle lights in the Owl House snuffed, plunging the rooms and corridors into not a frightening pitch darkness but rather one that Eda felt best set the mood for a midnight sneak. Peering into Luz’s occupied bedroom, making absolutely sure not to rouse her from her rest, Eda swiftly if not gracefully extracted her phone from her grasp. Luz’s unconscious lay there trying to account for it’s sudden absence, but she simply patted her cheek a few times and settled again.

If my clumsy trampling around her didn’t wake her, Eda mused to herself, a sigh of relief certainly won’t. Thus, she let one out on backward approach to Luz’s door and retreated back out into the hall, pulling the door closed behind her. “Right, I think I remember how to do this...”

Eda fondled with the human wonder box until she pulled the camera up, throwing a blackened silhouette of herself back at her, “Huh. Black shadow box that reflects only sadness.” This was followed by perhaps the driest laugh the Boiling Isles had in all likelihood ever heard uttered. A quickly scribbled light glyph and she was all set.

“Hi, Luz went off to bed early today, I guess waltzing around that dimensional nowhere tuckered her out somethin’ nasty-“

It hadn’t gone unnoticed to King how distant Luz had been the evening since her return through the collapsing portal; the ratio since he dragged her out with Eda and Hooty of how Luz was looking at each of them in turn with intense dread to her regular fondness was favouring the former to an extent that made King uncomfortable.

He was blindly tottering around the house looking for a place to crash out after Hooty had so very kindly put out the lights when he was alerted to a muffled monologue coming from below, in the living room. His padded steps weren’t in aid of discretion as much is there were for earwigging; he knew Eda’s voice well enough. “Who is she talking to?”

Still too far away.

It took a bit of rooting but King did uncover one of the holes Hooty had punched in the foundation of the house between the first and second floors, though why he couldn’t move himself through the house without the compulsive need to destroy anything in his way, heaven alone knew. The hole was only just big enough to get his muzzle through so he instead flopped onto his back and stuck one of his horns through and that gave him a clear enough window to listen in.

She was right in the middle of her stream of consciousness as he eavesdropped; “-only had King when she showed up on my doorstep worried that I was gonna eat her. But, and I know I’m not her parent and I’m not ready to tell her this yet but maybe I will someday, she’s since become the daughter I never knew I wanted. She’s saved my life, got me back on good terms with my sister, given me a family that I never realised I wanted for so long because I was afraid of the harm I could cause.”

King was outright stunned; “Should I really be listening to this?” he muttered to himself before disregarding his own query, his curiosity having gotten the better of him and kept listening.

“Luz is still sound asleep but I should still probably take this back to her. I basically wanted to say that your daughter couldn’t be in safer hands. She’s got me, King, Hooty, her friends, even Lilith occasionally, and we all love her immeasurably. I may be powerless but I will work myself into an early grave to get her home to you. It’s my responsibility she’s stuck here – she gave up the only transit between our worlds to save me – so I’ll go to whatever lengths I have to go to for her. I’m not her mom, I know that and I know I’ll never be that, but I’m gonna be every bit the mom I can be until I can get her back to her real one; I mean, as her real mother, you should know, there’s no lengths you won’t go to for your kids’ happiness.”

With a sigh, Eda laid the phone screen down on the table and scrunched her enormous hair into her face, letting out an exhausted sigh that broke the mass in part. She heard a slight scratching in the roof and took stock of the hole in the ceiling through her hair; “Terrific,” she said sardonically, “we’ve got rats again. Hooty’s got to stop doing that...” her voice trailed off as she left the room into the hallway.

In spite of his pretty inadequate core strength, King had narrowly managed to pull his horn free of the hole before he was spotted. “I don’t know what Luz told you, Eda, but now’s as good a time as any to tell me precisely what it is you plan on doing.” King brought his paw to bear on the sigil-encrusted tag of his collar; his birth father’s sigil and faltered, “I’m not having Luz wake up to find a goodbye message.”

Pushing the door open just ajar enough, Eda slung Luz’s phone back into her reach, just landing on a pillow beside her curled-up form.

“Right, Owl Lady, you’re in for a long night.” She told herself with a resolve matched only by that of the tyrant piquing the oppressive regime she had dissented against. She quickly and quietly hotfooted it back to her own room and drew her staff out from behind the door. She was in the process of knotting a fabric sheet around the end of it, fashioning it into a bindle when from behind her came, “Moonlight flit, is it?” illiciting a startled switch to combat stance until she laid eyes on her miniature challenger.

“Oh, King. It’s just you, sorry. A little on edge.”

King was clearly trying to pull of that stance Luz sometimes went for of swinging her right leg in front of her left and propping it up on her toes; King’s legs were by-and-large too short to pull that of so he ended up trying to achieve a cool, detaching impression while standing as if he was in dire need of the bathroom.

“Where are you off to at this time of night? Even the night market doesn’t stay open this late”. She might have been caught out but Eda still had one faithful old trick to fall back on.

Deny everything.

“Message from Lilith earlier this evening. Private, you understand. She wants me to shoot on over there; mom’s probably misplaced Hawksley again”.

“Then may I ask why I can see Amity’s stained glove poking out of that little sack you have there?”

“You- um...”

“Could it be a sign of ‘the lengths you’d go you for your kids’ happiness’, by any chance?”

That had clinched it; Eda brought the end of her staff to rest on the floor, the fabric bag at the end of it slumping down the shaft and unfurling at her feet.

“So, heard all that, did ya?”

“I heard enough,” King leapt down off the cabinet and went scrounging around in Eda’s nest, reappearing from inside lugging a length of rope twice as long as the one they’d made use of that morning, “and we’re gonna need this.”

Eda’s words caught in her throat, “Are you sure you wanna go along with this, King? Let me remind you how badly this could go.” King raised a claw in interjection, “It’d be an even greater disaster if you tried to go back in there by yourself and without assistance. If you got hurt or trapped in there then Luz would have nobody to take care of her. And I don’t want that any more than you do, you hear?”

Her confirmation was wordless but enough and King was already heading out the door. Eda called back to him from inside; “I’ll gather up the rest of what we’ll need, go wait for me outside with the junk door. Don’t wake your sister-“

“Say that again?”

“Mister! I said ‘Don’t wake Luz, mister...”

King offered absolutely no indication that he had or hadn’t bought Eda’s withdrawal and simply scrambled to the front door.

“Now, since we left Hooty guarding Luz, I’m leaving it up to you and Owlbert to get me out if there’s a problem.” Just as before, Eda had coarsely tied a series of untidy knots around her midrim as a safety harness.

King had voted that he accompany her before they’d even set eyes on the door, knowing full well that Eda would want to be the first to leap headfirst into the fray and, sure enough, she had already concocted a myriad of not-all-too-convincing arguments for why she should go alone, not least of which being that she had a better sense of what they were looking for.

“Fine, but be careful”, King relented.

“Always.”

“I mean, ‘careful’ careful, not ‘impulsively bluster your way through’ careful.”

“King, I know what I’m risking here,” Eda chided him, “and besides, if you heard even half of my video earlier, you’d know that I have to go alone”.

She tied to loose end of the rope around her staff and forcefully drove it into the ground; Owlbert was perched atop the staff watching her curiously and she gave him a little nuzzle under the wing. “Any sign of the portal becoming unstable, give it a tug and I’ll come back. If that fails, get on the staff and gun it.”

King nodded in bemused agreement, while Owlbert plainly had no idea what was happening since he, as ever, looked pleased as punch. Extracting the bloodstained glove from her hair, Eda tore off the farthermost finger, as they had rehearsed that morning and stuck it to the jury-rigged portal apparatus. With that, Eda gave King the signal to get started.

It took a while longer to build a charge with King being assigned that task but at long last, the process was successful. Eda called back to King as she gripped the frames of the now even further decayed portal door, “Now, I know this worked once but doing it again is incredibly risky. I don’t think it’ll stay open for as long as last time, maybe 10 minutes at best so I’ll have to be quick. Be ready to drag me out at 8 counting!”

The window for King to respond was slimmer than the ruined door as Eda leapt through it in virtually the next breath, leaving King and Owlbert to glance over at each other.

Inky, Luz had called this substance, which was not the descriptor Eda had foremost in her mind when she landed facedown in it; it wasn’t unlike lukewarm tapioca pudding, all lumpy and viscous. Forcing her face up for air, Eda got a clear look at this odd domain.

“Oh, boy. This place is even worse for wear then I thought.” The caverns were ripe with rot and numerous of the floating cubes Luz had described were now buoyant in the soupy sludge she was wading through.

“Hello? Is anyone there?” She wasn’t remotely surprised when no response returned. “The door’s damage really did a number on this place. Forcing it open again like we’ve been doing has upset the balance here even more”

A violent rock through her to the floor as the landscape in eyeshot suddenly convulsed and contracted, constricting in a way that made everything just that much smaller like some freak optical illusion. Another cube lost it’s ability to stay in the air and plummeted into the drink, taking a detour on it’s descent to collide with Eda’s head as it landed and dissolved in the vile substance.

“I’d better get a move on.”

Eda broke into a run and experienced this strange sensation of light levitation as she moved, rounding a corner into an open canyon with roughly ten to twenty cubes still holding stable in the air. Right before another one dropped like a stone into the goop below, splatting down square before Eda’s feet. As it broke apart into thick turquoise vapour, Eda got this faint glance at the world, or reflection of the world, on the other side of it; it was a disorganized stack of boxes, filled to the brim and some overfilled with various human artifacts.

Immediately rejecting her old nature of pondering how much money she could make off it all, she caught a fractional glimpse of a framed picture sticking out of the second box from the left, which sat next too some kind of metal predator. A young child with scruffy, unkempt hair with...

“Her human mother!” Eda exclaimed as the cube caved in like a damp cardboard box. “If these cubes are a link to the human realm, then we’re gonna need one!”

Springing around like a cricket, Eda made use of the dimensions loose notion of gravity and leapt remarkably expertly from cavern wall to cavern wall, grabbing cubes and pressing her face up against them to see if they were suitable. Each one she plastered her features against was a different mirror in the human realm, which was quite distressing for the five-year-old who’d been glaring into her bathroom mirror while brushing her teeth.

Another constriction of the dimension, another few meters smaller and Eda went spiraling through the air, leaving all of about two cubes still intact and floating. Sheer dumb luck perhaps, but one of which had an excellent vantage point, perfect in fact. Through the reflection, Eda could see Luz’s mother Camila, glued to her phone screen and soaking in a series of videos; she pressed her ear to the cube to try and catch what she was looking at.

“A-And look! I have friends to help me. / I'm never letting you go! You're never returning to the human realm! / He doesn't mean that. / Yes I do!” 

“Well, how about that?” Eda mused to herself; it was overt that Camila wasn’t paying her any heed and likely just as well. A visceral crush made her bones wince – there was perhaps four feet between her and the walls of the cavern now. She turned to leave but immediately stalled in transit.

“Wait! If I go back through there with this, it’ll be lost,” a summary that was immediately proved accurate by the collapse of the last airborne cube.

“Eda! The portal’s collapsing, get out of there!” The rift between dimensions had become so flimsy that King’s voice was not only able to break through the divide of the divide but with such clarity. “EDA, COME ON!”

Eda let King’s voice falter and fade into an echo and she let out a long, stoic breath, opening her eyes to the bleak, open expansive of her inner demonic mind. “Are you here?”

At the crutch of her feet, almost on a dime, the familiar shape of the Owl Beast, now only a minute scale of it’s former self, looked up at her and whimpered; “You can feel it too, can’t you? That panicking, pulsating feeling when you know you’re about to peg out.”

Another frightened squeak.

“Well, it’s not going to happen. Not to us, not today – the kid needs me to bring her this cube back and I’m going to make that happen but-“

She stalled, the Owl Beast giving her a stare that, oddly, was simultaneously empty and comforting, “-but I can’t do it without you’re help.” She dropped to her knees, “I can’t get her this cube alone and we can’t do it together. If we tried, the cube would be destroyed and this would all be for nothing. But you...”

She soothingly stroked the Owl Beast’s head, “...you can do it all by yourself. All you need is the strength to get you back to your former state.”

The creature was alarmed and squawked to emphasise as such. “If I give you the energy you need to fully turn me into the Owl Beast in the real world, I can save us and get the cube back to Luz.”

“Let me make it clear, I’m not doing this for us; I need your help, not only so we can both survive this but because Luz needs this cube and for that, she needs me, needs us to get out of this in one peace. After all our years together, fighting inside my mind, I’m pleading, no, begging you... do this for Luz.” Eda cuffed the tears of her illusory eyes and palmed her hem of her dress, “Help my girl find her way back to her real mom”.

King and Owlbert were dragging on the rope for grim death, or at least King was; he had to keep hold of it as Owlbert flew since the knot on the staff kept trying to slip to the bottom of the shaft. With a sudden jerk, the rope went limp and both King and Owlbert face-planted on the grubby floor.

“What’s happened? Eda! Eda, can you hear me?”

A terrifying shriek came hailing through the open door, on the tail end of which emerged a Brobdingnagian scale clawed talon, and the preceding slim-muscled craw. A few thuds and scarily unstable impacts later, a twelve-foot bundle of feathers came barrowing through the collapsing inky portal, shattering the remains of the archway into irreparable splinters in the process.

King swiped up Owlbert and dove for cover as the prone, wounded form of the Owl Beast, the honest-to-titan, gargantuan Owl Beast, made heavy collision with the closest tree. King hadn’t realised how tightly he’d been holding his breath until he let out a splutter like he’d been choking on a peach pip; he gently laid the dizzied Owlbert to the ground and prudently approached Eda’s colossal, pained form.

“Eda?”

Eda’s eyes opened, not with the soul-leaching grey they used to have, but a vibrant gold tint, a fact that was immediately wrenched from King’s attention when she regurgitated an owl pellet at his feet and slumped to the ground, folding back into Eda’s original body; “Oh, thank you!” she proclaimed to no-one in particular, or nobody that could be seen at least.

King balled into Eda’s embrace; “Never do that again!”

“No plans on doing so any time soon, King, don’t panic,” the sight of the owl pellet had her pry King’s arms away and she tore into the repulsive mass with her bare hands.

“Ugh, what do you wanna be touching that for?”

The pellet split open down the middle and after the pungent aroma had drifted elsewhere, King took notice of the otherworldly glow contained within it. Eda proudly lifted a perfectly formed cube from within the broken shell that the Owl Beast had encased it in.

“The fruit of our labours, King. Like I told you, no lengths,” she chortled.

Chapter Text

Somewhen whilst in the arms of Morpheus, Luz had rolled over her phone screen. In itself, this wasn’t enough to rouse her before the vibration that it gave off when it received a text message being pressed up against a portion of her side in which she was ticklish had her up like a shot. Her haste to draw the phone to eye level had her launch it up over her head but she actually gripped it on second attempt, a follow-up to her self-aimed eye roll and scanned the blue light shape of a text message on her screen.

‘Mantente a salvo cariño’, it read on the screen beneath Luz’s string of videos and texts now bunched up together above it with a tiny notice underneath reading-

Read 5:34 pm

“Mamí?” That wasn’t something Luz had typed in and not something she’d realized she’d said aloud until she noticed that she wasn’t still sleeping. The four bars floating at the top left-hand corner of the screen where infrequently but steadily oscillating between two and three at a time. Luz instinctively swung her thumb over to the call button before her attention was taken by that last video before Camila’s own message.

“Hello,” she pondered to the inanimate file, “Where did you come from?” The unprecedented attack of intrigue and perhaps a mild case of post-sleep lightheadedness and Luz started playing the video, widening her eyes as Eda’s face took up most of the frame. “Eda?”

“Okay” said King, “I’ll bite. What is that?”

Eda bandied the cube between one hand and the other before trapping it between both and glaring into it’s immaculate surface, “See for yourself.”

King stared into the opposite face of the cube, which his inflexible bone snout made a challenge so he needed to squint and got a clear enough image of the other side of the surface. He’d half expected to see Eda’s squashed featured peering in from the other side but instead, his eyes were locked on the Dominican-American woman deeply sleeping with sodden spots on her pillow sourced back to her watery eyes.

“Is that-“

“Luz’s mom?” Eda interrupted, “I’d hardly have risked life and limb for anything, or rather anyone, else.” Pulling the cube away from her face, King was now standing right beside her, “Are you talking about Luz or her mom?”

Eda didn’t answer.

“Wooooaaaaaahhhhhh”

From somewhere not readily noticeable, Hooty had sprouted up and was glaring into the cube in some kind of entranced state, like some kind of mesmeric conditioning. His eyes had even been glazed over by a series of swirls that King thought he could interrupt by pushing his way between him and the cube, to no avail.

“Is he alright?”

“No idea. Wait, if he’s here... who’s watching Luz?”

King’s skeletal features swung back around, “This whole thing made so much noise; we could’ve drawn attention from anyone!” Before King had breathing space to get another word in, Eda gave Hooty a hearty slap which startling him out of his ethereal revelry. “Ouch! Sheesh, hoot.”

“Hooty, in as few words as you can manage, is Luz safe?” She punctuated each of the last words for emphasis.

“Oh, sure. Luz was sound asleep when I came over here.”

“Which was when?” King asked

“As soon as you guys left.”

The distance over which Eda’s hand flew following it’s collision with her face was superseded by the speed at which her forehead bounded off her knees. Almost on instinct, Eda broke into a run, clasping her detached hand mid-bolt and sprinted back towards the Owl House.

“-lengths you won’t go to for your kids’ happiness.”

A silence that sounded of roses eroded the exhaustion sagging in Luz’s eyes to it’s bare minimum, “’Daughter’?” she asked herself when her cogitations were rudely interrupted by a nearby collapse of what may or may not have been a ramshackle construction designed to substitute a broken portal.

“Oh, no. Eda?! Eda, what have you done?!” Now well and truly awake, Luz was up and away, launching from the spot to her room door to the stairs to the outer door. By the time she’d exceeded the threshold to the living room, there was no need for her to make a grab for the door since Eda, at least three of her limbs now all askew from her winded charge for death or glory came careening through it first and all but piled into her, straightening her limbs out through means of a tight hug.

“Luz! Oh, you’re safe!”, Eda declared, literally talking out of the back of her head. “Yeah, I’m alright. Why- why wouldn’t I... be?” Luz asked whilst trying to crane her neck around Eda’s misaligned head so she could actually proffer her with an answer to her face.

“Right, sorry. Lemme fix this; then I’ll start over.” Eda gripped her ears in a reverse motion and yanked hard on them, dragging her skull back to the correct orientation; from within the mass of hair she carried, the cube from the portal shook loose from within the strands and caught air across the room, landing flat and the newly-emerged King’s toes as he stood in front of Hooty’s line of sight.

The object thrown clear of Eda’s locks wasn’t unnoticed by Luz but swaddled by Eda was unable to pass comment on it, at least until Eda collected herself and released her.

“Sorry. King and I went off to do a little errand and I apparently thought it best to leave Hooty in charge. How did you sleep?”

Luz’s eyes hadn’t batted at a word Eda had said, which she had noted under the assertion of where her apprentice’s eyes had been attracted. “Where did you get that?” Eda took Luz by the shoulder and led her over to where the cube sat motionless, the only article that could’ve been capable of lifting attention away from the typically jocular spectacle of King starfishing across Hooty’s determined face to keep his eyes off the cube; Hooty, however, was treating is too much like a hug.

“Let’s take this somewhere else”, Eda advised, thinking better than to wake Camila with such flagrant nonsense. She and Luz retreated to Eda’s muffled room at the apex of the house, what Eda considered to be the centrepiece of a resting outlaw, gently settling in her nest. Luz sat cross-legged, with the cube positioned in her lap. She looked up at Eda with her wet, brown eyes.

“Daughter.” Eda wasn’t a little bit dumbstruck by this sudden branch, “Come again?” Luz returned her stare to the magic item she clasped, tracing it’s flawless and unsullied edges with her forefinger in a anticipatory, absent-minded way. “You said that, well... that I was the- the daughter you never knew you wanted?” And Eda’s face went a more visceral shade of red than anything recorded in the Isles’ chancy history. Luz still had her eyes fixed on the cube so she didn’t see it but it was an emotional response so outrageous that she and anyone within radius enough would probably start contracting blushes to match.

“Um, well... uh-“

Luz allowed this to float between them for a second because in equal footing to Eda’s attempt to hide her abashment was Luz trying to conceal just how wide her toothless smile and inextricably fluid tears had made her cheeks all puffy and a red to balance the flush in her mentor’s.

“If, uh, you look closer at the cube-“

“I see mamí.” Luz finished it for her. She laid the cube in the twigs and bracken comprising the nest and turned to look at Eda, now all too happy to give her a fresh, open view of her unparalleled glee; “And here-“ she began.

Smoothly and a little cunningly, Luz wormed her way in between Eda’s arms again, “-I have mom.”

The word ‘mom’ lent a extra pound in Eda’s chest to reverberate through her ears and lodge in her throat, at least that’s what she wanted to think because saying aloud that she was choking on her tears wouldn’t have sounded like something she’d want said in her obituary.

“You think you’re the only one who wants us to be family?”

“I... guess not”, Eda’s affectionate snort that typically came on the tail end of a derisive laugh was taken as an open window for Luz to ball up like a little Latina armadillo and cradle herself, pulling Eda’s other arm around the crest of her neck and burrowing her face into her palm.

She let out a long, dreamy sigh; “Little owlet is still sleepy”. Eda said nothing; Luz couldn’t have made it any clearer what she wanted, to be held close by her surrogate mother while she had a peaceful rest.

She wordlessly obliged.

By the fall of the following evening, Luz was wide-awake again. Eda discreetly instructed Hooty to go and source some sleeping nettles on the off-chance they’d be needed. The hollow ringing of an alarm was about to sound through the cube’s six anti-materialistic sides and Luz wanted to be alert and engaged when it did; if her mamí was going to hear anyone’s voice when she woke, she wanted it to be hers.

5:45pm, common human time and the nail-bitingly irritating bitzing that came standard with every alarm clock beyond yonder cycled four inches beside Camila’s ear. She flat her palm against the top of it and it stopped. Eyes still scrunched up until she extracted the particulates of dead skin from the corners anchored between the bridge of her nose, Camila replaced her glasses and took a shrift look at the framed photo of Luz she took when she was but a dinky kid.

“Buenos dias, mi niño,” she told the picture groggily. She then responsively wedged her eyes shut with crocked fingers, “Oh, my. Now you’re talking to yourself, Camila. What is they say? The first sign of madness?”

“The second sign is when you get an answer back...”

On Luz’s end of the communion, Camila took fright and launched her glasses from her face, knocking the frame into facing the ceiling.

Camilla hastily put her glasses back on and took up the frame with not a little modicum of desperate tension. “L-Luz? Mija, is that you?”

“It’s me, mamá.”

“I... I don’t understand. I can’t see you.”

“But I can see you, mommy. I’m here.”

Camila rotated the frame in her hand and caught the faintest glimpse of Luz, her teenage Luz, superimposed over the 6-year-old counterpart displayed behind the glass the former was speaking through. She extracted the picture from the frame to expose the black felt backing behind it and Luz’s face and background became as clear as the photo.

“Luz! Oh, mija, I can see you.”

“You can see me now?”

“I can, I can! But, how...?”

“You can thank Eda; she brought me one of these weird cubes that I was speaking to you through before back.”

A short silence broke between the two, neither really knowing how to carry on from there.

“So...” Luz interjected, “how’s Vee settling in?”

A voice bounced around the hall outside, “Really well, thanks Luz.”

“Luz?!”

Vee’s haste to charge into the room sent her over in the doorframe but she nimbly leapt over the bed, gazing into the now vacant frame. Luz had no compunctions with sharing her face with Vee and told her as much. “Thanks, buddy. At first, I was all like “But what if she hates it?” and your mom here was all nice and said I could make my own choices”.

Luz let out an obviously dry chuckle that she expected Eda and King to pick up on but was obviously hoping Camila wouldn’t. “Yeeaah, heh, esa suena a mamá, está bien”. It wasn’t exactly sarcasm but there was something in Luz’s tone that probed the idea that her heart wasn’t fully in the words she was speaking, hence her relying on Spanish.

The things thus far unsaid but having yet to be said were turning Luz’s stomach because trying to pinpoint a start felt like trying to catch a bumblebee in a thimble. Through the cube, she watch Vee’s Basalisk features reshape themselves into a closer resemblance to Luz’s own human anatomy and passed a comment that she was going out before making an exit.

“She seems to be settling in well.” Luz said, listlessly, “Are you...?”

“Mija?”, Camila broke in, quite authoritatively, bordering on brusque in a ‘you-aren’t-in-trouble-but-this-needs-to-be-said’ kind of way. Luz almost swallowed her tongue, “Y-yes?” A deep, appeasing exhale.

“I love you, Luz. You know that, right?”

“I- Yes, yes, of course I do. And you know I love you too, mom.”

Camila stiffed momentarily but softened again; “There’s a creature from another world in my house, living in my daughter’s place. She’s so much like her – strong, impassioned, free-spirited and empathetic to a fault – she’s all the daughter I could have asked for.”

Luz felt like gagging on that last part, until-

“But, so are you, cariño. From the moment I brought you into the world, I wanted you to know for every second we had together that there was not and never will be a single part of you that I don’t love with all my heart.” The strain in Camila face from trying not to reduce herself to a blubbering mess was palpable. “From what Vee’s told me, you’ve become something nobody ever thought was possible. My baby girl, the first human witch.”

Luz wasn’t even trying to contain her composure, allowing every single tear to splay across her cheeks every which way they felt like. “The more I look at you,” Camila continued, “the more I begin to see it. If learning magic became an option for you then becoming a witch would be your calling; I was wrong to call it some fantasy you were playing out but-“

...

“But I can’t help but wish you were home. I want you to come back home to me because you’re still my little girl and where you are, it just isn’t your world.”

Luz pressed her cloak to her face to let the tears seep in but they instead just dropped to the floor, slipping from the witch’s wool like water off a duck’s back. “I...” Luz began but clearly had not endpoint for that sentence in her head, so instead just swallowed and burritoed herself in her cloak.

“I think I could use some more sleep.” She didn’t have the heart to let Camila respond to that before she’d disappeared into the hallway. “No, wait, mija! I didn’t mean...” But Luz was already gone, not gone off to sulk but departed because this frankly hadn’t been how she’d wanted this to go. Camila’s face was still plastered over the face of the cube, resting on a chair at the far end of the room.

Her attention was captured by the sight of Eda and King, who had been sat listening in to the entire exchange between the humans. Camila swallowed intently when Eda looked down at King, who was simply staring at his feet as she had been and nodded in the direction of the door, a gesture meaning “go to her”.

“I’m on it.” King answered aloud, sounding as deflated and sagged as he left the room after Luz.

“I figured it out, by the way.” Eda locked her attention of the shamefaced Camila on the cube. The shame didn’t disappear but it did balance out her bewilderment. “What happened between you and Luz that all but sapped the energy out of her that she tried to keep hidden from us.”

“You made her promise to stay when we got her home, didn’t you?”

The weight between Eda and Camila’s brewing stand-off gradually got stronger and stronger. “I did”. She didn’t sound less ashamed but she did have the glint in her eyes of someone who was braced to start defending their actions.

“I’d figured as much.”

“Are you judging me?”

Eda didn’t rise to that; she could’ve done but there’d have been little point. It would have achieved nothing. “No. The only parents worth judgement, I find, are those who try and direct their kids’ lifestyles for their own benefit. But I won’t be silent about that fact that I don’t think you’re entirely thinking in Luz’s best interests either.”

Camila scowled, “And you are, I suppose? Oh, I saw that video you recorded, Ms. Owl Lady, but let me tell you that you’ve got no say in my, my, daughter’s lifestyle. Whatever you may think or believe, you are not her mother!”

Eda’s already pale complexion drained away until she looked as white as a sheet; “No, I’m not.” She agreed, with no reluctance. “But I love her.”

Camila’s scowl retreated a fraction, “I want her to be happy and to live the life that makes her happiest.” The scowl deepened again.

“Are you trying to say that I don’t?!”

“Not remotely. But where’s the happiest you’ve seen her back home?”

Camila let out a small whimper as the scowl dissipated entirely; Eda continued her speech, “Was Luz ever as happy trying to fit into a world where she just didn’t as she’s clearly been learning magic here with us?”

She couldn’t.

“Luz thinks far too much with her heart. If she’s locked so violently in two minds between wanting to get back home to you knowing you don’t want her to return and being able to stay here and continue doing what she loves, she’ll not only start to falter in trying to achieve either but it’ll pull her apart. I mean, you raised the kid, can you tell me I’m wrong?”

Once more, she couldn’t.

“She desperately wants to get back home to you, don’t question that, but when she’s back, there’s something you need to consider before you talk to her about this whole staying put thing.”

“Which is?”

“Why you’re asking her to. Because I can already see that deep down, you know the reason she chose to stay here wasn’t to get away from you, it was to keep being herself – the same herself that she probably wasn’t even aware she thought you wanted to change.”

The same nausea that Camila had experienced when Luz’s form had magically drifted aloft into the aether that night stormed back in with a vengeance. “If Luz stays, just have a good think about what you’re asking her to give up. The friends she’s made, the life she’s made for herself here; if she relinquished all that to return to a place where she felt out of place everywhere she went, would she be happy? If you make her stay, you have to accept that she'll be giving up much more than you are.”

Camila froze in place, her tears sat idle on the cusp of the corners of her eyes; “I- I need to go.” She got up to move away from the frame, “Eda?” she asked, almost expecting Eda to have disappeared in the blink of an eye like some kind of vampire or some other magical thing that could vanish at the drop of a hat. “Ask Luz something for me, could you?”

The faintest, virtually insubstantial, nod of agreement, though that could’ve just been the distance away from the cube.

“When Luz comes back, could you ask her-“

Another brief pause, a nervous tick the kept her from relaying the point.

“Tell her that I’m going to be a proper mother to her when she’s ready to talk to me again. So... ask her to tell me all about this Amity Blight.”

Chapter Text

Following on from their not-quite-a-spat discussion the previous evening, both Noceda mother and daughter laid resting at either end of a dimensional divide that neither could transgress. Right until a fairly hefty boom and whooft from elsewhere sent shivers up the timber supports holding the Owl House upright.

A pinkish smoke bellowed out of the front windows of the house; Hooty went cross-eyed and turgid, spewling his tongue across the delicious dust and one or two of the magmapies flopped dead to the dirt, eyes glassy and drifted steadily apart like a croaked fish.

Since Camila couldn’t burst through any doors like Luz invariably had, she instead just clutched the picture frame and shook it vigorously, asking in tandem with her emerging daughter, “What was that?!”

Eda slunk into the living room from the kitchen behind Luz with a thick lilac powder smothering her face like spray paint. First a face like bitten backside, she drew in a large helpful of air, raising her chin to the sky and her demeanour switched on a dime to a fit of quiet laughter.

“Umm, breakfast?”

Luz exhaled and rested her hands on her cheeks. “It wasn’t a ommelette, was it?”

“Thought I’d try boiled phoenix eggs again, very fancy stuff”.

“I could’ve tried phoenix eggs this entire time and nobody told me!” Camila just watched the exchange looking for a moment to interject, as if soaking in an outsider chat about exploding breakfasts was as standard as bus fare.

“Knock yourself out, kid. I’m sure they’re still good... passible... edible”. But Luz had already left the room; “But don’t eat them too fast or it might make your heart burn, literally!” Eda just chuckled after that before she glanced over at the cube and her eyes glazed over Camila’s stunned face.

“What?”

She knew that stare well enough – she’s been given the brunt of it from Lilith many a time. That’s overbearing look of disapproval for one’s lifestyle and choices. The self same disapproving look that Camila was employing on her right there and then; “I accept that you are currently responsible for Luz while she’s with you, Ms.... Clawthorne, was it? And as such, I’m was hoping for a bit more, well, responsibility than... this.” From the cube, she tried to gesture in the broad direction of hallway Luz had just bolted down.

“Then what? The kid’s fine and happy. How’s that bad?”

“You aren’t just responsible for Luz’s happiness, you’re accountable for her safety too! You cannot claim to be a good guardian and then nearly explode her as a wake-up call. And what was that I heard about her heart catching fire?”

“Oh, come on. I’m not that careless... mostly.”

“And that’s the problem.”

“Camila, this is a dangerous world. There are lots of things that Luz may be at risk from. When she got here, King and I thought she was likely to get lost or eaten or both; there’s only so much I can do with the food at my disposal to make sure she doesn’t starve. There’s not a great deal she can digest here.”

Camila relented and sighed to say as much. “Just promise me that you’re being alert with my daughter’s health and welfare.”

“Of course, I am. In as much as I need to; she’s not made of glass. You’d be amazed by how well that girl can hold her own-“

“-HOT! HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT, HOT! Liquid relief!”

“Dang it! Luz, don’t go in the cupboard for that!”

Too late.

Eda side-glanced Camila’s expression; it spoke volumes with not a word uttered, “Not. Impressed.”

“Heh-heh. Smoke bomb!”

But she just launched a bag of chips she’d stored in her hair at the cube, stared dumbstruck for the moment and beat it.

After about ten minutes, Camila had taken the frame downstairs and brewed a tea for Vee. She took it gracefully but since finding out what she was, Camila had wondered regularly whether she took it as a courtesy or because she’d grown to have a taste for it.

“Whoo! He-he-heh, that was fun!” Luz was calling aloud to nobody in particular on her side of the glass.

“Ooh! Ooh, it that Luz?” Vee practically rode Camila’s shoulder until she nodded in confirmation. “Hiya, sis!”

“Sis?” Luz asked, targeting a quizzical but humoured look at Camila, who simply shrugged. “If it’s good enough for the goose, it’s good enough for the gander.”

Luz’s heart just melted at that but she tried not to let her face betray it – and failed. “Should I take it you have time to talk now?”

“Always, mamí.”

Vee respectfully left them to it and wandered off, like in a daydream. Luz cradled her arms in a nervous expression, gripping her elbows as if in preparation for a potential need to soothe them again afterwards. “Mom, about last night... I-“

“Don’t apologise, mija.” Camila wrapped her hands around her own mug of tea, stroking the china vessel in the throws of a regretful contemplation. “I, um, saw your video messages.”

“You did?”

“I watched them all over the other night. So much has happened to you since I last saw you. You you that is.” There was something that rested in Camila’s tone that was combatting Luz’s instinct to look shamefaced that didn’t exactly keep her from doing so but made her lip quiver like her face itself was still undecided. “It’s almost as if you’ve found your own people in that time.”

“Mamá, please don’t...”

Camila raised a hand in interruption, “It’s okay, Luz. It’s the job of a mother to understand her child and encourage their best interests. Even...”

Her face winced.

“...even if it means losing them.”

That did it – Luz fell apart into a blubbering mess, face buried in a fold of arms and hands, both pressing dejectedly into her hair. Camila’s parental instincts took hold again, “No, no, no, no, don’t cry. Don’t cry; it’s okay!” Luz wasn’t looking at her imploring face so her expression was clearing going to make no difference. “Oh, baby girl.”

Luz sniffed as she raised her head, “I never wanted to make you feel like you failed, mom. I love you and I’m sorry and you’re the only thing I’ve got to come back home to!”

Camila was taken aback by Luz’s brutal onset honesty. “It’s why I chose to stay here-“ A bright sparkle of light emanating from an intrusive sunbeam from behind Camila bounced off the glass of the picture frame and presented a golden-bright projection of her sobbing daughter, knees crocked and feet splayed apart, appeared before her. Unbeknownst to her, where Luz sat, another inexplicable light for offering this self-same projection of her mother to her.

From her experience in that wretched rain, Camila knew she couldn’t wrap her girl in a hug to console her, like she’d always been able to do since she was a baby, but when Luz looked up from her arms, tear-drenched features took in the sight of her kneeling in front of her as she raised the palms of her hands and ‘placed’ them on Luz’s cheeks. It wasn’t like physical contact, but the surface of Camila’s palms got warmer as Luz’s face got drier.

She took a chance and kissed Luz on the forehead, a tangle shot through her lips as a small imprint broke away to miniscule fragments of light off of Luz.

“I’ll come back to you, mom. I promise you that – but if I told you that I’d be willing to just give up everything I’ve found here then...”

“I know. You’d be lying.”

The silence drifted in the air. “Querida,” Camila perked up, working with Luz to take hold of her hands, “Tell me about Amity.”

“Amity?” Just the mention of the name out of Camila’s own mouth brought a flush of red rampaging across her face. “Right, yes, I’ve told you about Amity, haven’t I?”

There hadn’t been a twitch of equal footing between the elder Blight siblings and the younger for a long stretch of time. The foremost few months, not all of which fell within the period of Luz’s residence on the Isles, had seen to have the distance between the three siblings slowly shorten. Admittedly, it hadn’t retracted into a perfect triangle; an isosceles dynamic in which Edric would slope off into his own world allowed for the sisters of Amity and Emira to reinstate their own.

Today hadn’t been one of those days.

It had been an uncommon morning; Amity was still acclimatising to this reality of waking up with a portion of hope in her heart that had enfeebled the previously dominant sense of stone-cold obligation. It had been a welcome addition to the ever-expanding list of benefits that love had reaped her.

For the previous few mornings, she’d been roused from slumber by the tenacious need for attention from Ghost but on each occasion, she’d graced her early morning drowsiness with something sweet and quaint, a little present or an affectionate face rub across her upper cheek. Not a few mornings ago, she’d come up onto the bed with a little laurel wheat nestled around her head.

Amity sat up and yawned expectantly, to little disappointment, “Good morning to you too, Ghost” she soothingly greeting her palisman, giving her a nice thumbing around the ears, “Are you going to do the thing I like?”

Almost on cue, Ghost circled round on the bed, across Amity’s covered, cross-legged sitting and sat back on her hind legs. A dull, luminescent ringing sound rang out from Ghost’s glowing eyes and she started to change colour; from the tip of her nose to the end of her tail, a streak of indigo rushed down her back. Almost in an hourglass pattern, the colour spread across the top of Ghost’s head, just over the corners of her eyes and over her ears and as it seeped down her midrim, it started to gradually fade into the whiteness of her belly.

The sight warmed Amity’s heart; she’d not been offering any prizes to anyone ‘clever’ enough to twig what it was homage to, or rather whom. That still hadn’t stopped Edric from trying to cash in on it from time to time, at which point he’d received short shrift on each and every occasion.

“Ooh, pretty,” came a familiar voice from behind her. Emira’s.

“Emira, why are you in my room?” Before Amity would’ve responded with a more venomous and aggressive retort, but it since evolved, or devolved, into a old-fashioned, well-meaning exasperation.

“I’m so familiar with the way your heart beats at anything that puts you in mind of Luz that I could practically dance to it by now.”

“What.. do you...?”

Emira had whipped her scroll out of the illusionists’ trademark blue magic circle before Amity had even started speaking and to her astonishment and slight confusion had managed to pull up a picture of Luz enshrouded by her cat-eared hoodie before she’d even begun to think of anything else.

“You’re not very discreet, Mittens.”

Amity sighed, resignedly, “Fine, commence the teasing, but can we do it while I go get some breakfast downstairs?” She got up and started walking to the door, with Em in tow.

“I’m not here to tease, just give you some support.”

Nothing was said between the two of them by the time they’d reached the kitchen – Emira had presumed Amity had been working towards a witty dismissal, but she simply spaced-out again, lost in thought.

“Hello? Ground control to Amity Blight?”

Amity was shaken out of her momentary lapse, “Oh, sorry, just thinking about work.” Emira narrowed her eyes at Amity’s unreadable face; her new hairstyle had seen a dramatic transformation in her little sister but her ability to make her inner thoughts completely unfathomable through reading her facial expressions transcended any self-improvement strategies.

Was that just hard-wired into her brain or something?

The silence made Emira feel a little bit uncomfortable and she didn’t even have her twin to level off the inherent feeling of awkwardness. “Sooooo...”

Amity didn’t even flinch, consumed in her own world.

“You seemed pretty weightless when you came home last night. Was it that romantic taking care of Luz while she was sick? Common mold, wasn’t it?”

Amity knew not to try and hide her blush from her sister; she’d seen it often enough that any attempt to conceal it would have all the effect of not bothering. “Ah, yep, yep. I got to prove myself as an awesome girlfriend. All good.”

Emira nodded in recognition with a face that insinuated she still had more to say, “And what about Eclipse Lake?”

Amity did a spit take into the chest of a passing abomination servant, which simply trundled on as if nothing had hit it.

“What?!”

“Oh, Luz was very informative on those odd messages she was sending Ed and I. She was also pretty cute singing her little rhymes. Wanna see?”

Yes, but not right now. “And she told you about Eclipse Lake?”

“Yep.”

“Did she... say anything else?”

“Only something about her snake arms being powerful weapons. She was really out of it.”

Amity fidgeted in her seat, hoping for all her worth that her sister wouldn’t notice what she’d been cradling between her knees since she sat down; her diaries as she scribed her itinerary.

“I wonder what you did with this.” Emira called over clutching the self-same diary that Amity thereafter noticed had vanished from her laps.

Illusions.

Great.

“Emira...!”

“Relax,” Emira held up her hands in a gesture of surrender, still gripping the book before handing it back to her, a solemn look in her eyes, “I wasn’t gonna read it, sis.”

Amity took it back, confused but gracious, scrutinizing her sister’s features and drawing the conclusion that she was looking to be confided in – there had been hints brewing around Emira for at least a month now that she was looking to be seen as a good older sister. For all her flaws, Amity started to accept that she was growing up and accepting her role as a supportive sibling. Mostly.

“I, uh...” she opted to open with, with not a small measure of reticence, “I could use your help.”

Emira’s ears twitched; “Score!” She thought to herself, “She’s confiding in me!” It later transpired that she had not said that to the open room, that instead got a swift “Help with what?”

Amity tense her knuckles over her other hand but eased it off when she decided it wasn’t necessary and instead just tapped her thumbs together, not in shame but in trepidation. Looking Emira in the eye, she divulged her intentions; “I’m going to give my diary to Luz.”

“Woah! Bold move, mittens. Ooh, I actually quite like that. 'Bold-Move Mittens', yeah-“

“Em,” Amity snapped her fingers to draw Emira’s attention back to her, “focus.”

“Right. Right, right, right. Sorry, carry on.”

A deep breath. “I spent a lot of that little escapade to Eclipse Lake worried that if I failed to return to Luz with results, she’d be done with me.” She stopped Emira from interjecting, knowing full well she was about to, “I know she wouldn’t in my heart, but that’s not exactly on speaking terms with my head in matters where Luz is involved. It’s like I can’t think and feel at the same time and I feel like this is to blame.”

She holds the diary up in front of her face in an accusatory gesture. Emira didn’t vocally riposte to that, merely circled her wrist in a motion meaning ‘Keep going’.

“Luz knows the me I am now, the me I feel I always should’ve been. But my own stupid issues keep worming their way back into my head and I don’t want my problems to be the thing that tears us apart. In this instance, I quite literally am my own worst enemy.”

Amity sits gazing into her interlocked hands, skimming her thumbs up and down her interwoven fingers. She wasn’t paying too much attention to the environment around her because she was only aware that Emira had moved when she felt her big sister’s arm slink around her shoulder and pull her closer, rubbing her upper arm in a comforting way.

It was nice. Probably against her better judgment, Amity let herself nestle into her sister’s embrace. “I don’t think it could be that bad, Mittens; you make each other really happy, that could never be a bad thing.”

“I know, but... I want to be able to say it to her without worrying about her getting wrapped up in my plights.”

“Say what?”

“What do you think?”

The penny dropped; “Oh,” Emira brought her spare hand up to her lip in contemplation. She unfurled her other arm from around her little sister and picked up the diary from her lap. “Amity, you’re going to say that to your girlfriend,” Emira announced theatrically, “and I’m going to help you.”

“How?” Amity asked.

“With a flawless plan.”

About 100 meters away from the Owl House, Amity and Emira stuck their heads out from behind their chosen point of concealment, a tree. “Are you sure you can keep Luz’s attention while I do this?” Amity didn’t sound sure, but that may just have been her wanting to be the one to do the distracting. “Trust me. It’s gonna be fine.”

There was no sign of Luz or Eda, while outside the door Hooty was bouncing his face off the keys of a typewriter, presumably putting together a letter for Lilith while King watched with a crooked eye from inside the house.

Emira passed the diary to Amity, “Remember the plan?”

“Yep.”

“Great.” Emira drew a circle in the air and Amity’s enrobed body became completely transparent; ‘Nice cloaking’ Emira patted herself on the back interally before Amity gave her braid a flick to remind her she was still there. “Why are you still standing here, the spell doesn’t last very long. Go!”

No quibbling required, Amity less-than-stealthily made a beeline for the side of the house while Emira straightened herself out and took a gentle but confident stroll into the view of the house’s occupants. She walked up to the front door, Hooty completely subsumed in what he was doing that he didn’t appear to notice her approach.

“Hey, uh, I don’t suppose you-“ The door creaked open a crack and Hooty called out, “Luz, you have a visitor!” with no indication that he’d actually been heard and just kept tapping his beak off the keys in front of him. Emira took a step closer to the door to try and catch the sound of any muffled voices from inside. When none came, she stuck her head in through the door.

“Did you want something?” Emira bounded up and whacked her head on the doorframe in surprise, courtesy of King’s asking his question directly into her ear. He sat there and cackled for a moment before getting smacked on the snout and silenced. “Hey, you’re Amity’s sister, correct?”

“Yeah, that’s right.”

“What could you want here?”

“To talk to Luz. Is that allowed, King?” she didn’t quite spit the word out but felt a small compulsion to achieve personal recompense for being teased herself.

King grumbled a bit before traipsing down the hallway to collect Luz from her room. Whilst he was gone, Emira noticed a loose stack of papers strewn on the table resting a few feet from the couch, roughly halfway through was a sheet with a series of little doodles Luz had done illustrating Amity and herself in all their previous misadventures, further inscribed with fervent little hearts and stars and warm colours binding them all together.

She also noticed that she’d made a few attempts to recreate Amity’s signature in the corner; there were at least four variants that she’d botched but one that was actually quite close and underneath it she’d scribbled ‘+LN’ in tiny lettering beneath it and drawn a little heart around it.

While Em was admiring Luz’s cute sketches, the very same girl came tumbling into the room in a bit to rest the sheet from her hands but she just drew a circle in the air and puffed away for a second and she just ran through her, folding it up when she was done and handing it to her.

“You two are making a habit of this”, Emira teased while Luz came down from her blushing. “Please don’t tell Amity, I’ll never live it down.”

Emira stood and wondered if the day was just looping back on itself; hadn’t she had this same conversation with Amity just 45 minutes ago?

“Here,” she hailed Luz to the couch with a pat on the cushion next to her, “sit with me.”

After Luz had composed herself, she joined the eldest Blight sibling and seated herself, copy Em’s cross-legged form as she faced her. “Did you know I helped Amity dye her hair green?”

“She changed it back again?”

“No, no, no. The first time.”

“Oh. Well, in that case, no, I didn’t. Did you come here just to tell me that?”

Emira took Luz’s hands in her own, “No, it’s not for that. I wanted to talk to you about... well, I just wanted to talk with you about Amity.”

Luz asked if Amity was okay, remarkably not clamping down on Em’s hands, or perhaps because of that. She got incredibly passionate in her concern, even bordering on panic that anything might have befallen her, all of which Emira dismissed.

“I’ll just cut right to the chase,” she broke off Luz’s breathless maundering with before all but picking Luz up in her arms and dragging her into a thankful hug. “Well,” Luz continued, somewhat at a loss, “this is nice.”

“No, Luz, what’s ‘nice’ is looking into my baby sister’s eyes and seeing reflected back at me someone with hope for the future. A future that she finally think’s she’s got some control over now that she’s allowing herself to think and feel all the things she’d been denying ever since you came here”.

Emira reached to unfurl Luz’s scribbles but this time, she didn’t attempt to preclude her, and thus she brought her love-imbued impressions to bear. “I mean, look at these. You even tried to get her stupid, fancy watermark perfect just to stick your initials under it. Amity’s never had that, Luz, and you make her so happy, you’ve no idea” Em pulled out another hug, “and I wanted to thank you for it. ”

Luz’s blood rush in her face looked near enough to face paint and the temperature of her skin, which was near enough to Em’s own face to feel, was giving that away.

“Amity’s an awesome girlfriend, Em,” Luz professed when she’d been set free of the embrace, “the best I could’ve asked for. I can finally see and hear from my mom again because of the lengths she went to for me. I...” she bit her tongue.

“Well, you know.”

While Luz was staring dreamily at her shoes, Emira got a side-glance out the window to see Amity beckoning her out and to be swift about it. “Wow, is that the time, I should get going, I seem to have misplaced Ed. He’ll probably get himself eaten if I leave him alone to long. See you later, loverbird!” Her sudden outburst of nonsense gradually decreased in volume in her equally sudden hasty departure.

The door closed behind her and Luz was left kind of befuddled, “Um, bye?”

“Why are you still standing here, the spell doesn’t last very long. Go!”

No quibbling required, Amity less-than-stealthily made a beeline for the side of the house while Emira straightened herself out and took a gentle but confident stroll into the view of the house’s occupants.

Amity principally wanted to be out of Hooty’s line of sight, since he’d have been the most likely to give her away. To her shock, Eda was around the back of the house with what looked to be something like a giant rendition of what Luz had explained to be what the human’s called a ‘pizza cutter’.

A large serrated blade, roughly a meter in diameter, was roughly a third submerged into the tough and resistant dirt of the house, which from the looks of things had proven to be just as tough and resistant for the last ten paces. Eda had her hands, admittedly encased in chunky metal gloves, grappled around one of the prongs closer to the ground and was trying to lift it out so she could trying the next one in. For what reason she was trying to do this, Amity had not the first, second or third idea.

Trying to keep at least fifteen feet from where the groaning woman was trying and failing the puncture the ground with a quarter-ton death machine, Amity arched undetected around where Eda was doing whatever she was doing until she was positioned under the crest of the roof that led up to the window of-

“Very sneaky, Boots. But owls have good eyesight, good enough to catch the outline of a kid trying to hold an invisibility spell up but can’t help slightly breathing through her nose.”

Amity gave up the ghost and not just in the sense that her palisman of that namesake hopped off her shoulders when she released the remaining breath she’d been holding in. Taking a moment to air her lungs out, she uttered, “Don’t... tell Luz... I’ve been here,” in a breathy manner.

Eda glanced over her, her heterochromatic irises clearly giving the picture in front of her the once over and piecing together that Amity plus apprentice’s open window plus bungled invisibility spell equaled either mystery or surprise. And Boots hadn’t really bothered that much with mystery since that whole debacle in Willow’s brainpan.

“Eh”. Eda idled up to Amity and dropped a balled up plant glyph at her feet, which unfurled at the tip of her shoe. Looking up at Eda, she was bestowed a finger on the lips, a wink and a tongue click and the Owl Lady returned to her unorthodox pastime. Amity gave her a grateful smile when she wasn’t paying attention and rested the sole of her shoe on the glyph, stood in a pencil-like stance and was silently lifted up to the root by an almost consciously quiet vine.

Scrambling across the roof and idly slipping in through the window, trying not to dwell on just how creepy this plan actually sounded when she outlined it in her head all while actually enacting it, Amity drew the diary from her back and scanned around the room, looking for an optimum place to stash it where Luz would eventually find it.

Deciding on the underside of her pillow, Amity slipped the book in her pillowcase before quickly turning to withdraw it and place a handwritten note across the front of it, tying it down with the loose lace of her old broken necklace and thereafter return it.

“Would you be Amity?”

Who had been watching her?! Amity almost froze into a solid, unmoving mass, her blood running cold when she took stock of where the voice actually came from, an otherworldly golden cube, through the immediate face of which could be seen the curious expression of a woman who looked startlingly like her girlfriend.

Amity’s shock dissipated, to be exchanged for a wanton curiosity; “Wait. Are you...? You-you’re Luz’s mom!”

Camila wordlessly nodded in confirmation. “Oh, wow. Uh, hi, Ms Noceda, or should that be Mrs?”

“Camila is just fine, cariño.” Just like Luz, speaking in that strange language. Exactly why did the human realm need so many languages?

“O-okay, Camila it is then.” Amity nervously chuckled. Camila brightened on the cube face and fell into a little laugh.

“Did I say something?”

“No. It’s something Luz said in one of her messages that she probably didn’t mean to put on record. Diosa de pelo de algodón de azúca is quite right.”

“I... don’t know what that means.”

Camila blushed herself at being the one to tell her daughter’s girlfriend that the former had called her a ‘cotton candy-haired goddess’ in her mother tongue. But she did it anyway. The blush that followed was mighty, all-consuming and all but stole Amity’s tongue away from underneath her. She well nigh achieved the same hue as the self-same hair.

Parrying her own taunting internalizations, she observed how she was driving her thumbs into Luz’s pillow. Wanting only the offending diary to be indicative of her presence, Amity turned and pleaded with Camila not to let Luz know she’d seen her there, “I mean, she’ll know I was here when she finds this but I’m kind of working to a plan to be the one to say I... well, say that first.”

Camila pinched her fingers and pulled them from one corner of her mouth to the other; Amity had seen Luz do that every now and then and was still moderately clueless as to it’s significance but nonetheless understood it’s denoting statement of ‘I’m sworn to silence’ and so took it at face value and made a brisk exit.

Riding the vine back to the ground like a fireman’s pole, Amity returned to her earlier positions in the foliage lining the Owl House’s outskirts. Spotting Emira through the window keeping Luz’s focus, she beckoned her out with a quick hand signal and she appeared fleet in making her excuses and her exit.

“What was that?” she asked on her sister’s approach. Emira gave her a haughty side-eye, “Just being a gracious big sister. Did you do it?” An impromptu nod and the Blights went on their merry way, a weight lifted off Amity’s heart but not, unfortunately, her stomach.

“That was weird” Luz muttered to herself on return to her room, wherein she returned to her previous spot on her ragtag pile of blankets on which she slept. “Sorry, mamá, someone wanted me.”

Camila looked her up and down, there was an honest fluster Luz was trying to mask, “I know. Such a lovely girl, so charming.”

“Come again?”

“Tu Diosa de pelo de algodón de azúca, hmm?”

Luz didn’t have a drink on her. She was very thankful she didn’t have a drink on her or else she’d have done a not-unlike spit take that Amity had earlier that morning. “You mean Amity? Amity was here? In my room?” One moment, “Hold on, why did you call her that?”

“Probably because you did in one of your messages, mija?”

...

“Nooooooooooo...”

Luz slunk onto her back and tried to retreat into her hair before remembering her pixie cut wasn’t long enough to do that so she just pushed it back up over her head again. She took stock of the tiny thud as her head collided with the pillow and inspected the fabric, drawing out what she recalled to be Amity’s diary, from the library incident. Why was that in there?

“Oh, my. Is that the time? Sorry Luz, I need to go and put on something for Vee to eat. Te amo bebé.” She blew a kiss at the screen to round off her very obvious idea of making excuses and walked away from the picture frame, leaving Luz sitting in total silence, barring Eda still grunting away outside the window.

She wordlessly eyed the book in her hands and slipped the neatly crimped note tied to the front of it with a sort of string, she thought it was, out from beneath the intricately woven knot suspending it to the hardback and flattened it out; even in producing a single, simple fold in a sheet of parchment, Amity was profusely elegant.

As she recalled occurring with her diary that one time, a small illusion of Amity emerged from the page, the words glowing bright pink and dancing around the page to form a wide circle:

“Hi, Luz. I know that it’s kind of strange that I snuck into your room to deliver this, it was Em’s idea.“

That tracked.

“The fact is, Luz, ever since I went on that expedition to Eclipse Lake, I’ve been feeling more self-aware than ever. It-it’s not your fault at all; it’s my own insecurities that have got me feeling like this. I guess what I’m trying to say here is that, well, I know you like me, Luz, and I really, truly like you too and I now that I’ve got you, I don’t want anything, least of all some imaginary sense of unworthiness on my part, to get between us.”

Luz wanted to cut her off and offer some of her trademark heartfelt words of reassurance but she knew that this was just a letter that couldn’t hear her.

“So, I’ve decided to gift you my diary, my old diary that is. In that diary is everything I’m ashamed of – all of those horrible, spiteful things that I thought and did before I met you. It’s an open dialogue of all my worst attributes rolled together and I’m giving it to you to read so you can know precisely who it is you’ve let into your heart. I trust you implicitly and as such, this is my soul laid bare.”

The sheer weighty magnitude of the book Luz was holding could very well have turned it to granite in her grip because she could feel her arm tremble as she held it aloft.

“You know where to find me when you’ve finished and, if by some miracle you decide to stay with me when you get there, I’ll be waiting. Yours eternal, Amity Blight.”

The little figure dissipated into the air again and the little circle formed back into words. Luz tapped at the paper in disbelief; did Amity really think that little of herself?

As she jabbed at the corner, a small subsection, a follow-up in smaller writing, lit up the bottom right hand corner of the page not dissimilar to what her glyphs did and Amity materialized on the paper again.

“One more thing, Luz. As the girlfriend with the most to prove, I think I need to be the first to say it.”

“Say what?” Luz asked, still knowing full well that the paper couldn’t hear her but the blank that the little Amity had left open in her message still invited her to ask.

...

“I love you.”

And with that, she was gone.

She’d heard everything.

Camila hadn’t gone down to the kitchen; she’d not even left the room. And she’d listened to every word that note had said to her daughter. Still crouched out of the picture frame’s line of sight, she overheard Luz start laughing with a hint of weeping in her breath and she raised her hand to her heart.

“I can’t take this away from her” she scolded herself; there had to be another way to get her child back and not rob her of everyone she’d come to know and love.

“And if anyone can find that way, mija, it’s you,” she spiritually encouraged Luz from out of earshot and just sat there, quietly.

Reservedly.

Warmly.

Happily.

Chapter Text

It hadn’t escaped Luz’s attention from the word ‘go’ what Amity’s weightiest worriment was when the subject of their relationship placed her under heavy scrutiny – the role that she’d taken in her maltreatment and derision in the early throws of their time together.

If what the meagre experience she’d observed of the parenting tactics her oppressive parents employed was anything to go by, all that entrusting her diary into Luz’s care was representing that Odalia’s intrusive influence was still sinking it’s poisonous nails into the one thing Luz had always hoped she’d be for her girlfriend – an anchor for a freedom from that.

If that letter had told her anything, it effectively admitted that Amity still couldn’t feel free of it. She couldn’t accept her mistakes or capacity to be imperfect or else risk losing Luz to it. Which, in no uncertain terms, was absolute bunk.

“The covention duel, the library incident, the twins nearly getting eaten by that slitherbeast.” Luz muttered to herself through the thick cover of Amity’s diary that she was pressing to her lips in effort to muffle her preoccupations. Keeping her nose hanging over the brim of the book, she gently pecked the enfolded corner of Amity’s letter inscribed with her confession with her pinky finger and she flared up on the page, imparting the same words.

“One more thing, Luz. As the girlfriend with the most to prove, I think I need to be the first to say it. I love you.”

...

She prodded at her mushed-up pile of poached griffin eggs Eda had slewed in her direction across the table; Eda only took notice of Luz’s sudden bout of reduced edacity when she twigged her absent-mindedly sliding a fork under one egg and expertly catapulting it straight upwards when King dolphin-dove over her head, catching the plummeting egg in his snout on it’s descent.

“Luz? What’s wrong? I can promise this breakfast won’t set you on fire.”

“How do I help her, Eda?”

“Help who?”

Without faltering from her propped position on her skewed arm, Luz histrionically brandished Amity’s letter, still doubled over short of the appendix, and slapped it down on the table, the pink lettering spiraling out from under the planted hand and forming the circle that the illusory Amity was subsequently arisen on.

“One more thing, Luz. As the girlfriend with the most to prove, I think I need to be the first to say it. I love you.”

Luz’s propped arm flopped over the table, bringing her exhausted face down alongside it with a stressed ‘agh’.

Eda was predictably mazed trussed up in an expression of celebratory laudation. Luz, however, remaining unflinchingly deflated. “What’s with the face? She’s openly said she loves you, I thought you’d be elated.”

Now, nothing the Boiling Isles had slung her way had quite shot a feeling anywhere near as spectacular, even magical, directly into her soul quite like Amity Blight telling her that she loved her. The principle stipulation that was keeping Luz from erupting into the bipedal equivalent of the Northern Lights was the words that had preceded it.

Eda sighed in resignation, “What’s holding you back?”

“What did she mean, ‘the girlfriend with the most to prove’? Why does she think she’s got to prove herself to me? I don’t want her to be perfect – I don’t want her to think she’s got to be perfect for me!”

“You know, it could be that it’s just something she’s gotta learn for herself.” It felt at least like a valid reason. It sounded like a valid reason. And it fell very flatly on deaf ears.

“Is it wrong of me to have wanted to be the one to make her happy?”

“You’re jumping the gun, kid. She’s not saying she’s unhappy – I mean, I’m no expert but I reckon being in love often makes someone pretty, I don’t know, smiley?”

King, still squirming on the floor trying to reach for the residual egg snagged on the end of his mandible, was listening with at least half-paid interest, “Yeah, she did seem pretty over-the-moon when I pointed out to her that those weird human codes you were sending her were you wishing her home safe.”

Luz just clutched her legs to her chest and played with her feet like she only recently discovered she had them. “So why do I feel like I should be doing more? Why would she give me this diary?” She held the book aloft and Eda swiftly snatched it from her hands, swiveling it in her own.

Nestling it in her hair, she scooped Luz up over her shoulder and hefted her submissive body upstairs to her room.

Rhythmically tapping on the face of the realm cube, Eda called in “Eh-hem. Mama Noceda, your kid’s having girlfriend troubles. Could you give her some proper parental advice while I go off and do something typically impulsive and over-the-top?”

Camila was clearly shuffling restlessly through the creaking bed sounds and light-clicking that gave the other end of the line a good view of her – disheveled, dreary-eyed and exhibiting just about every other sign you’d associate with someone who’s just been woken up without prior warning. That considered, she was in a place where whatever time Luz needed to hear her voice, she’d hear it.

Eda had already stomped off out of the room, shouting to King about something called a ‘trash slug egg’ when she fixed her double vision on her daughter. “Is everything alright, mija?” Luz just shuffled awkwardly on her crocked knees, feet splayed out to the sides being pensively caressed by her thumbs. “Girlfriend troubles, did I hear? Pasó algo entre ustedes?”

“Solo que soy una mala novia...”

How had Luz been a bad girlfriend? What had instilled this idea in her he- wait, it was that diary, wasn’t it?

“How are you a bad girlfriend?”

Luz gingerly drew Amity’s note out of her back pocket and lifted it up in front of her face, “Amity left me this note when she left me that diary_”

Camila feigned surprise, which wasn’t difficult since she was so worn out – she really only had to nod in acknowledgement. “She, um... she told me she loved me in this note.”

Camila’s eyes burst wide open at a speed which could’ve forced tears on it’s own. “Oh, Luz, that’s wonderful to hear! Why on earth would you think you’re a bad girlfriend when you have someone who’s said that to you?” She watched Luz place the intricately folded note against her face, a tear or two landing on it’s fringe and travelling tenderly down it.

“Because she gave me that diary because she’s not happy with herself. And, as selfish as it might be, I’m now afraid that I’m not doing that. She gave me the one thing that embodies everything that she doesn’t like herself willingly because she wasn’t happy; because she doesn’t think that I’ll want to be with her if I knew everything. Because... I’ve let her down.”

That impeccably timed sunbeam that struck the realm cube and put Luz’s construct in front of Camila and the equally inexplicable stream of light emerging from behind Camila that did the same thing for Luz that allowed her an approximation of reaching down and brushing Luz’s hands was an experience that only one between mother and daughter separated by magic could be had.

“Oh, mi hermoso bebé. Dulce y cariñosa, como su padre.”

Luz huffed in a hefty lungful of musty, Boiling Isles air and looked into her mother’s eyes. “There’s only one thing for it, I have to prove to Amity that nothing thi... that diary could contain will change how I feel about her!”

Camila only smiled, “Now, that’s my Luz.”

“This is for Amity so it’s gotta be something big...”

She’s getting there.

“...something meaningful and real”

Penny’s in the air, let’s bring it home!

“Something breathtaking, magical... I’ve got it! I’m gonna give this confession the full Luz Noceda experience, with style and drama and theatrics! Now where’s that diary. Eda?!”

Luz took off out of the room calling out for Eda, who had been sneakily concealing herself in the corner behind them. Camila was rather started when she spotted her.

“I’m glad she figured that out. Now, I’ve got a lovely scheme to get back at Miss Odalia Blight in mind. You want it?” she asked Camila, who in no uncertain terms was very clear about the fact that she wanted no part in some childish act of payback against some unpleasant woman, no matter how deplorable a person she may be.

“She got Luz booted out of school and I’m fairly sure attempted to waste her not long after.”

...

“Tell me everything!”

Blight Manor was nigh on a fortress, an opulent, high-class 10,000 square-foot colossus of a building that deceptively made one believe that night had fallen because of the lengthy shadow it cast when the sun fell behind it, still at least 19 relative inches above the horizon line if one were to place their thumb between it’s radiance and the edge of the world.

Amity had arisen from an afternoon sleep, not common of her behavior but she was still slowly ferreting out what was common of her new outlook so a therapeutic sedate siesta felt-

Right.

The crook of her drowsy eyes was slightly distilled with fluid that she cuffed and awaited the clarity of her vision to add definition to the ornate décor of the hallway.

She didn’t launch herself over the arm of the couch like Luz did – there was still a modicum of class repute that she’d thus far failed to kick, but she did slump back to land her head on the armrest and found she couldn’t nestle her head into it and look wistfully into the ceiling gently because of the intricately-tied knot that had been tied into it.

And her hair was a few inches longer with no discernable cause – there was that too.

Amity lifted herself back into a sitting position and clasped the back of her head forensically when a humble, classic white knee-length dress with indigo hem and lacing that was all-the-while strewn together with an adroit hand out of lavish and upmarket material.

“Well, baby sister? You like?”

The twins had idled up beside her whilst she remained transfixed by the raiment still suspended before her. “Hang on, are you two trussing me up? Why? And...” she patted down her newly-issued braided lilac locks, turning to look into her sister’s sunny face, “was this you again?”

“Of course! You look so cute with your little braids.” Both Emira and Edric propelled themselves off the arm of the couch and other their feet, pressing their clasped hands to their hearts and admiring their handiwork. “I think we did a good job, don’t you sister?” Emira agreed in kind, “A great job, one might say, brother. Now she’s all ready for her night... Oh, but you might wanna hurry up and get that dress on.”

Amity was still trying to piece together what precisely she’d been set up to be subject to in the coming hours, “Why? What have you done?”

A knock came from the front door; Amity rose to go and answer it but was swept up and replaced on the couch cushion by Ed, “No, no, no, no, you take this and get dressed. We’ll answer it.” He plucked the dress from thin air and held himself from creasing it but barreling it into Amity’s arms. “Come on, go get changed!”

Amity couldn’t argue, she was already being chauffeured out of the room by a smartly dress abomination titan, garnishment drooped over her arm.

Emira pulled the door aside and there was Luz, not a great deal classier than she normally was but still had all the signs of someone who’d put in the extra effort with the resources she had. The outfit she was wearing was a little bit weightier and more boyish and had the long purple witch’s wool cloak of her’s pinned over her shoulders but it was unmistakably a dress of some description – Luz never wore dresses but she’d let Willow have a crack at constructing a flowery attire and the result was not unflattering.

She hid the dress itself pretty well under her cloak but let Em get a quick peek at it before she drew cloak back over it like a pair of curtains. Emira let out a whistle of approval, or at least what Luz took to mean approval. “Dang it, Luz, no blushing at your girlfriend’s sister!” she thought to herself. “She’ll be ready it a minute” Em told her in a hushed voice, “Wanted to surprise her so we kept your arrival our little secret!”

Luz was feeling even more conscious about her clothing choice when Amity voice sounded from behind the eldest Blight sibling, “Right, you’ve got me wearing this, now can you please tell me wh-“

Amity caught sight of Luz from the hall clasping her cloak to herself and her breath caught in her throat, “Oh, Luz is here. Of course, that explains all... this.” Luz’s blush was an all-out mirror of Amity’s own when fluster struck. From behind the couch, Edric cast two circles on the air that beckoned a suited abomination to virtually bridal carry Amity out onto the threshold while instructing another to very swiftly take Luz’s cloak in both the fashion of a butler and a schemer.

The girls were, for no better word, entranced staring at their appearances while Emira was holding up a note above Amity’s head for Luz to notice peripherally reading “Go on!” waking her from her beholding.

“Um, hi Amity. Fancy seeing you here... at your house.”

“Yeah, um; you look, well, pretty.”

“So do you! Shall we go?”

“Go where?”

“For a special kind of talk.”

Amity asked if she really needed to be adorned in so glamorous a gown if they were just going to talk – naturally Luz had something far more extravagant in mind and thus just went along with it and allowed herself to be led by the hand to the front gate with her staff tucked under her arm.

Emira watched them go and blew a kiss after them, knowing plainly that they’d not noticed. “Psst, Ed!” she called back into the living room and signaled to the side of the house and he followed her in that direction. The twins ‘discreetly’ met their rendezvous in a little enclave they’d built when they were little to hide from their dad and his work associates that they’d always play tricks on.

“Are we getting paid for this?”

“The only payment I’m offering is a warning, kid.”

...

“Be somewhere that’s not here”, Eda withdrew the realm cube from her hair.

A body, of sorts, had been constructed to give the realm cube a modicum more mobility that simply being carried around by Eda in her hair. Ever since she’d retrieved it, she’d been watching with intent just how remarkably Camila had been able to toy with it’s physical and non-physical properties with no magical ability of her own.

And then she’d dismissed a fair portion of her observations with a cavalier ‘power of love’ denying groan.

Nevertheless, before they’d snuck into the manor by the back wall, Eda had peeked at all the notes she’d stolen from Lilith while she’d been living with them and built a rickety assortment of limbs out of weeds and dry ice and slapped light glyphs all over the cube so the light turned the jury rigged mannequin into a giant, luminescent Camila Noceda.

Not for nothing, Eda thought, but it was quite impressive if she were to say so herself – though, admittedly stumbling around with a giant mom was a tad bit off-putting and she had nothing to throw over her in case anyone noticed so they’d just sprinted like women possessed to the farthermost edge of the Blight residence’s grounds.

“Right, here’s the plan, I’ll use this fire glyph to cut a hole in the wall, then we rush over to that hatchway leading somewhere inside and we just wreck everything. Sound good?”

Camila was quick to remind her that she wasn’t actually able to rush anywhere. The light construct that looked like her standing before them was just an illusion – the only thing she’d be demolishing was the mug of fruit tea she was brandishing whilst sat on her couch at home with a jam-smeared bagel.

King gave the avatar’s lower shin an elbow and whispered nonchalantly, “This thing will do the breaking of stuff, just shout angrily and make mean faces.”

Eda dabbed the corner of the glyph with her tongue and stuck it to the wall, slapping it down but instead of a neat cutting, the entire brick structure just melted into a groaning, pink sludge.

“Eh.”

The makeshift body lumped clumsily after Eda and King as they sprinted over to two polished wooden doors inset with pristine stone insignia of the abomination coven. Odalia had a fondness for laying it on thick, apparently.

Descending down the sickeningly decorated steps, the intrusive party emerged into a cluttered atelier, at least two levels below the grounds they’d arrived on. Rather unbecoming of the rest of the mansion, the workshop had untidy sketches, blueprints, manufacturing notes and ore-like materials bestrewn on every surface the eye could see.

“Woah, woah, woah.” Eda congratulated herself, “take a look at this dump. Looks like we found the centerpiece of Odalia’s little side business!”

King looked quizzical, “I thought you said Odalia was an ‘self-righteous aristocratic prig whose own crooked nose would give her palpitations’?” He raised his paws in an air quote.

“Oh, I expect it’s mainly Alador who works down here. How those two hooked up, I’ll never understand. That guy’s got a head full of rocks, I tell you. Still, mama smells the perfect opportunity for some tasty payback, what do you think?”

‘Camila’ was stood, hands nestled on hips, “You control this body – my approval is immaterial.”

Eda was almost shamefaced, “Well, I guess I thought... maybe- ah, forget it.”

Eda drew her staff from nowhere once more and took to swinging it in every possible direction and reducing everything she founds to flames or fragments; the avatar quickly followed suit, destroying just about everything it could while Camila just watched the wanton vandalisation through a picture frame like a micro-scale flat screen and chomping on an apple.

King, at the other end of the extreme, wasn’t quite as adept at destruction as Eda was – his diminutive stature saw to that. Before Eda could get in a heart laugh at watching him try to knock some feeble dents into some kind of metal ornament with a sheet chucked over it, the fabric snagged on his horn and sent him spiraling into a wrestling match with his own weight, pulling it clean off the item it was previously concealing.

“Oh, this just keeps getting better, one of those Abomiton things Luz told me about from that exhibition she was nearly killed at.” Eda took up a wide-step, low-bodied stance in front of it with her staff in position behind her head. “Fore!”

“STOP!”

Camila’s avatar body blocked the swing mid-flight and the other end of the staff subsequently clouted Eda around the head. “Ow, hey!”

She looked up at Camila’s illusory face, slowly boiling with barely-concealed rage. “You say this thing nearly killed Luz?”

“Well, so she told me.”

There was no abomination goo holding the metal framework of the cyborg together, just it’s technological implementations that gave it strength and power to burn. The semi-sphere suspended around the frame on the chest was about an inch thick and didn’t seem to have any light coming from it, suggesting it was hollow underneath.

“Que interesante...” Camila spat.

A fist made of laurel wheat and frozen sparkling warter was plunged through the crystalline dome like it was a damp paper bag and confirmed that it was in fact empty inside.

In the human realm, Camilla was clutching the picture frame so intently she almost cracked it. A sunbeam shot in through the window and bounced all around her – she needed to close her eyes from the brightness that was being observed but probably every passer-by or nearby neighbor she had.

The avatar reached up and clutch the glyph smothered realm cube and ripped it off the stump of it’s quote-unquote neck, forcing it, clumsily and akwardly through the hole in the chest where a tank of abomination goo was designed to be situated.

“What’s she doing?” King asked, grabbing at the torn hem of Eda’s dress. The dummy body sagged and fell over, shattering, particles of dusty ice sent flying over the cobbles.

Bloop.

A bubbling slowly started to rise inside the chest, an inbuilt reservoir of sludge built into the framework oozed out of pinprick-sized holes in the frame, coiling and snaking around the cube, encasing every side of it except the front. In an instant, the frame was now occupied by an abomination.

A very familiarly shaped abomination, to boot.

Eda, dumbstruck, simply gaped, “Oh, boy”

Amity trusted Luz implicitly, a trust which Luz had a habit of testing from time to time, such as the flight out to wherever they were going on her staff with Luz holding her hands over her eyes and directing her vocally.

“We’re just about here. You can come in to land!”

Ghost brought the staff on a gentle descent to a solid surface and dropped to the ground, jumping off the staff top and having a roll around on something.

“I don’t suppose you’re willing to tell me where we are?”

With an enthusiastic “Hyup!” Luz swung her arms away from Amity’s face to show her the adorned building of the Bonesborough Public Library in the center of which was her old diary, resting on a plant plinth. “Oh, that’s what this is about.”

Amity was somewhere between being crestfallen and concerned when Luz pulled a slip of paper, folded into a tiny heart with thin roots all over it, tying it together, out of her boot and tapped the center of it, “One more thing, Luz. As the girlfriend with the most to prove, I think I need to be the first to say it. I love you.”

Amity was looking into her own eyes, laying bare her feelings as if it was that easy, standing on the little origami heart a few meters between Luz’s face and her own.

“First time anyone’s told me they love me.”

The words sat like a tightrope wrapped around each of their hearts – neither girl wanted to step backwards, only forwards into an embrace, but not quite yet.

“So... uh, you read my diary.”

“Amity, when you left me that diary, I did a lot of thinking. It made me very afraid; I thought I was being selfish in wanting to be the one that make you happy and that I’d failed you in trying to free you from this idea that I want you to be perfect like your mom always did. And maybe I did.”

A fire of frost ran up Amity’s spine like a torrent, but Luz hadn’t finished speaking and started again within the next breath, taking gentle steps over to the plant that the old diary was stationed upon.

“Having a girlfriend is so scary; but now that I have you, I don’t want to let anything take you away. I can see it all over your face right now; this book is still an anchor for you. So, I’ve made a decision...”

She placed her hand on the cover.

“I’m not going to tell you whether I read it or not. I remember learning in school about a thing in my world called Schrödinger’s Cat. It basically means that if you don’t know something, it can both be real and fake at the same time; by not telling you, I both read and didn’t read it at the same time.”

Amity didn’t understand, but watching Luz trying her hardest to prove her affections were genuine without a clue about how to do it was really sweet of her.

Luz suddenly positioned Amity and herself about two feet to the left of the large coiled flower that they’d been standing on either side of throughout the exchange. “And I’m going to prove to you how special you are in the most dramatic way possible!” Save for getting on one knee, Amity could tell Luz was making out like she was in a stage performance, some Romero-and-Ghoulliette-type production, or the human equivalent, with a big, theatrical gesture of... well.

Luz lifted the book from the face of the flower, uncovering a newly-drawn glyph configuration concealed underneath it, the same glyph configuration that Amity quickly noticed had also been embossed into the back cover of the diary. Luz raised her arm and slapped the spell on the flower face, quickly tossing the book back atop it and pulling Amity away very quickly.

After they’d retreated a safe distance, the coiled flower swiftly shot upwards like a tightly-wound spring and propelled the book a good distance into the air where it’s back cover glowed a vibrant orange tint as a series of cinder trailed wrapped itself around the hardback spine, sprawled through every page, between every neatly inscribed line, and slowly pulled it apart in a bright white furnace, scattering each individual fragment of a past steeped in shame and consigning them to a future as ashen specs carried off over the boiling seas.

As the book went up in a blistering brilliance, a harmonious ringing shot out around the area of the library and ricocheted off a number of nearby buildings. Amity had been so transfixed on the beauty of her newfound emotional liberty and it’s surprisingly euphonious sound that she hadn’t heard what Luz had mouthed into her ear.

“I’m sorry, I, I couldn’t hear that.”

A second coiled flower that Luz had, for whatever reason, set up around them sprang up and hurled a small wooden ball with the same spell carved into it’s surface. Instead of burning up gently, like the book did, this one blew apart like a firework. Luz took Amity by the shoulders when her eyes returned to her after the initial surprise of the second launched projectile and she repeated herself slightly louder into Amity’s ear, but at the exact time the loud bang 20 feet above them echoed across the sky.

Once again, she didn’t hear this.

“Luz, what are you trying to tell me?”

The remaining coiled flowers, with yet another two wooden spheres nestled in their upward-facing faces were catapulted into the air, at around the time Luz was holding Amity’s hands and rocking excitedly on her toes as a further two loud bangs-

“I love you!”

She didn’t even bother to lower her voice for it this time. She cried it straight into Amity’s face with tearfully closed eyes and a smile to rival nothing at all.

“I love you, Amity Blight!”, Luz looked her square in the eye and chuckled as she shouted her name at the top of her lungs.

Amity was so warm, she felt like melting and bursting into radiant pink flames in no particular order. Luz threw herself on her girlfriend and clasped her so tightly, they could’ve melted into each other. The slack-jawed shock and bodily tension dropping away as a penny would in a wishing well, Amity returned the hug with all of Luz’s enthusiasm shooting through her and they sobbed joyously into one another’s shoulders and shuffled around to touch their foreheads together.

They collapsed to their knees, tears still streaming and fell into a fit of uncontrollable laughter.

“Alador, dear? Have the children returned home yet?”

Alador wasn’t even there – Odalia was shouting out into an empty house.

Almost.

She’d missed the worst of the commotion down in the workshop below her but a pungent scent had permeated the house somewhere. It was in kitchen, off in the corner – it was a kind of strong, tangy scent, somewhere between bloody and smoky.

A soft purple ember, like liquid fire, seeped through the tiles of the floor, causing a chair leg to catch alight. “What in heaven?” The flames ran over the chair and vanished before it broke apart into a ashen state that in itself fell apart into nothingness.

“Edric, Emira; so help me if you’ve been playing in your father’s workshop again...”

A pretty thunderous rumble let a drop of something viscous slip through the panels holding the ceiling up and land on the bridge of Odalia’s nose. “For titan’s sake, what is going on here?” Odalia growled and stormed in the direction of the main staircase. She rose up it step by step as the daylight seemed to drain away beneath her, traces of light almost swallowed up by the soles of her shoes.

She looked incredibly pale in this light. An abomination sidled it’s way beside her in the corridor. “Oh, what are you standing there for? Find whatever’s causing this and fix it!”

The abomination didn’t move – it didn’t flinch, it didn’t blink. It had round ears. Little round ears beside it’s gooey features with pin-black twin dots stamped into the lobes of both. Odalia finally noticed it was encased in the exoskeleton of an Abomiton, an untested variant Alador had been constructing for the Emperor’s coven.

“Alador didn’t tell me this model had autonomy. He wouldn’t have built such a feature without my instruction. What are you?”

The slime at the front of the abomination’s face oozed and morphed and protruded into a lip curved on the left side; more features were spouting out of it, like a more defined head sculpt, a mock-up of a short bobbed hair hanging at shoulder length and it’s eyes rounded out into a piercing, livid stare.

Odalia looked down into the smote centerpiece of the Abomiton and observed a crudely installed cube with an otherworldly mesh of glowing golden energy.

She squinted further – a woman was just vaguely visible in it’s most open face. Tan skin, large weepy brown eyes protected by the misted lenses of a pair of red-framed specs and deeply-glowering eyebrows set in an expression that Odalia had seen in her mind’s eye not so long ago.

An expression that had been the cause of a great number of headaches and outbursts of frustration. And an expression which, on the face, bore a startling resemblance to-

“You. But you’re...”

The mouth that had formed in the bottom centre of the Abomiton’s face rang out it’s words in tandem with the angry, Spanish dialect that emerged from the cube.

“A loving parent, Mrs. Blight. One who will go to any lengths, even those as ridiculous and impossible as these, to protect my child from harm.”

That human!

“Y no solo mi hija, harbías permitido que la tuya saliera latimada! You. Are. Not. A good parent!”

“Listen, whoever, whatever you are, I order you to leave my house. Not only are you trespassing, but you’re making use of specialized equipment. Get out!”

Camila, to all intents and purposes, stood firm – she was calm and collected and dead set. Very dead set, “Nunca resuelvo argumentos haciendo esto, pero en esta ocasión...”

Odalia opined her intruder with distaste, “What?”

In the palm of the Abomiton’s hand sprouted some bizarre ovular item, serrated on one side with what appeared to be some kind of grip on the other, “I said...”

“Feel. My. Wrath!”

And brought it down.

...

The twins just winced in unison; “Should we have tried to stop that?” Ed asked in a hushed tone as the reverberations of the Abomiton plodding off down the stairs in the direction of the secret entrance to Alador’s workshop that Odalia presumed the twins knew nothing of.

Emira just clipped him round the ear, “Are you nuts?”

“Wait,” Ed interjected, “You don’t think Amity would suspect us of having a hand in this?”

...

The twins were sprinting off in one direction, while off in the distance, Eda was trying to lug the Abomiton pieces out of the melted wall in a sack.

Luz had insisted on walking Amity home, predictably chivalrous of her, Amity thought, not that she’d minded. Luz had even made a show of lending her shoes to her for the walk back (she’d not exactly had time to grab her own pair before they’d been in flight for the library roof); more than that, she’d even re-enacted some old fairy tale from the human world and put the shoes on her feet herself.

Only Luz could be so schmaltzy - as if she was complaining.

There was so much they wanted to say to one another, an overwhelming, nagging sensation of wanting to just look at each other and tell the other they loved them numerous times just because the sound of hearing it was so new, so honest, bizarre and more welcome that pretty much any other assortment and combination of words strung into a sentence could be right now.

“I, well, never quite explained why I blew up the diary, did it?”

Amity was already failing to believe her good fortune and so refused to allow her curiosity to break the illusion.

“I still can’t help but wonder how you could love me after what I used to be like”

Where did that come from?!

“Even if you didn’t read the diary, you know how I acted when we met.”

“Can I be honest?”

“After tonight, I don’t think you can be anything but.”

They stopped walking, “I’m not perfect, Amity. You were right back then, a lot of the trouble you got into was because of me. I mean, that book almost destroyed any semblance of friendship we could’ve had in the library and I almost got you killed. But you still loved me.”

Amity admitted that it was around that incident that she’d started to stop denying that she’d had feelings for this strange character, followed by weeks of questioning how someone so adept at trouble could be so sweet.

“I guess I thought there were two ways you could see things; if I didn’t read the diary, you’d see I wouldn’t need to know what was in it because what matters to me is who you are now and if I did, I’d know everything you didn’t like about yourself and still have these feelings for you.”

They didn’t speak until they noticed that the last 30 paces they’d been walking, staring that their feet had led them back to Amity’s front door. Edric and Emira thundered inside between them, in a state of panic. Well, something went on here.

“Better go and fix whatever they’ve broken.” Amity chuckled, “Good night.”

She disappeared inside, while Luz retreated into an upright stance; maybe the shut-eyed lean forwards was a bit too much? She turned to look away and in the time I took for a normal person to take a breath, the door behind her opened, her wristed was clutched in a tight grip and her entire body weight was reoriented until the momentum brought Luz into an impassioned kiss with her girlfriend, still propped up by the front door.

It was such a cheesy, nay corny, response, but Luz raised her dominant leg off the ground and let her remaining one hold her weightless weight.

The kiss broke.

“Thought it was my turn for a bit of honesty.” Amity said tenderly and winked before pulling her head back through the closing door. Luz’s irises shrank to a bullet point and she sloped back into a blissful faint, to be caught by Owlbert, keeping Eda’s staff airborne, who carried her all the way back to the Owl House.

She didn’t come to her senses until Eda came back through the door, looking more disheveled than ever.

Inhaling.

“I saw kid, nice work. Bad Girl Coven policy at it’s finest – let them make the first move.”

“What happened to you?”

“Might have gone on a little... trip with your mom. Went a bit- you know.”

She chucked the realm cube onto the couch beside Luz, “You can ask her about it when she wakes up, I’m going to bed.” And that was all she said for the rest of the night; King had obviously dozed off earlier because his tail and hind legs were hanging out of the back of her hair, something hilarious.

Luz just looked up at the ceiling, brandishing the cube to her chest, “Lo hice, mamí. Quizás consigna mi final feliz depués de todo”.

The acolytes of the healing coven were shown to the door by the still assembled house staff of 10-feet-tall sludge monsters in dinnerware.

Odalia, her left eye now dressed in white cloth with a healing sigil sown into it’s surface, rummaged through the dismantled wreck of her husband’s workshop. All the early Abomiton models were now twisted, worthless hulks that would struggle to hold a sandcastle together.

“This is all because of that human again. Everything important, that infuriating girl manages to destroy and spoil, even poisoning my own children against me!”

She pulled open a draw and extracted the only thing in the room that still remained a single piece – a crystal ball. “Well, if she wants to start a war between our families, I’m happy to oblige.”

...

“Because I’ll win.”

Odalia tapped twice on the face of the crystal ball and it sounded a static noise, “Put me through to the Golden Guard. I have information that may be of interest to Emperor Belos...”

Chapter Text

There were some on the Isles who saw fit to call the Emperor’s castle the only remaining living organ on the colossus upon which their whole world depended. Situated in the chest cavity of the almighty Titan, it had all the functionality that a living organ would, too. Snaking corridors, trouble-shooting guards, a live flow of magic seeping through the structure of the building and filtering out, healthier in some points of view, to the wider world beyond.

The Emperor’s Coven, the guards, antibodies if one would, surrounding the heart, were only called upon when needed – dispatching to enforce and maintain Belos’ fascistic dictates and shrouded, soft-spoken edicts.

Hunter was uncustomary – he was the Golden Guard. For all he was used to giving orders to the every Alan, Bill and Colin, he was far happier being a single operative. The uniformity and lateral, binary obedience to the common guard’s any-means-necessary instruction following wasn’t imaginative and, most times didn’t prove all that productive either. He could only see most of them as feckless, banal cretins, over which he was of a higher order.

He clubbed the door to the Emperor’s chamber and was summoned inside. Belos strode among an assembly of busybodies stressing clear tubes of green, luminous fluid out of enormous golden drums. “You wished to see me, uncle?” Hunter asked through the humdrum.

The hollow depths of the eyes in his mask faced Hunter, “Indeed. I hear tell among the castle that you have received a message from the matriarch of the Blight family. Is this correct?”

Hunter elected only to nod. “She claimed to have some information regarding the Owl Lady and her human apprentice. Something about some kind of strange object, a cube of some kind connected to another realm”.

The colossal heart, suspended above the far end of the chamber, convulsed; a thick stream of fluid had been fed into one of it’s arteries and was channelling back out of another, up through a facsimile of a vain leading to heaven knows where. “The human has found a direct link to the human realm?”

“I can’t say for sure. I only know what the Blight woman says.”

Belos crunched his plated knuckle and skirted a finger around the crest of his right eyehole. It creaked and failed to resist even a slight contact. “A most interesting development. And how fortuitous if it turns out to be true; I must confess that I find the enterprise of the Owl Lady’s apprentice quite, let’s say, estimable.”

Hunter clutched at the brim of his cloak – the human was a wild card, not to mention unceasingly irritating. Was calling her estimable one of the Emperor’s tests of loyalty or a trap?

“I will acquire it for you, Emperor Belos. Just give me the word.”

“You seem awfully keen, Hunter.”

“My only goal is to help you in your plans to reach the human realm, Emperor.”

“Is it, indeed?” Belos queried skeptically, “I suppose you’ve not given me any cause to doubt your dedication to the Titan’s plan. Do as you see fit, Hunter, under one stipulation.”

“Stipulation?”

“I would have Kikimora accompany you.”

Kikimora, the wretched, perfidious ingrate. Hunter got caught up in thinking of Humbert within reach of that Judas. “I’d much sooner attempt this kind of task by myself, uncle.”

“My orders are not to be questioned – if I tell you that Kikimora will accompany you, then it shall be so. Understood?”

Hunter balked in silent understanding and turned tail from the chamber, Belos still flexing his metal-clad knuckles. He froze as she door shut behind him and propped himself up against it, watching the stray strand of hair emerging from his forehead dance in front of his eyes. With a huff, he simply swatted it aside and made for his chambers.

“Well, what a turn of events,” came a voice from beside the branch to the Emperor’s chamber; the raspy, shrill tones of Kiki, gave cause for Hunter to stop striding and proffer a peripheral glare.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh yes, you do. I understand I’m to accompany you on a mission to retrieve something from that human. Something of value to Emperor Belos? Something that requires his best and greatest to secure for him; am I close?” She was feigning an oblivious inquisition but was plainly chomping at the proverbial bit, seething with venomous glee.

“The Emperor has insisted that I permit you to tag along on a recovery mission.”

Crooked delight. “And what would we be recovering?”

“That’s of no interest you.”

“Is that right?” she queried, making no effort to hide that fact that she was goading him on.

“Yes, Kikimora, it is. Let me make this clear, you are only coming on sufferance. You have no say in how we undertake this mission, nor do you need to know anything about what it is we’re trying to get.” He pulled forth his golden mask from under his cloak and donned it, concealing his scarred face.

Kikimora’s claws pushed so hard into the surface of her palms, they could’ve drawn blood, such was her frustration. She hated the Golden Guard; his condescension and unparalleled attention from the Emperor was perpetually a spite to her unwaning loyalty. Nobody stood the Emperor’s side like she did; not those self-absorbed Coven heads, not this prodigious brat, her.

Although perhaps this was an opportunity in disguise. She considered her options for a moment and let out a long, drawling exhale; “Very well, Golden Guard- Hunter. If that is what the Emperor wishes than we would be best advised to follow his word. You have a plan on how to recover this artifact, I presume?”

“The human has a weak link we can exploit. That’s your job – leave the rest to me.”

Was he being this cryptic deliberately to test her patience, Kiki asked herself? There were days when she would gleefully watch him spit-roasted over the boiling seas. But she did also know that it would be easier to count the days were she didn’t want to do that, which she could probably do on one hand.

“And that exploitable weak link I’m expected to make use of is?”

“The human is courting the youngest Blight.”

This finally gave cause for Kiki to smile to herself, “Is she really? Now that is interesting…”

What Kikimora hadn’t been aware of what the bead of sweat which formed above Hunter’s temple and how it crept not down the centre of his face but down the left, cascading down the side of his face like a tear. A tribute to a subconscious shame, kept safely concealed behind a solid metal mask.

And an added emphasis on safely.

The law of the land when considering the Oracle track of Hexside, most magic schools in fact, was universally understood by most students to go like this; it’s Bureaucracy 101. Most students were meticulously drilled in the school’s procedure when it came to looking into the future. Mounds upon mounds upon mounds of theological, spiritual and ethereal theory work before the powers that be would even permit them a glance at an Oracle Ball.

It was the track that required the most glamourising in it’s promotion to students because kids were predictable in their resentment of monotonous paperwork. They only got to test the real groundwork of prophecy come their second year of study in the higher form, once the tedious formalities were out of the way.

Willow stooped against the desk with an Oracle student’s hand running a continuous spell circle in the air beside her head. As was her right, she’d applied for an opportunity to serve as an exam dummy, as the less informed and less interested students called them.

She was among one of about twelve other students, thirteen perhaps, to have volunteered to give up their time to engage the Oracle students in their Practical Prophecy Exams. All normal strictures were applied; foresight beyond a 24-hour span was forbidden, explicit statements of events yet to come were prohibited (since the examiners would be required to ensure that future events transpired as expected for grading purposes) and the oracle student would willingly forgo all memory of the prediction so as to preclude any deliberate interventions or cheating.

None of this was of any concern to Willow though; she merely had to sit and think and be grateful that she’d been selected that week – working on firsthand sunflower germination in a room next to the Insect Consortium was just a health hazard in the making.

The Oracle student, name of Mirri she believed, called time and broke Willow from her entrancement.

“Oh, is it over?” she asked.

“All done, fancy a peek into the future?”

Willow nodded enthusiastically, the wonderstruck girl of the world that she was.

They moved over to where the Oracle Ball was positioned at the front of the room, behind a thick purple curtain; the communal prophets through which the future was spoken were shy creatures. Mirri cracked her knuckles, bent her fingers double and rested the edges of her hands against the sphere, disturbing the wispy cloud inside it by moving the edges of her thumbs up and down it.

The wispy cloud wallowed in her eyes as she spoke; “Within but an afternoon, you will be needed by your friends. I’m seeing her, an unusual sadness – a motion of tears, she’s upset. She’s lost something, or feels she has, it’s hard to tell.”

She suddenly coughed and a purple plume drifted from her mouth.

“A battle of wills and strength – I cannot tell what. I mustn’t tell what. Danger…”

She suddenly looked pained and pale as a Basilisk’s meal.

“I see danger and I see sadness. Fight the danger with might, fight the sadness with compassion! Help her, Willow. She needs you!”

Mirri suddenly fell back in her chair and Willow threw herself to the floor to lift raise her to a sitting position. She was cold, breathing hoarsely and smacking her parched lips. “Professor!” Willow called out, “I need some help!”

The oracle professor thundered over and, with Willow’s help, hoisted the girl upright and moved her over to a chair. He rested his hand on her head, it was clammy and sticky. She was plainly unwell. The teacher turned to Willow, “Miss Park, thank you for bringing this to my attention. I will inform the medical staff and contact Miss Needer’s parents.”

“Was it something I did? She was reading her prophecy and she just suddenly-“

“Don’t trouble yourself, Willow. I’m sure you aren’t responsible; I think it’s more likely that Miss Needer was suffering from some kind of illness when she began and it clouded her prophetic collection. I doubt whatever she foretold will be that accurate but that’s nothing to concern you.”

Willow nodded in concession and turned to leave but halted; “Are you sure it’s nothing to worry about, professor? She said something about a friend being in danger.”

The professor seemed confidently convinced that Mirri’s prophecies were simply catastrophised by whatever was ailing her but nonetheless suggested that Willow speak with Principal Bump if she felt her concerns were worth pursuing. Willow appeared sufficiently appeased by this and turned and left for her actual class.

As she walked down the corridor, though, she still felt ill at ease. She was resting her elbow in her palm, fiddling with her hair. “’Help her’. That’s what she said.” She was pressing on towards the classroom where the lecture on sunflower germination was being given, the class itself still actually miles from her thoughts when she caught sight of Luz through the window of one of the farthest classrooms.

Willow couldn’t make out any of her words but watched as she stood in front of the other students in the room with one of her glyphs stuck to the chalk board. She slapped it down triumphantly, plainly expecting a more auspicious reaction than it simply blowing out a large wad of abomination sludge which coated her from head to foot, to the amusement of the other students and Luz’s obvious perplexion.

“Willow?” came the ever-deepening voice of Gus from behind her, “Something the matter? I thought you were in those Oracle exams today.”

“I was, and that’s the trouble.”

“I don’t follow.”

Willow was swift in filling Gus in on exactly what had taken place in the Exam room; he was paying very close attention, hanging on each development. Finally, he chipped in again. “So, if what that student said was true, you think that Luz might be in danger from something or someone?”

“We both know the answer to that, Gus. Even when Luz doesn’t look for trouble, trouble sure seems to find her.” Willow had reached into her pocket and pulled out a germinated seed; the tendrils emerging from it had clearly been cut off from what had originally sprouted but in it’s place were a trio of tiny, crimson flowers with finely-lined petals.

“What do you think we should do?”

“I think,” she began, returning the flowered seed to her pocket, “that you, me and Amity should have a good sniff around.”

“Detective Gus. I like the sound of that- wait, Amity?”

Willow looked at Gus quizzically, “Yeah?”

“You didn’t hear?”

“Sudden, onset adverse-regulatory behavioural patterns,” droned the DMA in a voice so one note, somebody ought to have offered him a tissue.

“Impaired notion of intellectual and educational welfare,” concluded the second.

“Erratic confrontation streak and positive indicators of rebellious alterations to established priority and appearance models,” waffled the third.

Amity was livid, truly and unabashedly livid. She always knew her mother was spiteful and controlling but had never even entertained that idea that she’d have the call to summon in the Conformatorium’s Delinquent Mitigation Assessors. Beyond being glorified therapists and some of the single dullest people ever to walk the face of the earth, as it were, the principle that she somehow needed ‘correcting’ was revolting.

Worse still, she wasn’t permitted, by law, to step foot off the grounds of the manor until the DMAs had concluded their conduct.

They’d not taken their glossy, artificial eyes off her since they stepped through the door, following her from room to room, seeping in every word she said and storing them in their oversized cheeks, not unlike what Luz referred to as a squirrel collecting nuts and parading in their rather ostentatious gold-trim suits.

One assessor had even tried to impose on following her into the washroom to monitor her activities and, in no calm fashion, received short shrift. For whatever it understood of it – it was a public fact that DMA brains weren’t really brains at all. They had heads like balloons.

Not in the metaphorical sense, either. They literally weren’t possessing of a thinking organ and thus everything that they ‘thought’, loosely using the word as the closest reference for what truly was inside their heads, was just whispers in a breezy cave.

Odalia, after applying a ferocious amount of cosmetic to try and conceal the bruised eye (and failing), came down to take stock of the DMAs reports of present. She took one glance at the reports, her facial expressions betraying nothing at all. She glanced over at Amity, smirked venomously, and turned tail to leave.

Transfixed, Amity ran her fingers through her hair in irritation.

A grunt caught her attention; Edric was swatting the bewildered DMA away from his pet bat, seemingly of the impression that it wanted to eat him. Emira fell over the back of the couch, lying on her back beside Amity, her unkempt hair pooling between the top of the carpet and the bottom of the chair.

“This is just ridiculous,” Amity protested, “those airheads aren’t gonna find anything.”

As if to prove her point about airheads, Amity flapped her hand at an assessor that had leaned in too closely and it floated backwards like a gust of wind might carry a paper hat. She knew what it was like to be punished by her mother’s standards but this was something else.

“What could she be punishing me for? It was one of dad’s creations that went wrong and clobbered her. And it wasn’t even the first time; why would she be angry about it now?”

Em could only give an unhelpful shrug. “Have you thought about sneaking out?” she muttered to Amity under her breath. Amity reminded her that would neither improve her situation nor prove successful because the Assessors were a joint creation of the Emperor and the Illusion cover – they’re always there and they’re never there, however that worked.

“Mom took my scroll from me, so I can’t even contact my friends.” She clasped her hands together and rested her chin on them, “I’m sure Luz would come up with some weird human comparison or silver lining to all this. She’s good at that.” She sagged back, disconsolate, her hands flopping to her sides.

Without explanation, Emira suddenly swung up and around and planted herself over Amity’s lap, “I wouldn’t worry about it, Mittens. I hear these things are just formalities anyway.”

Before Amity could respond in kind to the unusual delivery of this nonchalance, Emira pulled herself up, shook her head, letting her hair fly around a bit, and replaced her concealment stone, restoring her unblemished illusory image. “Still, can’t have everything. Love you, baby sister,” she gave the last part a touch of belittling baby voice and mushed Amity’s cheeks together and hopped up and out of the room before Amity could push her away.

Huffily, Amity lifted herself off the couch, suddenly acknowledging something wedged between the pillow and the arm and pulled it loose. It was Em’s scroll, a small message on it’s surface reading “I’m sure you know the numbers.”

Swiftly checking to see that the Assessors weren’t watching her, Amity pocketed the scroll and made naturally for the stairs. The Assessors hovered slowly into a single file and moved to follow her to the second-floor landing, where the door to her bedroom sat waiting. She reached for the handle to open the door and spontaneously spun on her heels and draw a spell circle in the air, engulfing the Assessors in a thick, viscous pink vapour.

An abomination butler opened the far window and the vapour cleared, by which point Amity had retreated into her room and bolted the door so the Assessor’s couldn’t just waltz in. Even so, for some added security, she sealed her door and window shut with abomination slime and summoned a thick layer to cover over the walls.

Sitting down on the bed, Amity typed Willow and Gus’ contacts on Em’s scroll and propped it against the back of the crystal ball. Willow, who had been slightly confused about why Amity’s sister would be calling her, and Gus, who’d been even more so, eventually answered.

“Hi guys. Gotta keep it down, mom doesn’t know I’m talking to you. She’s called the DMAs on me.”

Amity was quick to quietly voice her ire over her situation; she admitted she’d have brought Luz in onto the call but she didn’t have a scroll contact. Because she didn’t have a scroll. She thought to herself that perhaps she should see to that.

Willow and Gus’ expressions suddenly turned grave and shifty, catching Amity’s eye and making her worried. “What’s wrong? Is Luz okay?” she asked, straining to keep a panic out of her voice.

Willow was quick to assure her that Luz was fine but felt quicker to recount her experience with the Oracle student. “It might be nothing, but it could also be something and Luz doesn’t know she might be in trouble.”

“And I can’t help because those things are poking around my house, stopping me from leaving. Can you two make sure she’s safe and get a message to me? I don’t think I’ll be able to hide sneaking around with my sister’s scroll for very long, not with the Assessors watching my every move.”

Gus gave her an affirming set of thumbs up and Willow voiced her own guarantee; “Thank you. I’m glad she’s got you watching out for her.”

Willow smiled, “Of course. Hey, Amity?”

“Yeah?”

“Just so you know, I’d do the same for you.”

Amity wasn’t too flattered to turn away and conceal her blush, while Gus just kept his thumbs up with a cheeky grin. “Thank you, Willow,” she said.

…

“Thank you for everything.”

Odalia tapped at the surface of her crystal ball and Amity’s voice faded into silence. She wrapped her finger around the handle of the ornate cup and sipped superciliously from her hot beverage. “So,” she asked aloud to whoever was listening, “have I done my service to the Emperor?”

Kikimora’s banshee tones rattled the ball on it’s stand as she chuckled. Or cackled. Odalia could never tell which.

“Oh, admirably, Mrs Blight. Most admirably. The Assessors will return to us in due time; so long as you can manage their presence until then.”

“As you wish.”

Odalia shut off the crystal ball – oh, what Alador could’ve done with that technology. But, it was what it was. The battle had commenced; that old bat Clawthorne and her human had only to respond in turn.

The sun was rising, bouncing tangerine hues off the fuming waters across yonder as the King of Demons rose to address all that he surveyed. He stood stout, proud and precious as he cleared his throat.

“Mothers! Friends! Hooty! We have convened upon this spot on this august morning to witness a battle of the ages – a battle to determine the might and superiority of these two worthy combatants.”

“On our left stands,” thrust, “Luz the Human!”

Luz, stance wide and low, glowered confidently across the field from her aged adversary, flexing her fingers as a large, embellished, ice-crafted broadsword with vines wrapped around the hilt formed in her grip, a shield taking form in the other.

“And on our right stands,” thrust again, “Eda the Owl Lady!”

To the sound of Hooty’s heavily over-excited revelry, Eda locked eyes with her presumptuous protégé, balancing her twirling staff around her head and halting it horizontal to her eye line.

Off to the side, Gus was frozen in place holding in balance the Realm Cube, completely with an anticipatory audience (of two), atop his head while Willow sat on her knees on a large, springy flower. According to Luz, she’d likely make a killing in her world selling naturally bouncy chairs that can grow anywhere, though she did wonder why humans would want flower chairs they may eat them.

“Luz and Eda, are you ready?”

Both mentor and mentee nodded their preparedness.

“Then,” King called as he leapt from the pile of junk that he was stood upon onto a large, dented bell, “Game on!”

“Good luck, Mija!” Camila called through the Realm Cube.

Luz simply chuckled, conspiratorially, “Watch and learn, mamas,” she muttered with a cheeky wink, hurling aside both sword and shield, which shattered on the ground and melted. To Eda and Camila’s utter astonishment, she stood up straight, arms akimbo, inviting Eda to make the first move. And so she did. As Eda thundered towards her, a limp loop of vine flapped over in the dirt, catching Eda by the toes and sending her tumbling to Luz’s feet.

Her breath knocked out of her, Eda started up as Luz suddenly vanished in a luminous puff of smoke and a deep purple glyph just as suddenly carried her up into the sky in a weird vortex.

While the audience took a moment to overcome their dumbstruck gaping, Luz reappeared from thin air with a deep gasp and leapt on another glyph she dropped on the ground, propelling herself away from the large hole that appeared under her.

One.

Two.

Three.

Eda’s wailing form plummeted from the sky and into the hole, a hole too wide for her staff which caught on the ground around it and kept the Owl Lady’s arms as she herself dropped like a stone into a pool of water.

Luz lifted her arm in victory, “Ding-ding-ding! Winner!” she cried, celebratorily. Eda’s arms, still gripping the wooden staff, released their clutch and flopped into the drink themselves, rejoining the rest of their body, which half-humouredly treaded water.

“Nice trick, kiddo, but, well, d’you mind?”

Luz was outlining to her mother as she sprouted a vine up which Eda clambered out of the hole that being a tiny bit tricksy was an especially useful tactic in combat situations. Camila wasn’t all together thrilled that her daughter was defending a methodology of fighting in such a cavalier tone but had to accept it so much as she had no power to make a difference to it.

Eda squelched to her feet and kicked some dirt at King while he rolled on the floor in a laughing fit. “Using my expectations against me? I’ve taught you well in the ways of the Bad Girl Coven, young student.” Her teasing was underpinned with her signature snort.

Willow and Gus watched Luz exchanging gags and jibes with Eda from aside, throwing each other cautious glances and awaiting an opportunity to tell her about this maybe-or-maybe-not threat that was coming. They both already had the sense that Luz was twigging on to them, that they were withholding something but the abrupt appearance of a balled-up wad of paper come rocketing from over the treeline to plough into the cube on Gus’ head called all parties to attention.

After smacking Hooty on the beak for his predictably instant attempt to eat it, Eda unfurled the paper and double took in astonishment.

“Eda? Is something wrong?”

Eda was momentarily dumbstruck before driving the sheet into her hair and bolting into the house without explanation.

“What was that all about,” Luz asked. King was just as clueless and Hooty was spotlighting some tiny, six-legged toad thing so wasn’t really paying much attention. Willow and Gus thought the opportunity ample enough to speak to Luz.

“Hey, um, Luz?” Willow began, “Can we talk?”

“Absolutely. What’s shakin’ bacon?”

“Well, the thing is…”

Eda landed with a thud beside them, shrouded in a dark red cloak. She turned to Luz, “Alright, kid. I’m might not be coming back today; I’ve got something that needs seeing to and it can’t wait and it’s quite a way off. Promise me you won’t follow me.”

Luz asked what the issue was but Eda reiterated her request for a promise in somewhat stricter tone and the girl conceded. “Thank you. It’s not personal but it could be dangerous where I’m going and it’s rather struck me hard recently that I need to take a better deal of care to your safety.”

Luz looked forlorn but nodded, “I understand.”

Eda hopped up onto her staff, headed by an Owlbert with his wings unfurled, planted a kiss on her palm and bopped Luz on her head with it and took of into the sky. Luz and her friends watched her fly off over the treeline, Luz watching intently as she vanished into obscurity. Not taking her eyes off the direction her mentor just took flight in, she called back to King, “Did you get it?”

“Easily,” he replied, leaping up onto Luz’s shoulders with the sheet of paper he’d discreetly filched from Eda’s hair; Luz wasn’t the only one she’d taught too well. Plastered across the face of the paper was a print of a dark-skinned witch with large spectacles and a timid disposition. A wanted poster for one Raine Whispers, last sighted in a Boiling Hollows refuge, negotiable reward for live capture.

“Raine Whispers,” King whispered to himself, “I know that name. I read it in Eda’s diary – they used to date when they were younger.” The sentence had Luz wanting to squeal in excitement but she was more focused on the immediate issue and so instead probed for more information.

“I hate to have to ask this but what else did you read in Eda’s diary? The reading of which we’re definitely gonna talk about later, young man.”

“Can’t really recall. Something about them being a coven head, the Bard coven I think, who lead a rebel group against the Emperor and got captured. But, if that’s the case, how could they be in hiding now?”

“The poster says they’re hiding in a Boiling Hollows refuge?”

“Oh, nobody with any sense hides in the Boiling Hollows. Only the desperate or the crazy; they consist of the submerged bones of the Titan, deep beneath the Boiling Seas. They’re hollow because the waters wore the bones away long ago before being shored up by the early witches of the old order to make them safer, for all the good it did. They’re still incredibly unstable, especially after all these years.”

“And Eda’s gone down there to look for this Raine person.”

She sighed.

“King, are we gonna…?”

“I can’t say I approve, but obviously yes.”

Willow and Gus were looking increasingly worried, the omens of doom ringing clearer than ever in Willow’s memory.

“Mija,” called Camila through the cube, “you heard what Eda said. And you promised you wouldn’t follow her.”

“Yes, mom, I did.”

“But you’re still planning to go after her? Even when you know it will put you in danger?!”

Luz took a brave step towards the cube, to look her mother in the eye. “Mami, I owe Eda so much – for all that she’s given up after taking me in. She risked life and limb to get this cube just so we can talk now and…” she froze, “I don’t know what I’d do if she died out there.”

She planted her hand on the cube as if speaking through a window, “I promise I won’t take any needless risks, but someone needs to have Eda’s back. And after all we’ve been through together, it’s got to be me and King. I hope you understand.”

Luz, with King still riding in her hood, made a beeline for the side shed and emerged, or rather barrelled, out in a peculiar flying lash-up made from a bathtub.

“Be careful!” Camila called out. Willow nudged Gus on the arm and lead him inside the house, picking up the cube as she went. Hooty retreated into the door of the Owl House and fell asleep in moments.

Unbeknownst to all, Hunter observed everything, clinging gracelessly to the highest vantage point of a tree he could without making himself obvious enough to spot. He’d been peering at the party through a spyglass and was pleased to see the diversion he’d hurled over to them had worked as predicted. His face, however, sank as he watched Willow and Gus head inside with the cube.

He cursed himself, “I hadn’t banked on those two sticking around. Why did they stay?” He sighed, “It doesn’t matter, I only need the cube to be left alone. That’ll be my moment to move.”

The composite ruins that had not too long ago been Alador’s workshop were still being pieced back together by the Blight family patriarch and a handful of his closest technical associates. And the twins here and there – they felt a degree of accountability since they knew the truth about how and why it was trashed but deigned not to mention it.

The twins were down in the workshop alone, sweeping away tiny globules of old, decaying abomination slime that had been shaken loose from the unreachable crevices of the discarded Abomiton models. They were each thinking about the Assessors, prying their noses into their baby sister’s business when she wasn’t personally responsible for any of this damage.

In truth, they were both feeling moderately guilty for having clammed up to her about their involvement. Now she was being punished and she didn’t know why.

Ed tugged a side desk away from the wall and noticed among the flecks of grit and metal shavings a lump of dried ice and dead creeper. He deftly picked the ice lump up and held it in his palm.

“Whatever you’ve found over there, Edric, don’t eat it.”

Edric just winced, “How dumb to I look? Don’t answer that.”

Emira rested her case, “I’m thinking about it too.”

“What?”

“Telling Amity what really went on here.”

“Are we just nuts? She would literally destroy us.”

The twins mulled, their old mischievous sense of self-preservation wheedling it’s way into their minds. But they’d both recently had a hard dose of reality – that reality being that their Mittens wasn’t unhappy anymore. And they liked that.

They liked that she was finally happy with her life. They thought back to the library, their sister’s surface-level assurance masking her cries for help, and how they came close to worsening out of some warped perception of what was good for her. Their sullen faces as they looked at each other told all – perhaps they were now the architects of Amity’s woes and neither liked how that felt.

“We have to tell her.” they said in tandem, propping their broomsticks up against the table and heading upstairs.

As they waded through the living room towards the entrance to the stairs, neither in any particular hurry to get reamed, the twins caught sight of the Assessors floating single file out the front door.

“You don’t suppose they’re finished, do you?” Ed asked the sister crouching below him.

Emira just shrugged and motioned that they should follow them, “If they are going, it may reduce the riot act coming our way if we can tell Amity they’re out of her hair.”

“Sister, I think I agree with your way of thinking right now.”

They gingerly tip-toed up to the front door, peered around it to see if the Assessors were far enough away to not catch on that they were being followed and quietly made after them. Curiously, they weren’t following the track down to the manor’s main gate, as most guests tend to since it’s the only actual way on or off the property.

They were absent-mindedly drifting around the far side of the building, near to where Alador’s outside entrance to the workshop sat. “Why would they be going that way?” Emira questioned.

“Beats me,” Edric responded, “let’s see, shall we?”

Still being careful to ensure that they weren’t spotted, the twins crept in the Assessor’s footsteps, such as they were and spied around the corner, where the sun was still in an early rising position, bearing a glare that gave both teens a cause to squint and/or shield their eyes from it’s rays. The Assessors were getting gradually smaller but they could just make out their forms evacuating the premises through the melted hole in the outer wall that Eda and her raiding party had gained passage by.

“They’re going into the woods,” Emira observed.

The Assessors clearly weren’t paying them the blindest bit of attention from that distance so they felt it safe to make a sprint for the hole in the wall, though still maintaining a degree of vigilance, to scout where they went.

It was a pretty cold morning, though that could have been damp in the air, as the twins traipsed through the woods trying to keep pace and distance with the Assessors, who’d eventually convened in a circular crevice in a secluded part of the field of trees and stopped dead.

They hovered in place, lifeless as the proverbial dodo when a grating chuckle from just out of sight rang through and the Assessors turned to face it. The twins scamped around a few more trees, keeping low to remain obscured from detection, to see who had arrived and watched Kikimora emerge from hiding, entirely self-satisfied.

“So, you finally made it back here,” she put to the balloon men irritably, “did you do as instructed?”

The Assessors didn’t speak, only nodded – they really were stupid creatures, or so Edric and Emira thought. “Wonderful,” Kikimora went on, “that’s the Blight girl tended to.”

Ed and Em looked at each other with an obvious concern and confusion. Did she mean Amity?

One of the Assessors moved forward to grasp Kiki’s attention, “Did we do well, ma’am?” it asked with a dopey tone of voice but resplendent accent, “You said we would be due our permission to continue existing.”

The Assessor brushed up against Kiki and she recoiled in abject revulsion, “Oh, you asinine fool! What purpose could you possibly serve now you’ve done your job? We have the real Assessors after all and they’re leagues more effective then you.”

The real Assessors? The twins broke out into cold sweats and their blood chilled – what was going on here?

Kiki continued, “All you were needed for was to keep the child delayed and locked down in accordance with Mrs. Blight’s direction. You’ve done that, what purpose could you serve anybody now?”

While the quote-unquote Assessor tried to argue their right to an existence in themselves with a very substandard understanding of speech beyond it’s pre-established phraseology, Emira was insisting Edric get his scroll out to reach Amity through her’s. She had to know she was being used for something.

Their scurry was interrupted by the group of Assessors being engulfed in a fury of bright, lilac flame and bursting, patches of rubbery flesh falling to the ground, still smouldering before breaking apart into scorched ash and being carried off on the low morning breeze.

“That should be long enough. The Golden brat had better have done his part; he won’t get very far until he’s disposed of that human!”

The twins, against their better judgements, audibly gasped. They slapped their hands over the other’s mouth, but the damage had already been done. The noise caught Kikimora’s attention and she, aware that she’d been observed, conjured an even larger fireball before her hand and propelled it in the direction of the tree from behind which the noise had come. The tree’s stem detonated in a furious explosion and the top of it came toppling over, caught safely by it’s neighbours as one would perform a trust exercise.

Whatever was behind that tree was now long gone. Kiki was satisfied.

The bushes and shrubs a way away from the site of destruction were disrupted by a pair of witches, safely concealed by an invisibility spell as they sprinted with all their muster away from the Emperor’s little enforcer.

“They were fakes?! What’s going on here? Did she mention mom having a part in this?” Emira asked in rapid succession, evidently winded. The twins skidded to a stop just on the outskirts of the woods, the space between the trees and the wall of their house. “What should we do?”

“Exactly what we were going to do. You heard her – she said something about getting rid of ‘the human’. It doesn’t take much guessing to find out what that is.” Edric was fumbling with his scroll looking for Emira’s contact in his list and mentally kicking himself for not having it in his Favourites.

“Ed, come on!”

“I know, I know!”

Eventually, he happened upon the contact – he’d never realised how many useless contacts he had on that thing – and thumbed it firmly. The scroll made a strange kind of ringing sound when Amity’s face suddenly filled the screen, a look of confusion crossing her features when she saw the dishevelled state of her brother and sister.

“Ed? Em? What’s going on? Why-“

Emira cut her short, “No time for that now, just listen. There’s something you need to know about and, well, it’s not good news. But don’t do anything rash.”

“Emira,” Amity cut in, “just tell me. It can’t be that bad.”

The twins looked at each other and both looked deeply into Amity’s eyes through the call and simultaneously informed her that “Oh, yes, it can.”

Odalia was taking tea in her office – it was classy, organised and, above all, gaudy. So much was decorated like that of a person of entitlement and it had been up for debate for years whether that entitlement was even, frankly, entitled or simply sponged by a process of smart association and adaption to new circumstances.

Amity was happy to show her new circumstances as she strode with a newfound and frightful sense of fury – she could take being spited, she’d spent years living with it for the most trivial of matters, all at her whims. But she’d happily put the woman in her box when she’d been colluding to take her petty love of retribution out on Luz.

She marched up to the bulky doors leading to the office, magically swatting aside the abomination servants she crossed her path and drove all her weight and strength into a firm, level boot into the doors and prised them apart, a chunk of wood that had previously been the lock sent flying.

“Amity? What is the meaning of this?!” Odalia screeched at her daughter, turning from the door to face her and only then noticing the look of sheer outrage brewing beneath Amity’s eyes, her black eyeliner deepening to resemble something more than unbecoming.

“This is going straight to the Assessors, daughter. I know that human had been corroding your morals, but this is-“

“SHUT UP!” Amity roared, while Odalia gaped in utter disbelief.

“Oh, that does it. Butler, I want you to return Amity to her room and refuse to permit her egress until I allow it!”

An abomination butler came to approach but was stopped in it’s tracks by a significantly larger one Amity called upon with but a tiny circle in the air. Anger boiling over, Amity stormed up to her mother, drawing another circle in the air and allowing a large purple fist, composed of her own slime to enshroud her arm.

“You want something to punish, mom? Try this!”

And at that point, Amity propelled herself forward and drove the fist hard into Odalia’s other eye, knocking her clean to the floor. Odalia felt her own fury building up and rose to conjured a spell of her own but quickly found herself completely cocooned in abomination slime.

“I know you’ve been working with Belos’ little pet he calls an enforcer and I know that ‘Assessors’ were fakes sent to keep me here while something happened to Luz. So now, you’re gonna tell me everything about the deal you made.”

Outside the door, Alador and the twins sprinted up the hallway to get a good look at the mayhem taking place, with the twins feeling the need to stop Alador from interfering, citing that it wouldn’t help all that much.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!”

“Enough lies! If my girlfriend ends up with so much as a broken fingernail, then no amount of magic will fix what I do to you next!”

Amity withdrew her slime cocoon and Odalia slumped to the floor, completely exhausted and having earned herself another black eye to match her first one. The large abomination came to join Amity’s side as she imposed herself on her mother one last time, adding extra disgusted derision to the last word.

“Now, start talking, mom.”

Chapter Text

Hello, readers!

Jocularity aside, I expect you're probably tired of clicking on new updates on this just to read writer's notes and believe me,
I'm tired of disappointing you but I need to explain this particular delay because it's a bit of an awkward one. Long and short is
I know where I want to take these last two chapters and I have absolute intention to do it but I'm feeling conflicted by the fact 
that I started writing this as something that was once canon complaint and now very much isn't and a lot of developments over
the second half of season two have slightly put a crimp in things.

Take Hunter's turning against the Emperor after finding out he's really evil - I've kind of written myself into a catch-22 with
that particular story bead because the previous chapters had it firmly established that Hunter is still on the Emperor's side.
I'm not too concerned on how I'll tackle Odalia and her wretched behaviour toward her family and the comupance that I will
assuredly take great delight in crafting for her but that's principally because Cloud on the Horizon has rather laid bare that
Odalia is an evil person who was already unashamedly championing genocide for her own ends.

The problem really is with the Hunter angle - I can wrap up the story with the other characters and still make it seem as if
I'm keeping consistency with the main story (I'm not looking to return to canon compliance, I accept now that I'm way past
that) but if anyone could suggest how I could handle Hunter in a way that doesn't devalue what we know about him as a
character now, that would be splendid.

I accept that this likely isn't what you all wanted to read but I'm still struggling with my mental health and even I've found
it miraculous that I've been managing to post anything at all. I threw together another 2000-word piece earlier today to roll
off the back of the last episode and I'm quite proud of it (I'll link it in the notes) as well as writing a continuation story
following the Amphibia series finale (also in the notes).

Writing these fictions is really fun and I've had a hell of a time providing them for you and reading some of the lovely
comments I've gotten on them has really warmed my heart and made my currently difficult existance a lot more bearable than
you may realise. I have every intention of delivering these final two parts to you but if you could maybe take a look at my other
works, I would truely appreciate it too. I knew this piece was never gonna go on indefinately and I'm touched that it's become as
big as it has and I'll never be able to convay how grateful I am that all you splendid people have given it the time of day but,
like I say, it was never meant to go on forever and I just want to see if I can be just as entertaining for you in my other works.

I'm not saying you have to do anything. Please don't feel as if I'm demanding you to do something you don't want to - that's the
last thing I'd ever consider doing but I've put a lot of love into my other works and I've finally decided to branch out more and
start tackling new fandoms. So, if you folks could maybe find time to share some of my work or read my other stories or, hell,
even just say 'Hi' in the comments, you'd make my day just that little bit brighter. I love what I do and I do it for all of you and
I hope that I continue to prove myself worthy of your support.

Anyway, enough waffling from me. Rest assured - Chapter Seven will absolutely be coming and coming soon but I'll probably
wait until after I know how season two ends and then set about writing it and Chapter Eight. And if you can find time and/or are
interested in checking out my stories that I post in the interim or after I conclude this story, I'll be eternally grateful.

Best wishes and salutations!

- JMB