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“Hey Hunter! It’s, ah, it’s been a week and a half since the petrification ceremony. A week and a half since I-”
She starts to fiddle with the hem of her cloak, gaze flitting to the side.
“Destroyed the portal home. Not that… anyone else knows that.”
She flexes her fingers. Oddly enough, she’s wearing gloves.
“But! I’m recording this because- well, I, ah, I miss talking to you, I guess.”
“And this is for cleaning-”
“Yes, Ms. Noceda.”
“And this one- this one is for any aches, okay?”
“Yes, Ms. Noceda.”
“And here- here, here are some extra bandages, just in case.”
“Ms. Noceda, I already have three.”
“And you’re also covered in cuts, young man!”
Hunter sighs, adding the fourth roll of gauze to the bag and muttering a quiet thank you. Camila pushes onwards.
“Now, I really do need to get going, but I’ve left Susie another voicemail so she should be able to pick you up at some point today, but for now, you are staying downstairs and lying down, do I make myself clear?”
“Yes, Ms.-”
“Hunter, what have we talked about?”
Hunter resists a groan.
“Yes, Camila,” he replies, her name uncomfortable on his tongue.
“Good,” she smooths down his hair for the fourth time this morning, but it’d been a mess the last time he’d seen it, she probably doesn’t even make a dent, “get Luz to call me if you need anything, okay?”
In an attempt to not get caught having to use her name again, he says, “of course.”
“Good,” she repeats, “good.”
And with that, she places her bag onto her shoulder and strides off into the hallway. She calls upstairs in a mix of Spanish and English that Hunter can vaguely estimate to mean ‘goodbye, I love you’ and Luz’s voice replies in turn.
It's Luz’s voice, but not Luz.
It’s been a week and a half, but he can still feel his blood boil.
A week and a half, with something wearing Luz’s face.
They’d formed an unsteady truce, for the time Hunter had spent half-dead on the Noceda’s couch. For the first three days, he’d been too caught up in the spinning of his vision and the constant rotation of Camila and his foster parents hovering over him, debating taking him to the hospital or not, so he hadn’t said anything.
(They don’t take him, in the end. He ignores the hope that the Masons had remembered his phobia of hospitals, telling himself it was probably because of the bill.)
But screw the Masons. Camila Noceda was a saint amongst men, and Hunter doesn’t think he’ll ever stop owing her. She cleans his wounds and slings his right arm without a single complaint, only with the mild-mannered threat that if he brought any gangs to her door, she’d throw him to the wolves and a myriad of other things he’d lost in translation.
Which, yeah. That was fair enough. He’d fumbled enough in explaining away his injuries (he would hit himself for his initial ‘I was attacked by a bear’ if for one, he hadn’t been concussed and for two, if it didn’t hurt to move, let alone hit himself), so Camila had good reason to suspect foul play.
However, she hadn’t seemed to have caught on to the foul play within her own home.
“Luz”, or the thing pretending to be her, has barely left Luz’s room. Hunter can only really register them in the board games left on the coffee tail and the mop of hair he sees darting through the hallway, but that's enough.
When he was still mildly delirious, Camila had asked them to keep an eye on him. The conversation had been, well, stilted.
He thinks they’d been trying to convince him. When they lose at Cheat for the third time, a game Luz had some supernatural talent for, they seem to realise that it isn’t working.
They hadn’t talked since. Hunter is torn between being glad he doesn’t have to see so much discomfort twisting on Luz’s face and irritated that he has no opportunity to grab them by the collar and ask what the hell they think they’re doing.
Mostly glad, though. A week and a half, and he still can’t move without something throbbing. Threatening them would probably hurt him more than them.
Not that he’s going to listen to his body, when he hears Camila’s keys lock in the door.
He waits until he hears her car leave the driveway. Then, carefully as he can, extracts himself from the blanket Camila had left him in.
He hasn’t walked anywhere farther than the bathroom in a few days, and even that was with supervision. His last attempt at independence left him careening into the coffee table with one arm to catch himself. Camila hadn’t been pleased. It was less that his legs were injured, but the new balance of only having one arm available and the constant pounding in his head had left him unstable at best.
He’d got off with a warning. He gets the feeling that if Camila finds him sprawled across a different piece of furniture hours later when she gets home, he won’t get off so lightly.
But Hunter, ever persistent, carries on.
He manages the hallway fine. The stairs are a whole different battle, and any attempt at subterfuge is ruined by the loud tumble of his phone slipping out of his pocket and down the stairs. He shoots up a quick prayer for it but he doesn’t attempt to walk back down and grab it, not confident that both his balance and his nerve would survive the journey back up.
Hunter pushes on.
He doesn’t knock before he pulls open Luz’s bedroom door.
The creature- demon- thing- startles from their position, cross-legged on the lower bunk of Luz’s bed, hands poised just above Luz’s laptop.
“Hey, Luz.”
“Oh- uh, hey Hunter, you’re… up! Are you feeling better?”
They seem uncomfortable. Good.
“Yeah,” he answers, hand snaking behind him.
The door locks with a quiet click.
“And I’d like to talk.”
“Oh- yeah, sure,” quietly, they close Luz’s laptop, “about what?”
“About why you're wearing my friend's face.”
He must say it too menacingly. Their eyes dart to the open window.
Hunter kicks off in a sprint, but his balance is shot by his cast and the creature is closer, leaping off of Luz’s bed.
The creature skids on the turn, hands reaching to the worn paint of Luz’s windowsill, ready to jump.
Hunter grabs them by the wrist, turning hard and dragging the creature with him. His body screams in protest, the action tugging at still not fully closed wounds, but it gets the job done.
The creature spins with him and loses their footing, tumbling backwards onto the floor, only just missing the wall. They make a heavy thud on impact.
Hunter then watches in dawning horror as they begin hyperventilating on the floor.
Shit.
“Shit, shit shit shit,” Hunter half skids to the floor, almost faceplanting and barely catching himself on his one available hand. Hesitantly, he hovers it over the creature, still breathing heavily, body twisting unnaturally.
Hunter had walked up the stairs determined to get answers, but he wasn’t heartless. It also helped that the creature was wearing his friend’s face and hyperventilating in his friend’s bedroom, a painfully familiar scene, albeit rare.
He catches a glimpse of green and scales before the familiar tone of Luz’s skin returns, and for a split second, he’s scared, thinking the creature is about to morph into something and go straight for his throat.
But then tremors run down his friend’s form, and he’s struck with a new fear: are they about to cry?!
Demons have feelings too, you idiot! loops around his head alongside the realisation that okay, evil demons probably wouldn’t start panicking after one hit and a resounding chant of shit shit shit shit shit.
Cool. Calm. Hunter could do this.
“Can I, uh, touch you?” He asks, tone gentle as he can make it, but some strain still slips in.
The creature shudders, flinching inwards. This, to Hunter, reads as a resounding no.
Carefully, he shuffles backwards. Luz’s room isn’t all too big, and it’s not long before he hits the wall behind him. The back of his head bumps against the window sill, and he suppresses the urge to curse as a new wave of throbbing starts off.
He lets out a quiet ugh, raising his knees to his chest.
It takes a few moments, but Luz’s lookalike stops shuddering. Shyly, they turn their gaze up to Hunter, but she they still won’t meet his eyes.
He raises his hands in surrender.
They sigh, and then push themself up to sit against the opposite wall, crossing their legs. They keep their eyes trained on the floor.
“So…” Hunter starts off with, trying to break the tension that’s settled over the room, “I’m guessing you're a demon. From the Boiling Isles, right?”
“Yeah,” they respond in an unfamiliar rasp, bunching Luz’s shirt in their hands.
“Cool,” Hunter says, because it's the only thing he can think of, “that’s cool.”
A beat passes.
“Are you a witch?” They ask him.
“I don’t know.”
They pause in their fidgeting, then finally meet his gaze.
“Are you running, too?”
Hunter feels the urge to turn away. He’s never seen such vulnerability on Luz’s face and it's almost disturbing, but he keeps his head forward, not wanting to do this creature the a disservice.
“No.”
“Oh,” they murmur before finally breaking their stare, eyes moving back to their lap.
“Is that why you're pretending to be Luz? Because you're… running?”
Silently, they nod.
“Oh,” Hunter states, intelligently, “well, uh, do you have a name?”
“Vee,” they answer, quietly.
“Cool. I’m Hunter.”
“I know.
“Ah- cool.”
Hunter grimaces. He’s said cool way too many times today.
“Look- I’m not going to ask you what you’re running from in the Boiling Isles, but I need to get back there, soon,” Vee seems to stiffen up at that comment, but Hunter keeps going, “I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but Luz is kinda my only friend here, and I’m hers. As much as it's… kinda weird that you look like her, Luz’s mom might start getting suspicious if we start avoiding each other.”
“Mo- Camila. Camila has been asking about you… that’s how I knew who you were before you showed up,” Hunter hides it, but he can feel a twinge at his heart at the idea of Camila asking after him. Only a little one though, of course.
“You mean before she found me bleeding out in the woods?” Hunter attempts to joke, trying to diffuse some of the tension in the room and to distract himself from any sort of vulnerability at an adult actually caring about him.
It doesn’t help on either account. Vee only hunches into themself further.
“Ah- yeah, shit, sorry, back on topic. I was just going to say, you want to keep your cover right? And I want to stay near where the portal closed, keep an eye on it in case Luz manages to reopen it on her end. For that, we’re gonna have to work together on this. At least until I can get back to Luz.”
“And after you get back to her? Will you come back?”
The “will she come back?"is silent, but Hunter hears it anyway.
There’s concern in their voice, and for good reason. Luz- bright, loud, and incredibly unsubtle Luz would entirely break the veneer of change that Vee has made for themself. Hunter, for a brief second, wishes Luz were here instead of him. He’d never been good at planning for the future, not when personal stakes were involved.
“We’ll… figure that out later. But if you're running from something, we sure as hell aren’t going to throw you back to it. I promise.”
Vee doesn’t meet his gaze again, but they do raise their eyes from the floor.
“And you won’t tell Camila? That I’m not really her daughter?”
“No,” Hunter replies, ignoring the small twist of guilt in his chest, “I won’t.”
“Thank you,” they say, just a bit louder this time, a line of tension falling from their shoulders.
Sensing an end to the conversation, Hunter grabs at the windowsill behind him and hauls himself to his feet before making his way to the door.
He stops, just as he’s unlocked it.
“Oh and, Vee? Could you do me a favour?”
They look up to him, head tilted in silent assent.
“Could you stop straightening Luz’s hair? She always hated it like that, only did it when she was meeting new people and… worried.”
Vee’s eyes widen slightly, but an apologetic look comes over Luz’s face.
“I- uh, I can try? I’m just… a little low on magic at the moment. I was saving it for an emergency.”
Somehow, it hadn’t registered in Hunter’s mind that Vee wasn’t some sort of witch or demon with a bile sack. He files it away as them being some sort of shapeshifter.
“You haven’t been doing it on purpose?”
Vee shrugs halfheartedly, “I only ever saw it straight.”
That twigs something in his mind. The last time Luz had straightened her hair was the day they stumbled into the Boiling Isles. He decides to think about the implications of Vee successfully pretending to be his friend for over two months with no one noticing later, when he can be angry without worrying about sending Vee into a panic.
“How do you get more magic?” He asks, ever the pragmatist.
Vee seems uncomfortable with the question, but answers nonetheless, “I sort of, I drain it. From magical items. But the human realm doesn’t really have anything magical so…”
Hunter’s face twists as he tries to think of any way something from the Boiling Isles could have made it to the human realm.
A witch with a golden grin, mismatched eyes, and years of unregulated access to the human realm comes to mind.
“I… may have an idea for that.”
“Hey Hunter, me again! It’s been two weeks now, since I, well, y’know. And God, I’m really starting to wish they had internet in the Boiling Isles. I could really use your advice right now.”
“Okay so- I’ll explain. Me, Gus and Willow kinda got expelled? It was Amity’s parents fault, something about ‘child endangerment’ or whatever, but then I did this weird weapons presentation for them,” wordlessly, she flicks at a glob of abomination goo still lingering on her shoulder, “I’m fine though!”
“Gus and Willow kinda weren’t happy about it. But they’ve not really been too happy recently anyways so…”
She sighs, fidgeting with her hands in her lap.
“They miss you. I miss you. I also think they might be kinda mad at me? But- but that’s not important. But God, back on topic- I think even Amity misses you, and you’ve only talked like, twice. She asked after you earlier.”
She takes in a deep breath, then finally turns her eyes up to the camera. There’s a weak smile on her face, growing in strength.
“Speaking of Amity- oh my god dude, your gonna be so mad you missed this. She was really mad about her parents getting us expelled, right? So, I’m at her parents weapons presentation and I’m kindatotallygettingthecrudkickedoutofme and then the abominations arms explode! And I’m like oh my god oh my god and then who starts yelling from the ceiling?! Amity! And she called me her Luz-!!!”
Two weeks, and Hunter finds himself alone in Luz’s room with Vee. Again.
They’re holding up a white and purple striped shirt. He gives them a so-so motion with his hand from where he’s sprawled out on Luz’s top bunk, Luz’s laptop and an array of news clippings he’d repurposed from the library in front of him.
They place it onto the Luz pile.
They’d only been at this for about five minutes but they’ve already made it halfway through Luz’s closet, Hunter splitting his attention between veto’ing any clothing that may come off as not really Luz while scouring the local news for anything Eda related.
He doesn’t find himself short of content. He thinks it's a miracle that neither he or Luz had had a clue Eda existed before now. Eleven year old Luz probably would’ve made a fan club. Fourteen year old Luz might as well be a fan club, what with how she idolises the woman.
He side eyes Vee, who’s now taking some weird, flowy shirt off its hanger.
“Oh, definite no on that one.”
Vee’s brow knits, but Hunter doesn’t really pay attention to it, only looking long enough to see it get dropped onto the not Luz pile.
The most recent article he can find dates back to around two months ago. ‘Strange Woman Banned Immediately From Cafe For Creating Living Books’.
Way to be subtle, Eda , he thinks to himself. He smiles regardless.
Vee is now holding up some sort of light grey mock shirt jumper. He scoffs.
“I’m just saying, Luz got that as some shitty birthday gift from one of her mom’s church friends. I don’t think she’s ever actually worn it.”
“But,” Vee speaks up, and Hunter nearly startles at the interruption, “I like it.”
He doesn’t really know what to say to that.
“Er- sure, but if you’re trying to look like Luz-”
“What if I don’t want to look like Luz?” They snap, voice leaning more into their natural rasp.
Hunter blinks, surprised.
Vee looks like they want to curl into themselves, and quickly throws the jumper into the not Luz pile.
“I’m sorry- I, I just…” they trail off, eyes locked on the floor.
Hunter feels out of his depth.
“Do you not want to look like Luz?”
“It's not like that,” they sigh, lowering themselves to the floor.
Hunter feels like he’s looming from the top bunk, so he carefully untangles himself from his work space and climbs down, sitting down at Vee’s level.
Vee seems to catch his silent prod to continue, but they still speak barely above a whisper.
“It’s- it’s just… being Luz has been fine. Amazing, really. After all this time, I’ve finally had a place to belong.”
“But sometimes, if I catch my reflection it… feels wrong. And it makes no sense, I’m a basilisk, changing my form is in my nature , but, sometimes I just miss… looking like me, I guess.”
“Its stupid, I know. There’s not enough magic to be switching in the human realm and I couldn’t even be myself in the Boiling Isles, and everything here is so good and still, I’m just not fully happy. Maybe I never will be, without pretending to be someone else. Something else.”
“Clothes helped, I guess,” they finish lamely, eyes on their hands, fiddling with their fingers.
“Oh- shit, uh- sorry,” Hunter apologises, surprised by the earnest confession, “I… didn’t realise you felt like that.”
Vee seems to have said their piece, and Hunter searches for anything he could say to help.
“Can you really not let anything slip?” He tries.
Vee smiles ruefully, staring at the wall behind his head.
“Not without magic, not when I can’t switch back. I’m not really humanoid, if you know what I mean.”
Well, that’s a new revelation. He logs that beside the new term of basilisk in the slowly growing knowledge he has of Vee in his head.
“It's… I’m just being stupid, okay? We can just go back to sorting-”
“Oh, no way. Ditch the piles,” Hunter says, and Vee seems surprised by the change in plan. Hunter boulders onwards.
“I mean, you’ve already convinced, like, all of Gravesfield that you're the real deal,” he says, and tries to ignore how the truth stings, “so screw it I guess. What’s changing Luz’s wardrobe up a bit?”
Vee, to his shock, smiles, and then their eyes dart back to the jumper, grabbing the fabric and running it over in their palms.
This is good. This is a good moment. Hunter doesn’t need to push it any farther.
“Is there anything else?” His traitor mouth asks.
Vee lets out a little hm? , looking up at him curiously.
“Before we find some magic, is there anything else we can do? To make you feel more yourself?”
Damnit. Damnit all to hell. Damn Luz to hell, who’s voice is the one whispering in his ear to be nice to the sad basilisk-creature-person who had to pretend to be someone else to find a home.
“Oh!” Vee lights up, before instantly drawing back into themselves yet again. This time though, they look more shy than anything, “not really, to be honest. It's mostly my form that I miss, and my markings, I guess.”
He turns the idea of markings over in his head.
“We can draw them on?”
Vee, in a move shocking to Hunter, laughs a little bit. It's the first time he’s heard it.
“They’re not very human,” they say, tracing a circle just above their jaw, “they’d probably look a bit weird.”
“Would freckles work?” He asks, and pointedly doesn’t say Luz used to like fake freckles . She used to draw them on me.
Vee seems confused by the conviction he’s showing to this idea, but they still consider the idea before giving a half-hearted nod, “I guess?”
A few minutes later, and Hunter has fully raided Luz’s sparse makeup bag. Vee watches on, torn between being confused or being oddly touched by Hunter’s tenacity. He chooses not to think of whatever bare minimum Vee is used to that made his lacklustre and slightly selfish attempts at being nice are being taken as such.
“Okay so, this is eyeliner, right?” He says distractedly, as he loads up a wikihow in his off hand, “I stole it from Luz once,” three years ago , “so I have an,” incredibly vague , “idea of how it works.”
They seem surprised by that comment, tilting their head, so Hunter takes a guess, “human related question?”
They nod. Vee and Hunter had set up a system earlier in the week that anything Vee didn’t understand about the human realm, Hunter would answer without question or judgment. Still, they seem a bit embarrassed as they search for the right words.
“Isn’t eyeliner for…”
Hunter quirks a brow, but he’s got a feeling he knows where this one is going.
“...girls?”
It's a miracle Vee has lasted as Luz for so long, one part of him thinks. The other part thinks, how the fuck do I explain gender to a probably traumatised creature from the Boiling Isles .
“Sorry, sorry,” they rush out, ever eager to apologise, “it's just, gender seems to be a massive deal here, and I’ve been trying to research it but I don’t think I’ve been doing a very good job of it.”
“Nah, nah it's cool, I’m just… probably not the best person to ask,” he goes for comfort first, as he desperately tries to think of an easy way of explaining this, “gender can be confusing even if you're from the human realm. Can’t imagine how it’d look like to an outsider.”
He’s only bought himself time, as Vee continues staring at him, urging him onwards.
“It’s kinda complicated. Some people- most people in Gravesfield, to be honest- will say that there's only boys and girls, some people will say gender doesn’t even exist. It's all about finding what's right for you, I guess. Although, please don’t be the first group or I will have to kick you out of the Noceda household.”
Vee’s eyes widen, scared.
“Joke! That was… mostly a joke!” He covers himself with, even though he doesn’t really believe it as he says it. He can deal with Vee living as Luz, kinda, but if Vee ever made his friend’s mouth say anything vile, he would probably throw hands.
“Look, I’m really not the best person to ask, but I can give you some links that Luz gave me once. At the end of the day though you can just be… whoever you want to be, I guess.”
“I think… I think I like being a girl,” Vee says, and Hunter quietly logs a change in his head.
But, God- Hunter really doesn’t think he’ll ever get over just how open Vee is. She means everything she says so much , and she’s only known him for a few days. Maybe it was the life spent hiding everything about himself, but he can’t quite wrap his head around it.
“Cool,” is what he says instead, “then you're a girl then. And if you wanna change that later, then that's cool too.”
“Cool,” Vee echoes him, and Hunter quietly curses his go-to word now infecting her. He pushes onwards though, eyeliner pen now in hand.
“Okay, so this one is more black than brown so I’m just gonna apply it lightly but…”
It takes them a few failed attempts, but by the end of it, Vee has acquired a new found passion for makeup and a shoddy smattering of freckles across her cheeks, concentrated where she’d gestured her markings to be.
Her eyes are sparkling as she holds a mirror up to her face for the fourth time, Hunter having done a terrible job on the first run, smudged it on the second, and entirely forgot he was aiming for specific marking placements on the third.
Unpursued leads sit atop Luz’s top bunk, but Hunter figures they can wait for a while. If he can find some magic for Vee, he’ll probably find something related to portals as well, right?
Luz won’t mind if Hunter changes his focus a little. Just for now, he and Vee will do their best to not stain the carpet of her bedroom floor and later, they’ll figure this all out.
“Hey Hunter, think I was traumatised today! Turns out Hooty can twist himself into a backpack. It was as bad as it sounds.”
“A lot of stuff happened today. I figured out how to make an invisibility glyph, and we went to these ancient ruins for King, turns out he’s not actually like, a proper king. I… can’t say I’m too surprised to be honest, even if I’m kinda sad for him.”
“I can’t really talk much about it right now, I promised King I’d put him to bed. I promise I’ll record something more in detail tomorrow, but long story short King was just a really cute nickname that kinda exploded.”
“It was really fun, exploring the ruins, even if Lilith was being kind of a jerk about it before we actually found them. She’s kinda like you like that, even if it's kinda gross to think about.”
“I think you’d get along with Lilith, even if you didn’t like having to work with her at first. She can be a bit prickly at first, but deep down she’s just a total nerd. She’s really changed since she left the Emperor’s Coven.
“But don’t worry! Still keeping a total grudge since she tried to kill me. I haven’t had to wash the dishes in two whole weeks-!”
Turns out the coffee shop that Eda had terrorised was a dead end. All Hunter and Vee had managed to find after Vee grilled the barista were some weird bread worshiping rats. Once again, he wonders how the hell he and Luz had managed sixteen and fourteen years in Gravesfield respectively without ever catching onto anything strange.
He’s quite deep into this line of thought when Vee suddenly lights up next to him, tugging at his sleeve.
Hunter is, suffice to say, slightly alarmed. So far Vee’s emotional range has been mostly limited to one, terror and two, milder terror, so to see her look almost excited shocks him slightly.
Turning to try and see whatever she may be looking at, all he sees is a group of just-older-than-preteens lounging underneath a tree, playing… cards?
He blinks, then turns the familiarity over in his head. Hunter knows what playing cards look like and he’s had brushes with tarot cards and they don’t seem to match either of the ideas in his mind, so why are they ringing a bell?
Vee interrupts his musings with a shy voice.
“Do you mind if I go say hi to my friends?”
“No, what? Of course not, I’ll just hang here.”
She tilts his head at him, curious, then shrugs her shoulders and walks over.
Vee has yet to catch onto Hunter’s status as ‘town enigma’, and he’d prefer her to not be introduced to it via people she probably actually liked. He’s just gonna… stand here. Look at some leaves on the ground. Yeah.
It’s summer. All the leaves are on the trees. Damnit.
Luz, who was wrong about everything, had always liked the summer. Freedom from school and the sun shining seemed to dull her senses to the fact that boiling heat and no structure for three whole months was awful, actually.
She always had a retort for that. Usually calling him weak, which usually started a fight. He’d once made the mistake of complaining about being too hot while they were walking along a creek and she hadn’t hesitated to push him in.
Maybe Hunter missed Luz, just a little.
He takes a moment to think before coming to the realisation that he had very little friends who wouldn’t do the exact same. Gus, who was normal, probably wouldn’t. Willow, Ed and Em, Eda- and God, when did he start pairing ‘Eda’ and ‘friend’ in his head?- probably wouldn’t have hesitated to-
Eda.
That’s how he knows those cards.
He doesn’t really think before he stumbles over to where Vee seems to be finishing up, standing up and saying her goodbyes before he interrupts.
“Cool cards, where’d you get ‘em?”
In unison, four pairs of eyes turn to him.
Ah.
He has made a mistake here.
Desperately trying to ignore the staring- especially from the guy with an overgrown fringe who Hunter recognises as the freshman he once caught trying to do vape tricks in the school bathroom (at 10am. On a Tuesday.)- Hunter tries to salvage a more normal line of questioning.
“I have a friend… who likes cards.”
It is Gravesfield-wide knowledge that Hunter’s only friend is Luz. Luz, who is supposedly standing right next to him.
The five of them dwell there for a moment, and Hunter considers the likelihood of himself dying instantaneously on the spot.
The goth-looking girl, the one holding the playing cards, is the one to break the silence.
“I bought them,” she responds, then pauses for a second, “from the historical society.”
Ah, fuck.
“Cool,” Hunter answers. When he can’t find anything else to say, he just says, “that’s cool.”
Double fuck.
“Thanks?” She replies, sounding as perturbed as Hunter feels.
He needs to end this. He needs to end this, run away, and then scream. Maybe not in that order, he’d need to deposit Vee back at home first, but he’s gonna fit that scream in somewhere. The crawling awkwardness under his skin demands it.
“Well, uh, it’s been nice seeing you guys?” Vee attempts to break the atmosphere with, and it seems to work on the pre-teen side of this terrible interaction, as they very quickly begin to chime off with different variations of ‘see ya!’ and ‘text us!’.
Hunter seizes the opportunity, and walks Vee away as quickly as possible.
“What was that all about?”
“I’m not good with people,” he leaves it at that, as he begins walking them into a direction he very much wishes they didn’t have to go, “but those cards, I’ve seen them before in the Boiling Isles.”
“Really?” Vee asks, half jogging to keep up with his stride. He slows down a little bit, “I couldn’t smell any magic on them-”
“You can smell magic?” He asks, once again adding this tidbit to his slowly growing infofile on Vee.
“...yeah?” She answers him, shyly.
That’ll be helpful, he thinks. “That’s cool,” is what he says.
They cross the road, and Vee looks up in wonder at the building in front of them. Hunter represses the urge to scream.
“Okay, so, Vee, I’m not gonna lie, this is going to suck.”
“What?” She asks, eyes wide as they trek up the stairs.
“The guy who runs this place- Jacob, well…”
Hunter opens the door. Might as well get this over with.
“Stay back, witch!”
Vee nearly jumps out of her skin. Hunter takes a step in front of her, and the door swings shut behind them.
“He doesn’t like me much.”
“Are you even listening to me?!” Jacob explains as he dumps the box he was holding in his arms, circling in front of the welcoming desk.
“Mhm, yeah, totally” Hunter responds with a hum, sliding his phone out of pocket and flicking it to record as Jacob begins to advance, “the witch that you and are currently within five feet of?”
Hunter’s eyes flick to the town square, only a door away. More witnesses would probably be helpful, but he’s never liked spectacle.
“You came into my museum!” He points a finger at Hunter, advancing as he goes.
Hunter sighs.
“Jacob, did you forget the protective order again? Step back.”
“To hell with the protective order, that expired years ago!”
“To hell with the Class-D felony you committed and that I could use as evidence in another case? And that I could now get a civil protection order against?”
Jacob deflates, bravado fading. He takes a step back.
“Come on, man,” he moans.
“No, not ‘come on, man’. You put cameras outside my house.”
“That was years ago. And I haven’t done it again!”
“Jacob, I was five.”
“I was a kid too!”
Be calm, his inner voice says. Kill him, his inner voice also says.
His inner voice isn’t very helpful.
“You were seventeen!” He goes for stating the facts, for calm reasons. He yells it, for murder reasons.
“Legally, that’s a kid,”
“Legally, it’s not.”
“How was I meant to know the age of criminal responsibility?”
Hunter’s eye twitches.
“I don’t know, basic knowledge? But maybe not stalking me would’ve been a great start-”
“It's not stalking if it's in the public interest-”
“For fucks sake, public interest is only ever used in breach of confidence laws-”
“Only ever used so far. I know the law too, witch, I know how precedent works. And I’ve got proof this time, proof that you are a danger to this community. That’s why you're here, isn’t it?”
“Proof?” Vee pipes up from his side, looking incredibly alarmed.
Jacob blinks. Then his eyes sparkle.
“Yes- yes… random girl!, I have proof this time!”
“That’s really not while we’re here-” Hunter tries to interrupt, but Jacob barrels onwards.
“Normally, I wouldn’t engage with witchkind directly, not after,” his eyes flick to Hunter, “government intervention-”
“Conditional discharge,” Hunter drawls, reangling his still recording phone.
“A poorly disguised attempt at silencing me,” he overwrites, confidently, “in fact, years ago, I too wouldn’t’ve batted an eye at such a creature walking in our midsts. I can’t blame you for falling into their schemes.”
Hunter allows himself a facepalm.
“Tell me, random girl, do you like having teeth?”
Vee still looks alarmed, but the knit of her brows tells Hunter she is also deeply, deeply confused.
She looks to him.
He meets her eyes through the palm covering his face and gives a singular, defeated nod.
She imitates him to Jacob.
“Then you might just want to keep your fraternising with him,” he points a harsh finger at Hunter, finger hovering inches from his chest, “to a minimum.”
“I can’t tell you everything, but all the proof you need is on my Mewtube, just look me up, one thousand, two hundred and thirty seven subscribers and growing by the day. And what with my new, highly anticipated evidence…” Jacob now looks directly to Hunter, “your days in Gravesfield are numbered, witch.”
…that could be considered a threat, right?
Fuck it, it’ll have to be enough, Hunter doesn’t think he can stand to listen to Jacob’s schtick for much longer.
Hunter will take it up with a judge if he needs to. He’s got all the evidence he needs.
He taps his phone off record, but he keeps it held up.
“Listen here, Hopkins.”
Hunter takes one step forward. Jacob takes three backwards, hitting the wall behind him.
“I can live with your stupid theories. I can live with the one-man protests in the square. Hell, I can live with you interviewing my classmates for ‘suspicious activities’.”
(Technically, Hunter couldn’t live with that last one, as it’d instigated the long line of events that had landed him in youth court, but Jacob didn’t need to know that.)
“But if you’ve been recording me, watching me, following me, doing any of your creep shit again, I will march you back to court myself. And who are they going to believe, Jacob? The guy with a criminal record or the teenager he stalked? Y’know, I don’t think they would mind if you ended up a bit roughed up as well. What’s a bit of self-defence in such an easy case?”
Jacob continues trying to flail backwards, but behind the fear, there’s determination on his face. Fuck. Whatever he has on Hunter must be good if just threatening him isn’t working.
“You think I don’t know that?” He retorts, but the rise in his pitch tells Hunter that he clearly didn’t.
“Wouldn’t put it past you,” Hunter replies, but he stops his advance. Jacob looks visibly relieved, like Hunter might pull back.
The thing is though, Hunter’s had an idea.
“Look, Jacob. You don’t like me, I get that, but whatever ‘proof’ you’ve come up with this time-”
“Stop saying it like that!” Jacob interrupts him, voice pitched enough that it sounds like a whine, “I saw you! You came out of that portal, I have video evidence-!”
He saw what?
That’s bad. That’s probably really bad, even he can’t remember coming out of that portal, but Hunter can’t let it get to him. He keeps going.
“So you have been recording me again? It wouldn’t be on private property, would it?”
Jacob looks to the side.
“So lets say Jacob, you do take this ‘video’ of me to a court. I’ve seen your cameras- grainy footage? Obtained illegally? With whatever slapjob CGI you’ve put on this time? You’d be laughed straight into a cell. You didn’t go to prison last time, did you?”
He pauses for dramatic effect.
“I don’t think you’d like it.”
Jacob pales, ever so slightly.
“You're threatening me. You came onto my property and you're threatening me” he gets out, but his pointer finger is shaking, “you’re recording yourself threatening me! I can use that.”
“I can edit a video too, Jacob,” he replies simply.
Surprisingly, Jacob stops cowering, for just a second,
“You're the bad guy here,” he states, almost dangerously quietly, “you're threatening to silence me,” his volume picks up, “I’m the good guy here, I’m trying to protect this town- protect humanity! Protect it from things like you.”
If he was younger maybe, that would’ve hurt, to be alienated so simply.
But Hunter is frustrated, in pain, and more than done with this conversation. He cuts him off sharply.
“Can’t do that from jail, can you, Jacob?”
Jacob wilts, and Hunter knows he’s got him. He’s gotta be quick now, before Jacob gets back his nerve.
“Give me your keys.”
“Wha-?”
“Your keys to your museum. Gimme.”
“Why the hell would I do that-!”
“So I can fuck with whatever illegal footage you’ve obtained and then throw some boxes around so you have a good excuse for your Mewtube followers as to why your new discovery has gone missing. That, and get my friend here some cards.”
Vee perks up beside him, but she still looks incredibly out of her depth.
“No! No way-”
“Damn, guess me and Luz here will just have to go straight to the station then. You think a witness,” he gestures to Vee, “video evidence, and whatever shit you’ve got packed into your back office won’t be enough to send you down?”
He looks torn, incredibly so. But when Jacob starts rifling through his pockets, Hunter knows he’s won.
“Can you just leave a little bit of footage-” he whines as he pulls a ring of keys from his jacket pocket.
“Nope,” Hunter pops as he snatches the ring from his hands.
“Wait- no, c’mon man, that’s got my house keys on it-”
“Do know, don’t care, we’ll leave ‘em on the counter if we’re feeling nice. Out you go.”
He loops around the desk and starts shoo’ing Jacob out. Jacob complains, loudly, but in seconds Hunter has herded him out of the museum and locked the door behind him.
“What just happened?” Vee asks him, eyes still a bit wide, looking incredibly small in the high ceilings and long hallways of the historical society.
“Blackmail,” Hunter informs her, “justified blackmail.”
“Is that allowed?”
“Oh no, blackmail is definitely illegal. But Jacob doesn’t know shit, so let's get moving.”
Vee wastes no time after that.
To Hunter, the museum smells of lemon disinfectant and stale air. Vee clearly smells something different as she starts speed walking towards the counter.
Hunter tilts his head, curious.
“Magic,” she mutters, but excitement raises her volume, “I thought I could smell magic when we walked in, but it's definitely here, behind this door.”
“Well then, smell away,” Hunter responds, exaggerating his movements as he throws his newly acquired keys to her. She fumbles slightly, but still manages the catch.
As Vee makes her way into the backroom, Hunter lingers behind her for just a second, looking through the halls to some of Jacob’s exhibits.
It's a shame, is what he thinks to himself, an old regret, if Jacob wasn’t such an asshole, I would’ve loved this place as a kid.
His eyes catch on the town’s insignia, proudly displayed behind polished glass.
His mind flits back to a similar golden emblem, wings outstretched alongside a sword.
Weird, he thinks as Vee calls for him from the other room.
The thought lingers, even as he’s trawling through Jacob’s computer (the password resting on a notepad next to it) and watches himself get blasted through an open doorway. The video has no sound, but if he squints, he thinks he can see Luz, back to the door, facing the Emperor head on.
A flash, an explosion, and the doorway cuts out of reality, like it was never there. He watches detached for a second, as the him of two weeks ago bleeds out on old wooden floors.
He takes his time, unscrewing the side panel of Jacob’s PC. He then proceeds to rip out his hard drive and snap it over his knee. He fucks up the RAM and power supply as well for good measure. Vee claps a little, even if she seems alarmed by his ferocity, two sets of cards now resting in her pockets.
They go back home. Hunter leaves Jacob’s keys on the gutted case of his computer.
“Guess who,” Luz stage whispers, eye so close to the camera it blurs. She pulls back in one large movement, “me! And I’ve got news!”
“Okay okay, so remember in my last vlog when I told you that Eda’s mom gave me some pointers? About there having been humans in Bonesborough before. Well…”
With flair, she pans the camera to a pet enclosure in her room. Within it, a mouse sleeps.
“I found his diary! A mouse ate it and is now projecting it to me, but that’s like, a totally different story.”
The camera turns back to her.
“Oh- and you're totally not gonna believe it. This guy’s name? Phillip Whittebane! Either it's a massive coincidence, or it's the founder guy! Which is still one hell of a coincidence. What’re the odds you get named after a guy who actually made it to the Boiling Isles? That’s gotta be fate, I’m telling you.”
“I really think I’m getting closer to making a portal, I can just feel it. And then- then…”
Her face scrunches as she thinks.
“I, uh. I haven’t really thought that far ahead.”
“First things first though- apologies. I definitely gotta apologise to a few people. And…”
She sighs.
“It's not just you.”
“I’ve been drawing back from Willow and Gus. It just, it kinda stings, hanging out with them without you there, oh- Willow found that reptilian book you were asking about, by the way.”
“And it's like, it's not a massive deal. We still hang at school and stuff, but just today right, Gus went on this whole adventure with some Glandus kids- and he’s barely told me anything about it. And I know it's probably nothing and of course he doesn’t have to tell me everything about his life and I know-”
“But we’re kinda a pair, here, in the Boiling Isles. I can’t help but think that I just don’t fit as well without you here with me.”
Hunter and Vee are sitting on Luz’s bedroom floor, and he’s beginning to wonder if this is their thing now. Hunter had only come in a minute ago, and yet here they are, on the floor.
Honestly, he’d half-expected Vee to withdraw from him, after they’d found some magic for her. Their deal wasn’t transactional, she didn’t have to help him back after he’d helped her. And yet, when he’d sent her a message this morning asking to talk through more portal ideas, she’d agreed, exclamation marks and all.
But now that he’d gotten here, he wasn’t really feeling like talking. He wasn’t feeling like doing much of anything, really. Dave had dropped him off today. It hadn’t gone well.
In minor good news though, Camila had finally allowed him to take off his sling. It’d been three weeks, after all.
Mindlessly, he rolls his wrist, revelling in the new feeling.
Vee looks at him.
“I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Are you sure?” She asks, and the knot in his chest tightens, “that looked… pretty tense.”
Luz’s window faced the front of the house. Vee must’ve seen Dave walk him out of the car.
“Me and my foster parents just got into a bit of a fight earlier, it's no big deal.”
Vee’s eyebrows lift, expression questioning.
“Do you… know what foster care is?” He asks, trying to dodge the obvious question.
Vee stares back at him with his friend's face, expression flat, “I meant the fight.”
Hunter raises his hands in defence, “hey, don’t blame a guy for asking,” but he realises he’s talked himself into a corner, so he tries to let loose just a little bit of truth, to try and ease Vee’s nerves.
“It wasn’t that big of a fight. They’re just… concerned.”
Vee’s gaze is unrelenting, and Hunter feels like he's under a microscope.
“They don’t like that I’m going out so much when I’m injured and they don’t like that I won’t tell them that I got hurt, okay?”
“Oh- I’m, I’m sorry-”
“Please,” he cuts her off, and decides to feel bad about it later, “don’t apologise. I’m just frustrated right now, it's nothing against you.”
Vee shuffles a bit closer to him, sitting at the end of Luz’s bed while he sits against the side.
“I- uh,” Vee murmurs, and Hunter tiredly turns his face to her, “I don’t actually know what foster parents are. Are they… different? From Camila?”
“They’re not meant to be,” he bites out, bitterly, but lets the anger die with his words.
“It's this human system, but I don’t know, they probably have an equivalent back in the Boiling Isles. If a kid's parents are really bad, or if they don’t have parents anymore, people can train to be foster parents, and then take those kids in. I’m one of the latter, but I don’t even remember having any in the first place.”
Vee looks to him, and he hates that she sees familiarity on her face.
“You too?” He asks, voice quiet.
“Yeah,” she responds, fiddling with her hair. She’s been doing that ever since they got Eda’s Hexas Hold’em cards, and Hunter had watched the texture changed before his eyes. Hunter told her she didn’t have to if she didn’t want to, but Vee had decided she liked it, and so like that it had stayed.
“Basilisks don't really have parents. Not anymore.”
He raises a brow at her, urging her to continue at her own pace.
“My kind went extinct, a long time ago,” huh? Then how… “but we were brought back by bad people for bad reasons. They wanted to know how we drained magic, and I still don’t know why.”
“Damn…” Hunter mutters, and is hit with the small feeling that his own sob story probably has nothing on Vee’s. He doesn’t really know what to say in the face of it. All he can think to do is lighten the mood, desperately tense for what is only eleven in the morning.
Carefully, he rests a fist on Luz’s bed, facing Vee, “no parents gang, I guess.”
She breathes a laugh, and quietly meets the fist bump. They both withdraw.
“I think I used to resent Luz, for that,” Vee admits, and Hunter straightens up, “when I first came here, no one had ever been nice to me, I think. Then I met Camila, and she was amazing. Luz had a mom who loved her, a life… and she still ran away from it all. Why?”
A familiar urge rises in Hunter, the need to defend Luz regardless of any base to Vee’s claim, but he doesn’t think he can, not right now.
“I’m so thankful Luz ran away, and I know that’s a horrible thing to say, but I am. Because here, I got to be happy. But even when I got everything I wanted,” he fingers trail the freckles drawn across her face, “it still wasn’t enough.”
“I don’t think anything's ever enough, really,” Hunter speaks up, “you could have the most perfect life on Earth, and there’d always be something left to bug you.”
“I get that now,” she says, “everyone is just… trying their best with what they have, aren’t they?”
“Yeah,” Hunter mumbles, staring into his reflection in the mirror across the wall, “they are.”
They sit in silence for a moment.
“Are you… sure you don’t have parents?”
Vee’s voice is quiet, but it rings loud in Hunter’s ears, his head jerking to her. She backpedals.
“I- I don’t know anything, of course but… I don’t know. Your ears, your eyes… if I can make it into the Human Realm, who says you couldn’t have, a long time ago? You don’t smell like a witch, but you don’t exactly smell human either.”
He stamps down the tiny flicker of hope in his chest and carefully pushes away any thoughts of Vee being able to smell that there’s something wrong with him and leans back further into the bedframe.
“I think Eda would’ve noticed a toddler getting through her portal. She’s bad, but she’s not that bad. Probably.”
“Why does there only have to be one portal?” Vee asks, and the idea is such an obvious one Hunter could slap himself for not thinking of it sooner.
“I…” Hunter trails off, and finds he can’t think of an answer, “I don’t know, I’ve never thought of it like that before. But it's not like my birth certificate says anything about a baby emerging from a glowing door or anything-”
“What?”
Hunter makes a small noise of questioning, before realising that his statement would make no sense to Vee, who probably only has a vague idea of what a birth certificate even is, “I- uh, when the state can’t find any record of birth parents, the typical procedure is just to put down where the kid was found. Some hikers found me while wandering off trail. I was outside some cave or something.”
“And you never thought that was strange?”
“Of course I’ve thought it was strange-” his pitch raises as he goes to defend himself, but he stops, “but I’ve never thought about it in the context of magic.”
He thinks of the beach below the Owl house, human trash washing up every other week.
Vee looks at him, imploringly.
“Every myth you humans have is caused by a little of our world leaking into yours”.
“What’re the odds?” He asks the air.
“The best you’ve got,” Vee replies.
“Heya Hu-”
Cheep!
Luz smiles as the lens is overtaken by a bright red beak.
“I brought a little guest to my pity party today,” she chuckles, stretching out a finger for Flapjack to perch on.
“He’s been a little lonely with you gone,” cheep! “But me and Owlbert have been keeping him company, hope you don’t mind.” Cheep!
“Still, I’d kill to know what he’s been saying all this time,” cheep! “D’you think you’d still be able to translate for him through a video? My phone is kinda the entire reason I know about glyphs, so who knows! Maybe the magic will seep through or something.”
She moves her hand, and Flapjack repositions himself into the crook of her neck.
“It’s been easier recently, to just use a palisman. My glyphs have been going,” she flexes her palms, “kinda haywire. I… don’t know why.”
She looks down to Flapjack, who lets out a discontented little noise at the change in position. Her eyes, for just a split second, flick down to her lap where her hands now lay.
“Yeah… it’s weird.”
Hunter walked to the Noceda’s today, not wanting to deal with the strife of asking for the third ride of the week. Camila opens the door for him instead of Vee. She must’ve finished early today. He tries not to cringe as she invites him in.
Hunter has absolutely nothing against Camila, nothing, but he can’t help the discomfort as she welcomes him in, asks him if he’s eaten today. He’s never taken well to adults trying to help him, and Camila has always made that feeling so much worse by just being so nice.
Luz had always called it kinda weird, his aversion to her mom. He thinks it's reasonable precaution, not that he’s ever told Luz that.
“Are you alright, Hunter?” She asks him before he can make a beeline to the stairs.
“...yes?” He answers, doing his best to not meet her eye.
“It’s just,” her voice is dripping with concern, and Hunter wants nothing more than to leave, “you’ve been over a lot this summer.” Please, please don’t ask the question- “is everything all right at home?”
Damnit.
“Yes, Ms-”
Her gaze sharpens, ever so slightly, as she tilts her head.
“Yes, Camila. Everything’s fine.”
He prays this is the end of it, and he takes a cautious step towards the stairs.
But there is determination on her face, and Hunter is hit with the helpless feeling that he’s not getting out of this one.
“You know that you are free to stay here, Hunter, as long as you’d like. You just have to tell me.”
He can’t help the way his face scrunches at the familiar offer, but he smooths his expression as quickly as he can. Not quickly enough, in the way Camila cocks her hip, moving her hand to rest on it.
“Don’t give me that look, young man. I know you don’t like me saying it-”
Hunter really, really doesn’t like Camila saying it.
“But we owe you. I owe you.”
“But I don’t,” he makes the useless attempt to argue, just as he’s done a million times before. Camila is undeterred.
“You were Luz’s friend. I’ve always been worried for her, I always will. I was still worried that first time she brought you through the door, saying she was going to show you her entire Azura collection…”
“You thought I was going to make fun of her,” he states bluntly, because he knows it's true.
Camila purses her lips, gaze flickering away from him. Then, she lets out a sigh.
“Yes, I did. But then you didn’t, and that meant more to me than I could ever say.”
Hunter knows his ears have probably been burning since the start of this conversation, but they flare up here, and he prays to anything below or above for this conversation to be done.
“She never could quiet down, my girl, but I could always tell that it hurt her, not being understood. She was walking away from herself, even if slowly. But then you brought her back.
Camila pauses for a second, and Hunter hangs onto the silence… he’s never heard this part of Camila’s usual speeches to him before. It's new.
“And- Dios, she’s been so different since she came back from camp, even if she enjoyed it. I’m sure you’ve noticed.”
Hunter, slow as he can, nods. Distantly, he thinks he should probably tell Vee about this.
“I know I shouldn’t ask favours of you, Lord, you’ve been through too much already. But if there’s something wrong with Luz, that she can’t tell me, could you bring her back again?”
Hunter is maybe a little floored. And very alarmed. He’s bad with vulnerability at the best of times, but coming from his best friend’s mom? Who he’s inadvertently been lying to for the past three weeks about the safety of her daughter?
He doesn’t know what to do and he doesn’t know what to say. He doesn’t think he can explain to Camila that whatever good he may’ve done by Luz, she’d paid back tenfold a long time ago just by being his friend.
“Of course,” is what he settles on. It’ll have to do.
Camila smiles, ruefully, then goes to worry at his hair. He ducks his head a little, but makes no further attempt to resist.
“There’s my boy,” she murmurs, and fuck, okay, maybe Hunter’s ears were just going to be red forever, “oh, but go- go. Luz is probably waiting for you. Go do your teenager things.”
Hunter ducks out without another word, but he ascends the steps a little slower than usual. His pace only picks up when he makes it to the landing, knocking two quick taps on Vee’s door before he bursts in, pushing through his mortification to remember the reason he’d rushed over.
From his bag, he pulls a folder, borrowed from the Mason’s study. Vee crowds close to see. For the most part, it contains cheques, passports, and other important documents, irrelevant to them. From it, he pulls a single sheet of paper.
“Vee, I’ve got our lead.”
It’s dark out. Darker than all of Luz’s past recordings. She’s outside.
On a tree stump in the woods, Luz’s phone jostles, the video blurring as she does.
Luz is a dark outline, sat cross legged on the stump. There’s the sound of fabric moving and paper crinkling, and the outline of a glyph lights up before sparking where it sits. It glows brighter and brighter, nearly fizzling out, before it forms a small ball of light.
Luz comes to view in shades of yellow and white. It only exacerbates the circles under her eyes, painting them an ugly shade of brown.
“Hey,” she murmurs, eyes half focused, “I’ve figured out what’s wrong with my glyphs.”
Quietly, her hands move together. Slowly, she peels back the gloves that had become her new staple before she bears her palms to the camera.
Even with the lighting, the royal blue that dapples her palms are unmissable.
“So… yeah. This is why I’ve been wearing your gloves. Sorry about that, I guess. I thought the marks would fade but, as you can see,” she gestures at nothing, “they haven’t.”
She makes a weak attempt at jazz hands.
“I still haven’t told anyone, but I think when I broke the key, I think it had Titan’s Blood in it. Meaning that when the glass….”
“Mierda, Mami’s gonna kill me for getting a tattoo without her permission,” she breathes, eyes glistening.
“Titan’s blood is apparently some really powerful substance, but it's rare now. Something powerful enough to make a portal to the human realm, and somehow I got it lodged into my hands. Enough for it to mess with my glyphs, but not enough to help.”
Silently, she places her face into her palms.
It's a few minutes before she raises them, eyes ringed.
“I’m sorry, Hunter. I should’ve ran after you. We could’ve closed the portal after us, and even if Belos did follow us, we could’ve gotten help or something. I shouldn’t’ve just left you there.”
“And,” she starts, impossibly quietly, “I can’t help but worry that maybe… maybe you hit your head a bit too hard. I can still remember the sound.”
“Someone found you. Someone must have. I can’t believe anything else. But… I’m still scared.”
She glances behind her, surveying the woods. The wind is a quiet woosh in the microphone.
Luz pulls her gloves back on.
“I should be in bed, I’ve got school tomorrow. Me and Eda made a deal with the Bat Queen and everything. Palisman adoption day,” she laughs mirthlessly, “maybe I could find a friend for Flapjack.”
“Or maybe not,” she adds, expression dark, “Gus told me a while ago that palismen bond through conviction, and well, I don’t know. I’ve always wanted too much.”
Her hand reaches for the camera.
“Goodnight, Hunter.”
“C’mon Hunter, we’re almost there.”
He wheezes, arms slipping down his thighs as he reaches the top of the incline.
“Vee, which one of us got thrown through dimensions only, I don’t know, three weeks ago?
Her face falls.
“Joke, sorry” he huffs out, breath still shaky as he exhales.
“No, sorry, I should’ve,” she starts, but trails off as Hunter straightens back up, waving off her offered hand.
“Forget it, you said we were almost there?”
She purses her lips, but she nods, hands fiddling with the frayed corners of the map they’d bought off an uninterested teenager what could’ve been only thirty minutes ago, but felt like at least an hour to Hunter’s struggling lungs.
They’d scribbled all over it with the notes they’d kept on Hunter’s phone, thankfully kept working by the hotspot he’d begged the Masons to renew a few days beforehand. He didn’t really need it, but it would be helpful if one of them (Hunter) suddenly dropped dead and they needed an airlift.
They knew the forest he’d been found in from his birth certificate, but it's not like it’d specified exact coordinates. The best Hunter and Vee could do was search up the area’s popular hiking routes and circle every known cave or outcropping of rock and hope for the best.
Only three out of five done, and Hunter was struggling. He was really, really hoping this next cave was the right one. How they’d be able to tell, he didn’t know, but he’d take anything over the final x on their map which was at the very end of the trail, an hour and a half away.
It only takes a few more minutes before Vee suddenly stops, surveying the trees around them.
“We have to go off path now, but it's this way,” she states confidently. Hunter already knows this, having marked the spots alongside her, but he follows without complaint, figuring she’s talking to herself more than him.
They walk in comfortable silence, only broken but the occasional snap of twigs under their feet and the calls of birds around them. At one point, Hunter points out a squirrel, and Vee is enamoured by it for far longer than Hunter thought just a squirrel deserved. The joy of nature, he guessed, was something he would never understand.
It's when the ground beneath them starts getting harder and rocks start cropping up that Hunter breaks the question.
“Smell anything?” He asks, hopeful.
“Uh, kinda?”
He whirls on Vee at his side, but she seems anxious.
“I don’t know if it's magic, exactly. It smells a lot… duller? If that makes any sense.”
“Sounds magic enough to me-”
She throws an arm in front of him, stopping him in his tracks.
“Sorry- just, maybe be a bit more careful? I know you're excited to go back to the Boiling Isles but…magic can be dangerous.”
You would know, Hunter thinks, then tries to banish the thought.
“I don’t want anyone else getting hurt by it.”
Carefully, Hunter raises his hand, and slowly lowers Vee’s with it. For once, she doesn’t jerk away.
“Thank you,” he says, as earnestly as he can
Three weeks ago, Hunter had promised Vee that whatever she was running from, they wouldn’t send her back to it. Today, he doesn’t say it aloud, but he promises that if he needs to, he’ll help her run. And maybe punch Belos again, while he’s at it. He doesn’t know for sure that Belos is Vee’s guy, but he’s put a few dots together in his head, and he doesn’t think it's unlikely.
They reach the opening of the cave. It's not that dark at the mouth, lit by the midday sun, but he can see that it gets darker farther in.
“Well, here goes nothing,” he says to himself snarkily, then steps forward, “if I die, tell no one I love them.”
Vee seems unamused.
As he steps foot into the cave, he’s met with the underwhelming echo of his shoe meeting rock, but he continues forward. Vee follows behind him warily, fumbling with her backpack for the torch she had packed. It was probably hidden underneath the three water bottles and four sandwiches she’s cut up and placed neatly into sandwich bags. She was really getting into the cooking thing, he’d noticed.
A quiet click, and a beacon of light shoots forward in front of them. Vee grins back at him.
Okay, maybe the torch had been a good idea. He takes the loss lying down and her grin goes smarmy. He rolls his eyes at her, but maybe he’s smirking a bit too.
The cave very quickly descends, and Hunter is careful as he clambers down the steep rock face, lifting an arm up to Vee from the bottom as she nearly skids down the surface. It's really not that steep, but Vee seems to think it is, what with the way she eyes the path, fingers digging into the rock of the wall.
“I don’t know about this…” she mutters.
“I’ve got you,” is all he says, and she climbs down without another word, though her posture remains tense.
“See? Easy, a baby could do it,” he jokes as she makes it to the bottom, she gives him a half-hearted glare, but her head darts to the side, sniffing at something.
“We’re getting closer, whatever it is.”
Hunter can feel his heart beat a little faster in his chest.
The torch is practically essential for the next part of the walk. They’ve lost all aid of the sun, and Vee leaves cones on the floor at every corner they turn, even though they haven’t found any diverging pathways yet. It's a little disorienting, sure, but it's manageable.
They turn a corner, and Hunter can see a vague glow in the distance.
Bingo.
He walks a little quicker, but Vee catches on quickly and follows him in a trot. She’s as curious as he is, if not for different reasons.
The corridor opens into a cavern, and luminescent water stares back up at them.
The room is decorated by all sorts of columns and rock formations, but Hunter finds he can’t draw his eyes away from the rockpool in front of him. The water isn’t glowing, not exactly, but it's got an unnatural tint to it that only grows the closer he gets to it.
“This is it,” Vee says, paused at the entrance to the cavern.
“What… is this?” Hunter asks, only inches from the water now.
“I don’t know,” Vee answers, catching up to his side, “but it's definitely related to magic. How, I don’t know.”
Gently, Hunter lowers himself to his knee.
Scrounging the floor before him, he comes up with a pebble. He dangles it over the water with bated breath.
He drops it.
The stone drops into the water unceremoniously, little rings shooting off across the water around it.
Nothing else happens. Hunter was expecting more from the ominous, maybe-glowing water.
“Y’know,” he continues, and still keeping his voice low, he allows himself a phrase he’s been keeping from saying in front of Vee for weeks, not wanting to make her feel less of herself, like he was just sticking near her because she took the form of his best friend, “Luz would’ve loved something like this-”
The light in the room swells, and then it flares.
Hunter flails backwards. Vee drops to the floor and catches him by the shoulders.
The water ripples, and then it morphs.
“Holy shit,” Hunter breathes.
An image appears in the water. Hunter shrugs off Vee’s grip and shuffles back to the edge, trying to make it out.
It's nothing more than a figure, but the silhouette is a familiar one.
“Luz,” he murmurs, and he knows with certainty he is right.
Behind him, Vee echos the name.
The image isn’t clear, and repeating her name doesn’t define the image any more, but after weeks of nearly nothing, Hunter could cry in relief.
“I don’t think it's a portal,” Hunter says, “but it's something. A connection. If I could just get a message through-”
“Your phone,” Vee pipes up, and Hunter turns to her.
“I’ve tried, but the Boiling Isles doesn’t have any sort of internet. Eda always had to keep the portal open if Luz wanted to text her mom-”
Hunter stills, an idea slowly forming in his head.
“Vee, can I have one of your sandwiches?”
Vee stares at him, incredulous.
“Hunter, I don’t think now's the time-”
“No, no, trust me on this one.”
With motions wide enough that Hunter can tell Vee thinks he’s doing something really weird, she hands him a sandwich.
He opens the bag, and then unceremoniously dumps the sandwich on the floor.
“Hey-!”
“Vee, I’ll apologise later. Just-” he fumbles through his pockets, and the excitement coursing through him has him struggling with the bag’s ziploc, but in only a few seconds he’s sealed his phone into the plastic bag. He holds it up to Vee.
“I still don’t get it,” Vee says, but at least now she can tell now he’s doing this for a reason. Her tone asks him to explain.
“This pool, I don’t know how, but it's connected to the Boiling Isles somehow, it has to be. We probably can’t go through it, but maybe a different sort of connection can,” he wields his plastic-sealed phone for emphasis.
She still looks confused.
“I have a hotspot on my phone- that’s like, a human thing. It makes, like, a centre for connection that other devices can connect to- I think. I don’t really know a lot about phones.”
“Luz has her phone in the Boiling Isles,” he takes a deep breath in, not really used to talking so fast for so long, “and as long as I’ve known her, she’s always had it set to autoconnect to mine. Little shit used to use up all my data.”
Realisation seems to dawn on Vee’s face now, as her eyes flick between Hunter and the pool.
“Oh,” is all she says.
“Oh,” he repeats, a grin starting to split his face, “a massive oh, if this works.”
With a shaking hand, he hovers his phone above the surface of the pool.
He eyes the sandwich bag, not sure if it’ll be 100% waterproof.
“And if this doesn’t work…” he gets out, “I was due an upgrade anyway.”
With no further fanfare, he dunks his phone into the pool.
Rings of water distort Luz’s silhouette, but it doesn’t fade.
For a long few moments, nothing happens.
He can just feel the water on the tips of his fingers, that strange fuzzy not-feeling of almost touching something.
Unnoticed to him, his touch doesn’t ring the water.
Hunter can hear his own breathing, unsteady and halted, echo back at him from the walls of the cave.
A moment passes, and then another.
And then, muffled by the water, his phone buzzes in his hand.
“Oh my God,” he breathes.
With the moment broken, the phone buzzes again, and then again. It takes a good while for it to still in his hand, but he doesn’t feel brave enough to take it out a second too early.
Eventually, it does stop. He yanks his phone out of the water, pulling it to his face.
From the home screen of his phone, a list of video messages fill the screen, all with the name Luz positioned above them.
He pulls his phone close to his chest, then looks to Vee.
Her trepidation has all but faded now, and he thinks his excitement might just be infectious, what with the small but shocked smile on her face, her eyes still blown wide.
“It actually worked,” is all he can say.
Vee, shuffling closer to him, raises a palm. He’s so caught up in himself he barely understands it until she asks, “high five?”
He lets his phone clatter to the floor of the cave as he damn well high fives his friend.
Miles away, Camila’s phone buzzes while she’s on shift.
She silently berates herself for forgetting to turn it on silent, but she still pulls it from her pocket.
Mija, the name reads.
Odd, she thinks, I could swear she said she broke it at camp, not that she lost it.
She flicks the phone to silent, and concludes to ask Luz about it after work.
After she’s watched her video messages, of course.
“I’m not upset about it.”
Flapjack lets out a low chirp. If a bird could look unimpressed, he is doing all that and more.
“I’m not!” Luz exclaims with her face pressed into her pillow, throwing her arms out in emphasis.
Flapjack, undeterred, hops the distance of her torso, pecking at her ear.
“OkaymaybeI’malittleuupsetaboutit,” she murmurs into the fabric, only to be met with a renewed flurry of pecking, this time targeted at her hair.
“Oh- c’mon little dude, no!”
She complains, but Flapjack still gets his way as she rolls over onto her side, facing him, arms lying loosely in front of her face.
She doesn’t need Hunter to translate the expression on his face. Spill.
“I know I said I wouldn’t get my hopes up, I know. I still did though, and look where that landed me.”
“But everyone got one except me…” she addresses her words to Flapjack, but her eyes still wander to the picture frame by her bed, placed face down.
“The whole reason I stayed here was because I wanted to learn magic, I wanted to be a witch! But I don’t even know if I want that anymore, because even when I tried my best I still managed to screw everything up.”
“And- and! Even if I did know what I wanted I’d still have to go home eventually, and it's not like I could be a witch back in Connecticut. Gah, what was I thinking-!”
She groans into her pillow. Unnoticed to her, her bedroom door squeaks.
Still too wired to even attempt sleeping, she pulls herself to her feet and paces towards the echo mouse, content and asleep in its new enclosure.
“If you could just tell me things a little quicker, bud” the echo mouse snores, completely unaware of her suffering, “you have no idea how much easier my life would be.”
She scratches at her palm through the leather of her gloves. Behind her, she hears the skittering of talons on wood.
Luz turns to see Flapjack behind her, struggling to pull her cape towards her. When he notices her attention, he circles towards the door, flapping his wings.
“God, when’d you get so smart little guy?” She asks him, pulling her cloak up from the ground, “I think I do need to go on a walk. Get out all these bad vibes.”
She pulls together the golden clasp, then outstretches a palm for Flapjack to jump onto. He does so happily.
An idea pops into her head.
“Say, Flapjack, you want to go have a proper reunion with some of your old friends?”
He tweets happily as Luz carefully shuts her door behind her, not wanting to wake Eda or King.
She does her best not to wake Hooty as she leaves. She’ll be back soon anyway.
Luz pulls her cape closer as she steps out, but she doesn’t really need to. It's a little bit cold outside, sure, but one thing she's found out about the Boiling Isles is that minus the occasional terrifying phenomena, the weather rarely changes, not in Bonesborough, at least. Her friends haven’t mentioned anything about seasons yet either, so she’s unsure if the weather ever does change.
These are the thoughts that occupy her as she takes the five minute trek to Hexside, a laughably short journey in her opinion, what with Eda’s aversion to any sort of standardised education, but it's convenient. She makes the Grudgby pitch in record time, if a bit slower than usual. She’s in no rush tonight.
There’s a protective shield around the palismen nest, but Flapjack makes short work of it after she lowers him down to the floor. Luz chooses to sit outside, still a bit tender from her rejection earlier in the day. Flapjack continues on merrily and is met by a small chorus of sounds from the palismen inside.
At least one of them could be happy tonight.
Eurgh, Titan, when’d she get so angsty?
She considers taking out her phone, recording another message for her mom, or maybe Hunter. But her mom wouldn’t understand what she’s upset about, and she only recorded a message for Hunter last night.
That one may’ve been a bit of a bombshell. For her, anyway.
She checks over her shoulder, and then checks again. Slowly, she peels off her gloves.
Familiar, random patches of royal blue stare back up at her. They’d faded a tiny bit over the weeks, but they feel just as damning as the day she was picking glass out of her palms, watching as the colour didn’t trickle out alongside her blood.
It’d been hard hiding the wounds from Eda and King, King especially. She knew he had a good nose, and she’d spent a whole week on her toes, denying any further injury as he stared up at her with big, sad eyes. But she’d got through it.
They still sting sometimes, in flares, but Luz can cope with that. She’s fine.
She is, by all rights, absolutely fine. Which is why she’s sitting on her school’s grugdby pitch at night, moping as her friend’s palisman talks to the first people who can understand him in weeks (sans Owlbert, of course).
Yeah, she’s fine.
Luz pulls the gloves back on.
She allows herself a bit of drama and throws her head back, staring at the sky. The stars at least look familiar, as long as she ignores the occasional aircraft puttering through the sky, finishing today’s rounds.
One in particularly actually looks a lot closer than the others. She racks her mind for any nearby landing pads. Maybe it's heading to the precinct in town? But only Emperor’s Coven’s ships land there.
Then again, it could be one of the Emperor’s ships. As it comes closer, the familiar design tells her she’s right.
Weird, that they’d go so low this early. Bonesborough’s precinct was still another ten minutes flight away, and she was positive even the Boiling Isles had laws about low flying aircrafts.
It's only once the vehicle goes so low that she can make out a figure at its helm that the thought occurs to her that, hey, maybe they aren’t aiming for the precinct.
When she recognises exactly who the figure at the helm is, curved golden mask and white hood pulled high, she thinks, hey, that’s probably not good.
The crane of bone attached to the bottom of the ship catches her attention when its machinery starts to shudder, as if it's preparing to move.
Her eyes flick to the palisman nest.
The Emperor’s coven. A shortage of palisman and palistrom wood. A publicised palisman adoption day. The Emperor’s right hand man. The Emperor.
The Emperor, who consumes palisman.
Oh, no.
She scrambles upwards, but tries to stay low. What with the angle of the ship, the Golden Guard probably hasn’t seen her yet. She runs straight for the nest, slamming the door open.
The palismen startle, all but Flapjack crowding to the back, fear obvious. She whispers assurances, but there’s desperation in her voice.
“Hey! Hey little guys, oh my God I’m so so sorry but we’ve got to move. Someone bad is coming, but I’m going to keep you all safe, okay?”
Flapjack, thankfully, translates for her. The palismen look up to her, eyes wide, tentatively trusting.
Silently, she stretches out her cloak with her arm. Without further communication, the small remaining group of palisman start to crowd into the offered shelter, some climbing into her pockets as they go. Flapjack takes his habitual position on her shoulder.
“Stay low, okay?” She murmurs. She’s met by a small crowd of sound, and she takes it as confirmation enough.
Keeping her eyes upwards, she shuts the door of the nest. The ship is still high enough that she’s hidden by the hull, but it's probably just been luck that she hasn’t been spotted yet. She wouldn’t manage to get away without being spotted, and she’s not sure if she could escape in time before the Golden Guard caught up to her, not with seven terrified palismen clutching onto her.
She crouches behind the nest, angling herself so the incoming ship wouldn’t be able to see her. She scans the pitch, trying to think of a distraction that could buy them enough time.
The bleachers are empty, nothing she and Flapjack can jerk around to make a noise. They could manipulate the scoreboard maybe, but she’s not sure if enchanting the numbers to say “loser” would work for more than a few seconds, regardless of how gratifying it may be.
Her eyes go from the goal posts to the floor itself, painfully empty. Her gaze skitters across the innocuous dark circle at the centre of the pitch, and her memories flick back to only a few weeks ago, how Boscha had nearly faceplanted into it as Willow trapped her foot to reach the ball-
The ball! As quietly as she can, she whispers a plan to Flapjack, if they can just-
A claw of bone begins to lower itself from the base of the ship. The nest rocks against her back, and the crane creaks as it begins securing its grip.
Luz doesn’t move. She’s got to make sure the Golden Guard doesn’t see this one coming.
Wait for it…
A stutter of movement, and the nest begins to lift off the ground.
Flapjack, a familiar grip in her hands, lights up in columns of yellow.
Now!
Lichtenberg lines of magic trace their way through the pitch’s turf in seconds, meeting at the centre of the pitch with a harsh glow.
With the help of a bit of extra juice from Flapjack and a myriad of child endangerment laws that never got passed, the grudgby ball goes rocketing upwards. The ship above Luz careens to the side, but it remains airborne. She hears a cry of indignation from above.
The field shifts beneath her ever so slightly, the terrain adjusting itself the compensate for the traps that now lay beneath it.
A jump cut of siren red, and the Golden Guard stands a few feet from her, staff drawn. He’d caught on sooner than she would’ve liked.
“Human!” he barks, and she has to stabilise her footing, remind herself to not jump at the voice as she’d done the last time she’d heard it. It still rattles herself, but she reminds herself of the facts, just as she’d done all those weeks ago.
Different pitch, Hunter’s is deeper. The guard’s words are clearer, more enunciated, Hunter has always mumbled through his sentences. This is not your friend. This is some strange, terrible coincidence.
She bites back a retort, knowing that one step forward and the Golden Guard will be met with a swinging scythe.
Game on, she thinks, as she slams Flapjack into the ground.
Using Flapjack as a pivot, she vaults over the palisman’s nest. She doesn’t turn back to look, but she can hear the shing of a grudgby scythe cut through the air, and she hears more than sees the jolt-thunk of magic as the Golden Guard teleports out of its path.
She’s halfway to the goal post when she throws Flapjack out of her grasp, dodging arrows as she goes. Flying out of here may not be the best idea because the Golden Guard could pursue on his staff, but Luz knows these woods. Plus, she’s not got any better ideas.
But the half second she waits for Flapjack to stabilise in the air is too long, and her foot catches on a trap, a column of vines materialising beneath her and sending her flying upwards, her fingers only grazing at Flapjack’s staff.
She lands in a hard tumble, but she manages to twist herself just so she lands on her back. It hurts, but she doesn’t land on any of the palismen hidden in her clothes.
The wasted time has allowed the Golden Guard to catch up in a flare of red, even if he nearly gets smacked by a grudgby vine in the process.
He looms over her, and her scramble to grab a glyph from her one unoccupied pockets is stopped as he grinds a foot into her palm, effectively pinning it. She grits her teeth through the pain, praying the palismen in her pockets remain still.
She’s not that lucky. One of them- the duck-, tries to make a run for it. It's caught in an aura of red magic.
“No-!” she exclaims, free hand snaking down to yet again try and grab a glyph, but the Golden Guard sees the obvious move, and with a flick of his staff the duck palisman flies upwards, magic relocating to just its foot and dangling it in the air.
“I wouldn’t try that if I were you,” the Golden Guard warns her. Luz stares up at him defiantly.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that,” he continues, anger in his voice as he turns his head in an overexaggerated motion, “imagine my surprise, when a simple fetch mission nearly has me nearly falling off my own ship. If anything, I should be the angry one.”
“Why are you stealing palismen, Golden Guard?” She spits out, buying herself time. She thinks she already knows. She also tries to kick him, for good measure. All she manages to do is scuff up dust, but its the thought that counts.
Wait, actually, the dust-
He sighs, annoyed, but his tone goes sharp.
“Frankly, you should be more concerned with yourself. Attacking a coven official, interrupting their duties, hoarding palismen…”
Slowly, carefully, Luz traces out a glyph with the heel of her shoe.
“You're not even worth the Conformotorium. I think a petrification would work better, frozen forever for your crimes. I know coven policy says it doesn’t hurt but…”
He stares at her, pointedly. Luz thinks she can almost catch a glimpse of a gaze.
“Oh,” she drawls back in return, intimidated, trying to draw all attention to her face and not the straight lines she’s carving out, “would that be before or after you fix up the stage. Y’know, after Eda totally tore it to pieces? And set it on fire. And kicked your butts.”
The Golden Guard fumes, and then digs his boot farther into her palm. And yes, it hurts, but Luz can taste victory on her tongue.
“Your little fluke was nothing but-”
“Cool, I don’t care,” she informs him happily, before driving her foot into the ground, willing the glyph to life.
For just a second, the lit lines of the glyph shudder, like its going to break under the weight of its own magic. Luz prays to every God she knows that no please not now this is literally the worst time to act up, please-
A tube of roots and thorns shoots out of the earth, twisting itself in size as it barrels into the Golden Guard, pulling him along with him with the momentum.
He screams, high pitched and startled, as he goes shooting through the air along with it.
Something echoes with a brutal crack as he flies through the grudgby goal. She winces slightly at the sound, but she doesn’t really feel bad about it. Screw that guy.
“Thorn vault, baby!” Luz cries, relief and victory flooding through her as she skitters back to her feet. The Golden Guard’s magic had slipped and released the duck palisman, but Luz is up just in time to catch it.
Taking stock of the rest of the palismen and finally reclaiming Flapjack from where he still hovered in the air, Luz allows herself a little taunt from across the field. The Golden Guard’s staff was just a little bit out of his reach, and that crack must’ve hurt him somehow, so she doubted he’d be up anytime soon. Who could take a hit like that and just stand back up?
She doesn’t notice the splintered wooden mask to his right, snapped in half.
“How’d you like that, jerk?!”
From where he’s sprawled on the floor, just getting his elbows underneath him, the Golden Guard whips his head to face her.
Hunter stares back.
Luz’s heart stutters in her chest.
She’s caught, motionless, just staring.
She can’t decipher the expression on his face, but he doesn’t waste the moment. He grabs his staff and then jolts.
She feels slow. Everything feels slow. She can feel the air shift. She sees the Golden Guard materialise in front of her, staff posed to attack, but she still can’t move.
He sends her flying across the pitch, right before the “Hunter” caught in her throat can make it out into the air.
Her vision blacks in the corner, and she tumbles into a gaggle of limbs as she impacts harshly on the wall that lines the bleachers. All she can do is hold onto Flapjack for dear life, but even that fails, and he tumbles from her grasp. Her upper body throbs.
Luz thinks she hears, “how do you like that, human?”
All she can hear is Hunter.
She’s confused, disoriented. She feels like the world has been pulled out from under her and everything has been left radically off kilter. She can still breathe and she doesn’t understand how, not when everything else is failing her.
When she can’t pick up any hints of an illusion, she desperately searches for differences on this figure. There’s only a few. The Golden Guard’s hair is styled to the left, but there’s still one stubborn strand sticking out of place. His left cheek is cleaved in half by an old, gnarled scar that crosses his nose and clips at the bottom of his right eyebrow. But it's all surface change, juxtaposed on a painfully familiar face.
She feels nauseous. Luz can’t tell if it's her world spinning or if it was the way her stomach flipped when she hit the wall.
All she knows for sure is that she will not go down like this.
She lets her eyes flutter closed.
Hunter’s voice, but not Hunter, is closer now. His voice lifts in amusement, just like it always did. Like it always does.
“One hit like that and you're out?” He asks. She can hear a shift in fabric, and his voice becomes ever so slightly more distant, “and here I thought you were stronger than that.”
He’s turned his back on her.
Bad move.
She opens her eyes just a sliver, so even if she’s wrong he won’t be able to tell, but her eyes meet the pristine white of his cloak. He’s walking towards the palismen, who have now huddled together outside their nest, one of them pawing at the door.
“Well, apart from that mishap…”
Luz’s fist closes around Flapjack’s staff.
“I’d call this a mission well done.”
The jolt-thunk of teleporting, as silent as she could make it.
Luz aims, and she doesn’t miss. Her magic may be unreliable at the moment, but a bat to the head never was.
The Golden Guard goes out like a light, and Luz is left wheezing over the body of her best friend.
Flapjack tears himself out of staff form, but she doesn’t stop him. He looks to her with wide eyes.
“I don’t know,” she murmurs, still woozy.
The nausea hasn’t gone away.
“I really don’t know.”
The palismen come home with them. So does the Golden Guard, lugged onto the back of Flapjack’s staff form, secured by vines.
In the morning, the Bat Queen will come for the palismen. In the morning, Luz will have to try and explain to Eda and King something she can’t even explain to herself.
But for now, Luz will sit with her back to the couch in Eda’s living room, trying to ignore the body lying on the couch and failing miserably.
Unbeknownst to her, her phone buzzes on her bed.
| [
"oh babey",
"Alternate Universe",
"Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence",
"Pre-Series Canon Divergence",
"Sequel to another fic",
"Action/Adventure",
"Fluff and Angst",
"Attempt at Humor",
"Canon-Typical Violence",
"Established Amity Blight/Luz Noceda",
"Luz Noceda Angst",
"Luz Noceda Needs a Hug",
"Good Parent Camila Noceda",
"mild body dysmorphia",
"its MY fic and i get to choose the vee headcanons",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard and Luz Noceda are Siblings (The Owl House)",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard and Vee are Siblings (The Owl House)"
] | General Audiences | [
"Hunter | The Golden Guard & Luz Noceda",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard & Vee (The Owl House)",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard & Camila Noceda"
] | [
"Hunter | The Golden Guard (The Owl House)",
"Luz Noceda",
"Vee (The Owl House)",
"Camila Noceda"
] |
Raine didn't really remember what happened before they woke up.
All they knew was that they were in their room, laying on their bed, sleeping soundly.
They slowly opened their eyes, adjusting to the light. They felt another presence sitting besides them on their bed. They slowly sat up and recognized long, plant-like hair.
"Good morning, spout! Did you sleep well?"
Terra Snapdragon. Great.
Why was she here with them all of sudden? They really didn't want her here. Weird, they thought. They nodded at her question, not wanting to talk to her. Not until they figured out what was going on.
"Good! Hopefully with the...medication you took yesterday you feel better now."
Medication…?
They never remembered anything about medicine, or needing it. Something felt… off. But they decided to run with it anyway. At least until they figured things out.
"I do. Thank you."
"Perfect! I'll leave you alone for a minute, then!"
She proceeded to stand up from their bed, heading to the door. "Oh, and don't forget to drink your tea!"
Tea?
They looked to their night bed and behold: a large container filled with a pink substance, the 'tea', they supposed. It radiated a weird scent they weren't used to, and the smoke coming out of it made it feel weirdly eerie.
They didn't trust this.
"I won't. Thank you."
And with that, she left the room, leaving them alone. They eyed the tea suspiciously, and decided to take a sip. Just to try it. It tasted horrible.
So they whistled onto it, changing the flavor and turning the drink a lighter color than it was before. They took another sip. Much better.
They set the cup aside on the night table, and noticed a few other things that hadn't been there before. A 'get better!' balloon was floating on top of their table, and several postcards were scattered around. They decided to grab one, just to read it. It was your typical store bought card, with a basic 'get better soon!' written over it. It didn't say who it was from.
They opened it, wanting to take a quick look before going to work. They spotted bold, messy handwriting, though they didn't recognize it all that well.
'Dear Mx. Whispers:'
'We heard from Terra that you were sick, so we got you this to make you feel better! Hopefully staying in bed isn't messing around with you much. Get better soon!'
'Signed, Eberwolf.'
'P.S: The balloon is ours too. It's light is really pretty. Purple, too! Darius chose it for you, though he told me to keep it a secret.'
It was a nice letter, they thought. But it still felt weird, last time they checked, the two of them tried to…
Oh. Now I remember.
The two Coven Heads had tried to capture them. They remembered it all now.
They looked around the room, something that might help them figure out why. The balloon.
Just like Eberwolf said in the postcard, it was glowing. Dimly, sure, but it was glowing. They grabbed it to get a closer look, flipping it and looking at the back. Same as the front, 'get better' in white letters.
They looked back at their postcard, but something was off. The balloon's glow made it look… different. They moved the balloon so that the light glimmered across the card, and behold, a hidden message. Smart.
This was written in neater handwriting, they noticed right away.
'Dear Mx. Whispers:'
That had stayed the same.
'If you're seeing this, it means you figured it out. Congrats. There's a hidden message.'
'That's not why we're writing this though. We want to talk to you, Whispers. There's some stuff you should know in regards to our most recent encounter. Meet me by the rooftop by evening.'
'Signed, Darius.'
'P.S: Eastern tower, 7:00pm. Do not be late. Unless Terra catches you. Then it's acceptable.'
Huh. That was not what they expected. Especially when they had tried to kill them last time they 'talked'. They weren't even that close to begin with, even though they were fellow Coven Heads.
But whatever. They guessed they would go talk to him. Because they had questions that needed answers, and he might just be the one to answer them.
...
They arrived at the tower a few minutes earlier than expected. They weren't one for being late. Better being earlier, they supposed.
7:00pm, and Darius was nowhere in sight. Weird, considering he was the one being so strict about them not being late. Maybe they were at the wrong place.
They rested their body on the rail of the rooftop. Well, not really a rail and more like a bunch of blocks stacked on top of each other. They felt a cold tap on their arm, and they looked over to find a little abomination standing beside them. It seemed to be holding something in its hand. A piece of paper. They grabbed it and unfolded it, revealing the same neat handwriting in purple ink. Darius’ handwriting.
‘Hello, Whispers. Yes, it's me. I'm not gonna be there in person, at least for now.’
The little abomination handed them another piece of paper. They unfolded it again and read it.
‘We want to avoid suspicion for now. Besides, Terra might have you wrapped around her finger at this point. Just answer this question: what do you remember from before you woke up today?’
They looked at the little abomination standing beside them. They leaned in to whisper: “You and Eberwolf captured me. I think Kikimora was there too.” Their memory was blurry around the edges, they didn't remember what happened after they captured them. But they knew the general thing.
The little abomination nodded and drew out another paper. It wrote something out and handed it to them. The writing was a lot messier this time.
‘You're in the clear. We're sending you here now.’
“Sending me where-”
Their question was quickly answered as they were encased in purple goo, blinding them. They quickly felt their body hit something below them. Some kind of seat. They still couldn't see anything. They heard some whispering and murmuring in front of them, but they couldn't decipher what it was.
“Alright fine, we'll let them see.”
They felt their sight clear up, and in front of them stood Darius (in person this time) with Eberwolf perched on his shoulder. Behind them were three beds stacked on top of each other, and the room was dimly lit, the only light coming from behind a curtain. This place didn't seem familiar to them, so they must be outside of the castle.
“Where am I?”, they asked the Coven Heads.
“You don't need to know that for now. All you need to know is that no one will hear us talk here.” Eberwolf let out a sound of approval where he was perched on Darius' shoulder, then moving to sit beside Raine. His little feet dangled from the edge of the makeshift bed they were sitting in.
Silence accompanied them for a while, until Raine decided to break it.
"So… You said you wanted to talk about 'our recent encounter'. What was that about?"
"We were investigating the rumors of a member of the bard coven defying the Emperor's Coven. Turns out the little rebellion was led by you. So we decided to go there in person.", Darius answered them, crossing his arms.
"And then you tried to kill us."
"Less 'kill' and more like trying to...recruit you."
Recruit?
"What do you mean by that?"
"Well...", He signaled to Eber to come beside him, and he did so. "You aren't the only one in the Coven who finds the entire thing suspicious."
"So you guys…"
“Yep, we're sorta against the Coven system and all that.” Eberwolf nodded enthusiastically at that, making a pleasant howl.
They weren't expecting that. Out of everyone, Darius and Eber were rebelling against the Coven Sistem? Well, they really saw things differently now.
“Oh.” They let out a relieved sigh. “That's good to hear.”
“It's good to be having a fellow rebel in the same room as us. Right?” He directed the last part to Eber, who squeaked as he nodded yet again.
They stayed in comfortable silence for a while, knowing that even though they didn't know what they were going to do, at least their true intentions were revealed without judgment. Huh, who would have thought?
The moment was ruined by a noise coming from another room, separated by a thin curtain. A loud yet muffled "SHIT!" could be heard.
"Oh for fuck's sake.", Darius whispered under his breath, which Raine let out a chuckle to.
But they knew who that loud voice could belong to, as they had worked together for months at this point. Her voice was instantly recognizable.
"I guess we should go check that out. Might as well come with us, Whispers."
"Right."
Their doubts were proven true as Darius pulled the curtain open, revealing a pained Amber on the other side. Patting her shoulder was Derwin, and Katya was sitting down on the low table in the middle of the room with her notebook in hand. They turned to the three of them with surprise on their faces.
"Raine!", Amber said, running up to them and engulfing them in a hug.
"Amber! What are you doing here?!", They replied surprised, returning the hug. Katya and Derwin came running up to them as well.
"Well, turns out Darius isn't as bad as we thought. He helped us out of the Corformatorium!", Katya replied. Derwin nodded beside her, saying nothing yet looking really happy to see them.
They turned to look at him, his arms crossed on his chest. "You really did that?", They asked him.
"Well, we needed the extra reinforcement. The more rebels the better."
They gave Darius a gentle smile. After everything that happened in the past couple of days, it was nice not being completely alone anymore. Maybe he wasn't so bad.
They placed a hand on his shoulder. "Thank you for helping them. I really appreciate it."
They could have swore they saw a light blush appear on his face. He looked away, using his hand to cover his neck. "It's nothing."
"Hey, Raine!", Amber interrupted them.
"Yes, Amber?"
"So like, I know you guys just got here but I've been thinking… Technically we can't be the Bards Against the Throne anymore..."
"So, we should come up with a new name!"
They let out a quiet gasp and nodded. They really did have to change the name. "What do you suggest we name our new rebellion then?"
Her eyes started glowing right then and there. "Oh, I made a list!" She nudged Katya standing right beside her. "Kat, gimme your notebook!"
She tugged the notebook in her hand, Katya just gripped it harder. "Hey, don't pull it so hard!", She complained.
Eventually, Katya let go of the notebook and Amber grabbed it, going through the pages to find what she needed. Eventually she stopped on a page and held it up for Raine to read. The list wasn't relatively big, taking up less than half of the page, the rest filled with doodles and scribbles. Their eyes landed on one particular name.
"Covens Against the Throne? It sounds perfect!"
"It sounds nice...", Darius added. A sudden look of realization came on his face. "Wait-"
Raine interrupted him before he could continue. "The CATTS!"
Amber let out a hiss, while Katya and Derwin laughed in the background. Everwolf squealed with excitement, while Darius' face turned a bright red. He tried hiding it in his hands to no avail.
"Can't we just have it named 'The Rebellion' and that's it? It's really unnecessary-"
"Aw come on! It's the perfect name!", Raine begged him, trying their best to use puppy eyes on him.
"It doesn't!"
"It does~"
Darius looked up from his hands, a pleading Raine standing in front of him. Titan, why do they look cute-
"Ugh, fine! We can keep it, temporarily."
Their face lit up as they threw a fist in the air. "Yes!"
The rest of the CATTS (he guessed that's what they were called now) started to cause a friendly commotion, cheering loudly.
"But", Darius interrupted, causing the room to go quiet. "As soon as we find a better name, we change it."
"Alright then, deal." Raine stretched out their hand and Darius took it, making an agreement. Raine however, crossed their fingers behind their back, causing a quiet chuckle from Derwin.
They let go of his hand, trying their best to hide the smirk that attempted to paint their face.
They weren't ever sure if the two Coven Heads in front of them were worthy of their attention. But now, they notice, as they're both giggling to each other, that maybe they could get along. For rebellion's sake.
| [
"Post-Episode: s02e07 Eda's Requiem",
"Secret Messages",
"rated T for slight swearing",
"Terra is a bitch we hate her",
"Mutual Pining",
"it's implied but it's there"
] | Teen And Up Audiences | [
"Darius Deamonne/Raine Whispers",
"Darius Deamonne & Raine Whispers",
"Darius & Eberwolf & Raine Whispers"
] | [
"Raine Whispers",
"Darius Deamonne",
"Eberwolf (The Owl House)",
"Terra Snapdragon",
"Katya (The Owl House)",
"Derwin (The Owl House)",
"Amber (The Owl House)"
] |
Storming into his room, Adrian slams the door behind him, his tail lashing irritably. Weaving past nonexistent clutter, he audibly sighs, flopping down onto his bed near the edge of the large space, an irritated expression staining his face as a vivid heat pooled in his abdomen.
He’d been having this issue for a little while, maybe a few days? It hadn’t been too long. This usually happened when he was around Darius… Or just thinking about him, he could barely keep himself together at today’s meeting, which had led to where he was now.
In a sweaty heap on his bed.
What were the words? Oh right, he felt hot- hot and bothered, every time he saw the fellow covenhead’s face, or his physique- everything, he wanted to melt. Frivolous thoughts clouded his mind with every word he’d said to him, their banter, in all honesty he’d found it attractive, even if Darius’ somewhat annoyance toward him was obvious.
A huff followed as he shifted around, his thoughts morphed into fantasies, and suddenly he was pinned down, moaning under the Abomination Covenhead’s grasp as he thrusted in and out of him, a soft groan following as he cried out his name in the dreamlike state, but when he blinked, fiction sadly melted into reality, and he was alone.
Shifting in his spot, he felt uncomfortably wet, his tail thumping against the bed, this was a new low, a high and mighty witch like himself feeling like this for one of his coworkers, yikes. Though he felt himself dripping with desire, he whined from frusturation, sexual frustration.
An irritable sigh followed as he began to tug off his one piece, why was this thing so hard to take off anyway. Growling, he pries it off with some difficulty, placing it gently on the bed next to him.
He’d never been a fan of his own body, tracing a finger around one of his transition scars, in a fleeting moment of forlorn. Though he snapped out of it fast, flexing a hand and sticking two fingers into his cunt, a quiet squeal followed, as he began softly thrusting in and out.
As he continued, he still felt frusturated, it didn’t seem like enough, none of it did. He needed- something else, of course he couldn’t have exactly what he wanted, or what he’d envisioned in his fantasies. Glancing around, he’d caught eye of something that could aid him in this.
Namely his tail, he was too horny to care about it technically being almost unheard of, and that he’d likely find his behavior wildly abhorrent later, that kind of regret, he had no time for that now. Sighing softly, Adrian positions his tail at his entrance.
Inhaling sharply as he pushes the tuft in, it felt odd, like it was tickling his insides. A quiet groan echoed out of him as he pushed his tail deeper into his heat, then slowly dragged it out then back in, testing the waters.
Adrian began to pick up the pace, slick coating his tail, until he let out a certain moan. “Ngh! Darius!” He paused, had he really said that outloud? Panting softly, he narrowed his eyes, he could care less if anyone heard, let them question what he’d been doing.
Breathing heavily, he continued, curling the tip of his tail inside of him, practically clinging onto the bed as his body rocked quickly back and forth. A mix of moans and whines followed, he moved his free hand down to his clit, pinching the bundle of nerves in between his forefinger and his thumb
“Ghh-! Da.. rius- I-I’m so cl-!” That was just about enough to drive him over the edge, crying out as he came on his tail, panting harshly as he slowly pulled his tail out, shaking his fluids off with a few soft flicks.
Though he felt regret, especially at the certain noises he’d let out, at least he was satisfied.
| [
"Tail Sex",
"Masturbation",
"reupload bcuz i got embarassed lmao",
"Mentioned Darius Deamonne",
"Trans Male Character",
"Trans Adrian Graye Vernworth",
"The Author Regrets Everything",
"I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping"
] | Mature | [] | [
"Darius Deamonne",
"Adrian Graye Vernworth (The Owl House)"
] |
Hunter was supposed to be meeting up with his blind date tonight. He wore elegant, brand-new clothes, got a fresh haircut and even used some cologne. Luz decided to put a bit of makeup on him for a better effect as well, although he wasn’t entirely sure if that was really necessary.
And knowing Hunter, that was a lot of effort put in. He was pretty hopeful about this date.
Now, he wouldn’t put it past the Blight twins to be making a fool out of him from the very beginning: from telling him about a friend that was interested in him of all people, to them texting him and then finally having him stood up. Hell, the friend could be made-up for all he knew.
That was what he got for trying to socialize, he supposed.
The club was fancy, expensive. It was this type of place where all kinds of relationships happened. Since he has already left his room, dressed up and took some cash, he could as well indulge in some drinks before sulking back home.
He took his jacket off, hung it over the back of the chair and as he was finishing his first glass, someone gently tapped his shoulder. He reluctantly turned around, feeling bitter and generally discouraged about partaking in any more social interactions tonight. No more talking to people unless they stood behind the bar.
“Is this seat taken?” the stranger asked politely, although Hunter felt like something else was hiding behind his civil tone. He just couldn’t decipher what.
Hunter fought the urge to roll his eyes. But bad humor or not, he shouldn’t be mean to anyone just because he got stood up. He was raised better than that. So, he chugged down the rest of his glass, set it back with a loud clank and answered, trying to sound somewhat polite, “No.”
The man smiled and took the seat right next to him. Dark skin, even darker hair, fashionable suit. Not too hard on the eyes either, Hunter had to admit.
He was about to call the bartender over and get his refill, when the man cut in, “Let me buy you one.” Hunter raised his eyebrow at that, side-eying him suspiciously. Was that what you get for being the bare minimum decent?
Hunter didn’t protest and let the man pay for his next glass. And the one after. The drinks served a decent punch but weren't too strong; he needed to walk back home somehow after all. Although with the saved-up cash he could even order a cab.
He began sipping on his third shot when the man finally asked sympathetically, “A tough night?”
Hunter wanted to snort. Was it that obvious?
“I mean, I’m still here. Figures out, doesn’t it?” He answered strainingly and the stranger nodded, humming in confirmation as if he knew exactly what Hunter was talking about.
“I have a room nearby, what do you say?” Hunter choked on his drink; his eyes wide open as he coughed into his fist. Damn. Good lord, that was… straightforward.
He slapped Hunter's back until the boy got the situation back under control. The shock still had a tenacious hold on him.
Hunter wiped his mouth with the tissue the man handed to him and he looked back at the stranger. “Sorry,” he said hoarsely. This whole situation felt surreal. What should one even say to that kind of a proposition?
“No need to apologize. Could happen to anyone, hm?” he answered playfully.
Hunter swore the man was hinting at something specific, but he couldn’t for the life of him figure out what. Did they know each other somehow? Did he know Hunter?
The stranger only chuckled at Hunter’s consternation as if it was something quirky, cute. Not dead-on awkward.
“So, what do you say?”
Hunter worried his bottom lip with his teeth, idly looking over the room. Alcohol, miserable, lonely people all around and a bartender who looked one step away from doing the rope and chair trick.
Fuck, did he drink so much he suddenly became existentialist?
One thing he knew: he didn’t want to be like them. End up like them. Sudden realization of loneliness, anxiety and fear surfaced and ran through his body alongside the blood mixed with alcohol.
Seconds passed like hours. The man was waiting for his answer with an easy going smile and before he knew it, Hunter grabbed his coat, stood up and turned around to him. “What the fuck are you waiting for?”
Well, the man certainly didn’t lie when he said he had a room nearby as it turned out to be quite literally on the other side of the road. An extravagant hotel to go well hand in hand with the overpriced club.
There was some nasty white noise buzzing in Hunter’s ears, but he still managed to catch the name mentioned at the front desk. Deamonne.
A bell rang, but not the one in Hunter’s head, rather the one announcing the elevator’s doors opening. A number popped up on the small screen and Hunter had half a brain to think Good thing I don’t have a height fright before it was time to step out on their designated floor.
Hunter was led to the room at the end of the hall. A card was placed in, the door fell open and mister Deamonne let him enter first with an inviting flick of his wrist.
He gasped audibly while taking in the new, unfamiliar setting. The room was enormous, squeaky clean and — just like everything Hunter saw so far at this place — fancy.
Now, it wasn’t like Hunter wasn’t used to wealth. Quite the contrary actually, as he was the nephew of one of the most respected businessmen in the city. But whereas his uncle preferred his house to be kept in a classic, almost modest style, the hotel clearly valued the suffocating abundance more.
“Like what you’re seeing?” The man asked with amusement. Hunter didn’t answer but did he even have to? His face was like an open book.
“You want a drink beforehand?”
Hunter’s head hurt at the sole mention of another drink. “Oh, um, maybe just water?”
He disappeared into the convenient, adjacent kitchen section and Hunter took it as an opportunity to wander around. He curiously opened another door, and his eyes were met with the sight of a cozy-looking bedroom. The bed specifically looked especially plush and soft.
Well, he would probably check that out soon enough, Hunter supposed.
The man startled him, but Hunter quickly shook that off, accepted the glass and almost instantly emptied it. His host offered another but Hunter politely declined. His head already felt much clearer.
The man sat on the edge of the bed and Hunter joined him. His surprisingly soft touch as he tilted Hunter’s head upwards to kiss him surprised Hunter. But hey, what did he know? Maybe the bed was a reflection of one’s personality.
Shoes fell off onto the floor, then pants and tops followed and before Hunter blinked again, he was sitting there naked next to his equally undressed partner. Crazy how the alcohol could affect the time.
Another — this time a less gentle — touch followed by a rough kiss happened and Hunter couldn’t help but moan into the man’s plump mouth, his own hand running down his thighs. Damn, somebody here didn’t skip a single leg day.
They tumbled onto the bed, Hunter at the bottom, caged by the man’s sturdy arms and chest. His face was flushed dark crimson and he couldn’t blame it just on the alcohol.
He bent lower to get his mouth directly next to Hunter’s ear and he whispered out in a cocky manner, “Name’s Darius by the way. You’ll need it tonight.” Then he nipped at Hunter’s earlobe and burning heat bloomed in the boy’s stomach.
It didn’t have a right to make him feel that hot. Why was this man — Darius, he reminded himself — that hot?
Darius gave him a wink before moving lower and once his tongue licked a stripe down Hunter’s shaft, causing his legs to tremble and toes to curl at the sudden sensation, he barely managed to croak out, “Hunter. I— it’s Hunter.”
“Pretty,” Darius commented idly and since his hand was wrapped around the base of Hunter’s dick, thumb idly caressing a prominent vein, Hunter couldn’t say for sure if he was still talking about his name.
Tight heat of Darius’ mouth wrapped nearly completely around his cock and Hunter wasn’t proud to admit he almost kicked the man in surprise. And neither was he brave enough to admit that the noises slipping past his lips weren’t exaggerated. Darius was just that good.
God, what a turn-around to a terrible night.
Darius’ tongue gently caressed the underside of Hunter’s dick, and his head fell onto the plush pillows, eyes screwed tight in pleasure and hand tightly pressed over his mouth in a futile act of saving the remnants of his dignity.
Hunter unconsciously buckled his hips, chasing the intoxicating feeling of Darius’ throat squeezing tight around his cock as the man tried to not gag. His body trembled in shock when Darius’ finger pressed against the pucker of his asshole and he whined in confusion.
Darius pulled off Hunter’s dick and he bet the man was being overly seductive on purpose. People just didn’t do it that way on the daily! …did they?
“I’ve got condoms,” the man said plainly and Hunter stared at him blankly. Was the alcohol kicking his ass harder than usual or was this just how those things typically went? He wasn’t exactly a sociable person after all.
Darius didn’t look too convinced, and it seemed like he was about to say something else and judging by the worried furrow of his brows, it couldn’t be anything drunk Hunter would want to hear.
So, saving his face, Hunter immediately rambled, “Yeah, yeah, works. Just—” Darius cut him off with a nod, as if he already knew what Hunter was going to say. As if it was some common knowledge.
It was starting to be quite irritating.
But then Darius’ mouth was back on Hunter’s dick, putting especially a lot of focus on his sensitive cockhead, and his finger was slowly breaching his hole and Hunter supposed he couldn’t really be mad at the man now, could he?
His mind was still quite foggy, so Darius reaching out for some lube beforehand probably just slipped past his attention. Either way, Hunter felt like he was swimming. Or maybe drowning, because it was mighty hard to breathe with two unyielding fingers scissoring him. Or maybe he was just weirdly sensitive.
Granted, Darius did try to calm him down, he rubbed soothing circles into the boy's supple thigh and went slow. Almost agonizingly slow.
Hunter was hard and already leaking, and it was hard to not act like an enraged child when Darius pulled off his dick with a loud pop right when the coil in Hunter’s abdomen was so close to snapping loose.
“Darius, please,” he whined. His body was tense, and the pleasure of the climax was looming over him, so close to coming true if not for the man denying him.
Darius cooed at him unapologetically before wiping the excess drool off his own chin with his hand and sunk another finger into Hunter’s tight asshole. Fingers were rubbing so close to his prostate but never quite striking it, fueling the faux arousal inside him.
After deeming Hunter stretched enough, Darius rolled on the condom and slicked it up with some lube as well. And damn, it was probably rude to stare but… Darius was packing some serious heat.
Hunter blushed and averted his eyes, which was a tad silly, considering that he’d have his guts rearranged with this dick in a moment.
The first few thrusts were the most painful, making Hunter cry out and stiffen, begging Darius to hold still for a moment and let him get used to the immense stretch. And thankfully, he did. From then on it only got better. Darius really knew what he was doing because soon Hunter’s cock was back to full hardness, his toes curled in pleasure and his back arched off the bed.
“Hickeys are okay?” Hunter forced his brain to process the words and he nodded eagerly. He loved wearing turtlenecks anyways.
Darius bit into Hunter’s collarbone and to make things easier for the man, Hunter let his head fall to the side, giving Darius’ eager mouth more space to roam. Then he sucked a mean bruise into his skin and Hunter could only moan the man’s name in reply. It all felt so good.
“How about mouth?” Well, Hunter couldn’t complain about the lack of enthusiastic consent there. He hummed in agreement and canted his head up, allowing him better access.
Darius’ mouth quickly claimed his and Hunter hummed contently into the elated kiss. Every inch of his skin buzzed with eagerness. The man clutched Hunter’s hair with his hand and slipped his tongue into his mouth, deepening the kiss. Hunter just groaned, parted his lips wider and let himself be dominated.
He never wanted this night to end, but unfortunately after some time Darius’ thrusts became more erratic, staggered. Knowing he was edging closer to his climax, Darius stroked Hunter to his own completion. Then after a few more thrusts, he pushed deep into Hunter’s willing body and came with a groan as well.
Hunter whined once the dead weight on his chest became suffocating and Darius pulled his soft dick out and slid off him.
The man got up from the bed to discard the used condom and Hunter whined at the loss of the extra heat. Soon Darius came back to the bed with a wet towel and wiped both of them off. Not wanting to be separated again, Hunter grasped at him sloppily and pulled him closer to snuggle to him.
Darius murmured into Hunter’s ear and he positively shivered, “We can go again in a moment. If you don’t have anywhere else to be, that is.”
Hunter chuckled in amusement, still blissful after his climax. “I’ve got all the time in the world.” His quivering breath tickled the man’s neck. “Just… Give me a moment.”
Darius hummed affectionately and after the boy drifted to sleep, he decided to go to the kitchen and prepare something to eat before waking him up. With eye bags as dark as these he needed as much extra rest as possible, Darius decided.
He put his briefs on and picked up some fruits, washed them, put them in a bowl and made some simple sandwiches as well. He didn’t know whether Hunter had any allergies, so he made sure to prepare some variety just in case.
Darius was about to turn around on his heel and go shake Hunter awake, when the boy walked into the room. He was completely naked, and Darius couldn’t ignore the twitch his dick gave at the sight.
Hunter yawned before saying drowsily, “Why didn’t you wake me?”
“You looked like you could use some rest.”
“Huh.” He heard that a lot. “What are you doing?”
“Thought you might want to eat something before we get back at it.” Hunter averted his eyes and flushed. Right, they were supposed to do it again.
He felt a warm, tingling sensation in his underbelly at the thought. Suddenly aware of his nakedness, an abashed Hunter sat on the couch and covered himself partially with a left behind blanket.
Darius walked over, set the bowl and plate at the coffee table and Hunter plucked off a few grapes. Since they would get back to sex in a brief moment, he preferred to not eat anything too heavy on the stomach.
Hunter spared an idle glance at the window while munching on his snack. It must have been really late at night already, nothing but an endlessly dark world illuminated by a bunch of colorful neon lights.
“Enjoying the view?”
“Sure do." It was a bit different than what he usually saw from his own bedroom window each night. The change was nice.
“Want to take a closer look?” Hunter raised his brow at that.
Then Darius’ hand unsubtly caressed his uncovered ankle, the touch making his skin tingle, and Hunter licked his lips, finally grasping the implication behind the man’s words. Hunter could feel his body warming up again, arousal sparking up in his crotch.
“Okay,” he hushed out eagerly. He had an idea where this was going and wanted to see it unravel.
Hunter stood in front of the window, gaze unconsciously wandering over the horizon. Darius pressed his body against Hunter’s back, and the boy couldn’t help but shiver, feeling the man's clothed dick pressed up against the small of his back. Still soft but he had a feeling it wouldn’t be that way for much longer.
It was a different kind of intimate, one that Hunter wasn’t expecting after agreeing to this one-night stand, but he wasn’t complaining.
The hotel they were in was located next to a different apartment building and Hunter was able to notice a few people standing on the balconies, smoking or chatting with friends out in the brisky breeze.
He could see them but could they see him?
Darius caressed Hunter’s chest with one hand, softly squeezing his breast and drawing a faint moan out of him; the other hand rested on Hunter’s thigh, in close enough proximity to his dick to make it twitch in anticipation.
Damn, he felt so needy already. How could Darius make him feel that way so easily?
“Ready for the next round?” Hunter nodded without skipping a beat.
Darius chuckled in amusement, “So eager.” His voice was warm and soft, Hunter liked the sound of it.
He was still stretched out and partially lubricated from their previous round but just to make sure Darius wet his fingers with his saliva and sunk them inside Hunter’s hole. He mewled at that and buckled his hips against the thick fingers, “Darius…”
Hunter braced himself against the glass, enjoying the blissful cold against his heated skin. Then, Darius’ free hand seized him by the jaw and forced him to look in a particular direction. Hunter swallowed.
And almost as if Darius could read his thoughts, the man whispered sultrily into his ear, “What if they can see you?” Hunter groaned at the thought. Would he like them to see? …would Darius?
The windows were stretched out from the floor to the ceiling, nothing was being left out if anyone was curious enough to stare.
He scissored Hunter, savoring the way in which his body was just yielding under his slightest touches. Hearing Hunter’s quiet mewls and the sudden hitching of his breath made Darius all too aware of his own arousal. The boy just had a way of sneaking into his heart. And pants. He broke the contact off for a moment to step out of his underwear.
But Darius shouldn’t feel that way about Hunter, so he tried to smother some of the most troublesome thoughts, nipping them right in the bud. Nothing good would come out of it in the end; he knew it.
“Do you think they talk about you? What do you think they say, Hunter?” Darius said to distract himself while keeping the boy’s head still, not giving him an option to shy away. He could feel Hunter swallow, then saw him in the reflection nervously licking his lips, cheeks already dusted with pink.
“Would they call you names?” Darius lowered his voice, making sure to strike Hunter right where it would elicit a reaction out of him.
Hunter squirmed, feeling the soft huff of air on his ear. “Y-yes?” he whimpered. God, his body was on fire.
“Hm,” Darius hummed, still stretching Hunter on his fingers, despite the clearly annoyed buckling of Hunter’s hips. So impatient! “What would they say? Tell me, baby.”
Hunter focused on the question, eyes locked on the figures on the horizon, swearing that their heads were turned right at him. What would they say? “That I’m a nasty slut,” he rushed out, “who likes being watched.”
“Are you?”
“I— m-maybe?” he whimpered unsurely as Darius’ deft fingers struck his prostate. Darius hummed. Interesting.
Another clever move of his fingers had Hunter rolling his hips against his hand. “Please, Darius, just fuck me already,” he begged just shy of breathlessly. What a pretty sound, Darius thought.
Fulfilling Hunter’s wish, he pulled out his fingers and Hunter groaned unhappily at the loss, hole clenching around nothing. Darius then snatched another condom and put it on his hardening cock without fanfare. As amusing as it was to watch Hunter’s needy squirming, Darius was slowly growing impatient himself.
As he lined himself up with Hunter’s hole, his right arm hugged Hunter around the waist and pulled him closer to Darius. He timed his first slow thrust with a light nip at the boy’s shoulder just to watch Hunter’s face scrunch up in discomfort for a brief moment.
It was… cute, in a way. Darius had to admit that. He probably shouldn’t have, though.
Once he pushed in to the hilt, burying himself completely inside Hunter’s tight heat, Darius’ second arm joined the other at Hunter’s slim waist. Being somewhat pulled backward by the hips, Hunter leaned forwards and braced his hands against the window to maintain some balance.
Darius’ thrusts were slow but deliberate, precisely aiming to ignite the arousal inside Hunter’s stomach as quickly as possible, make his own desire consume him and drive him to the brink of madness.
“Fuck, you’re so tight.” He clenched harder around his cock at the notion.
The boy was already half-mast from the slight foreplay and earlier dirty talk. Hunter’s unsteady breath left a fogged patch on the window.
Darius perched his chin up on Hunter’s shoulder and the coarse hair of his beard rubbed against his tender skin. He let out a quiet, unintelligible murmur at that.
Hunter’s gaze unconsciously skimmed around the view, searching for nothing in particular. However, he felt a thrill at the possibility that somewhere there somebody may be observing them, getting turned on by them. One look at a wrong time was all it would take for him and Darius to get caught.
It shouldn’t be as arousing as it was.
Hunter clenched tighter around his dick and judging from that and his face expression, Darius knew exactly what was crossing his mind.
"You want someone to see, don't you, Hunter?"
Hunter nodded, forehead pressed flush against the glass. "Yes," he breathed out shamelessly. "Want them— ah, want them to see..." He swallowed, noticing Darius' expression which edged Hunter on to continue. "Want them to be jealous…"
Hunter cried out at a particularly rough thrust. Darius just couldn't help himself, there was something enthralling in Hunter's breathy, raspy voice. Still, despite the pain, Hunter dutifully rolled his hips against Darius’.
"Fuck," he grunted, hands roughly gripping Hunter’s side, likely leaving some marks in their wake. "Of course you want them to see. You're such a fucking sight."
Hunter could feel his face heating up, blush spreading all over it. He felt dizzy.
Darius prompted him to look at his own reflection in the window. His hair was disheveled, collarbone littered with bite marks, blush was spreading down his face and onto his chest. He was a right mess. "So gorgeous. Right, baby?" Hunter nodded meekly.
Darius’ hand pumped his cock unprompted, making Hunter’s body give a full-blown shudder. His eyes widened, and he could see the mischievous glint in the man’s eye reflecting in the glass.
“Just how pretty will you look when I make you come, hm?” he whispered right into Hunter’s ear, voice low and sultry. Hunter couldn’t stop the moan from slipping past his lips.
Darius timed the pace of his hand with that of his hips, jacking Hunter off with each deep roll into his hole. At some point Hunter screwed his eyes tight, heavy breathing intertwined with some unintelligible nonsense kept flowing from his mouth after Darius quickened his pace.
He swore he heard his name a couple of times and well, if that wasn’t a big confidence boost and a good reason to show some more care to Hunter’s swollen cock. He gripped it tighter, savoring Hunter’s choked-out groan and pumped it a few times for good measure.
Soon he could feel the knot in his own abdomen coiling tighter and threatening to snap again, so he erratically sped up his thrusts, blindly chasing that pleasure while making sure he was still making Hunter feel good.
“Fuck, Hunter,” he groaned. Hunter shivered at the wanton noise overflowing with emotion. He liked hearing his name rolling off Darius’ tongue. “You make me feel so good.”
The words sparked a warm feeling in his chest. He was doing this. He was proudly making Darius feel that way. And fuck, it felt good to do good.
With another particularly rough thrust, Darius shoved his dick as deep as he could inside him and came with Hunter’s name on his lips before sloppily finishing him off. Hunter’s come spilled into Darius’ hand and some even splashed onto the window. They should probably clean it up, but instead Darius decided to leave it to the cleaning staff.
Afterwards, Darius helped wobbling Hunter back into the bedroom and onto the bed and since both of them were too exhausted to go and wash themselves, they just laid down together. Hunter was quickly falling asleep, nestled close to the other’s chest.
Darius’ hand was gently threading through Hunter’s messy hair. “It’s my last booked night,” he started slowly, unsure if the boy was even still awake. “I need to get up early, but you can sleep in if you’d like. There’s a scheduled wake-up call an hour before staff will come in to clean up this place.”
Hunter hummed in reply, somewhat comprehending the words. He was, however, drunk and exhausted so he couldn’t be blamed for any misunderstandings.
They fell asleep together, but — like promised — Hunter woke up completely alone. The call had to not happen yet because no hostile cleaners were hauling him out of the room.
Good. He needed a moment to take all the events of the last night in.
He got up, picked up his discarded clothes and was about to walk to the bathroom, make use of the still valid room reservation, when something on the bed table caught his attention.
Now, he was fairly sure he was distinctly hungover, but it was most certainly money. Lots of money. And not some dollar bills either, they were hundreds. And next to them was a note.
Hunter began reading, hoping for some explanations because his mind was blank, “Thank you for the enjoyable night.” Sounded civil enough. “I forgot to ask about the price, but I hope that’ll cover it,” Hunter read it out loud a couple more times and it just seemed to generate more questions than answers.
What? Did he— Oh. Oh.
“Oh, fuck.”
Damn. What a night, right?
| [
"Alternate Universe - Modern: No Powers",
"sex against a window",
"Anal Sex",
"Anal Fingering",
"Biting",
"Hand Jobs",
"Blow Jobs",
"Consensual Sex",
"Exhibitionism",
"Mistaken Identity",
"One Night Stands",
"Aged-Up Character(s)",
"(but only like 2-3 years)",
"Dirty Talk",
"Alcohol",
"Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot",
"Porn with Feelings",
"Kissing",
"safe sex",
"Explicit Sexual Content",
"Sexual Tension",
"Mild Orgasm Delay/Denial",
"Foreplay",
"Alternate Universe",
"Enthusiastic Consent",
"Hunter finally gets some appreciation!",
"Age Difference",
"Darius Deamonne is Catching Some Feelings (oh no!)",
"ask to tag!"
] | Explicit | [
"Darius Deamonne/Hunter | The Golden Guard"
] | [
"Darius Deamonne",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard (The Owl House)"
] |
Two brothers- both aspiring witch hunters- catch their first glimpse of the evil they've sworn to vanquish.
"Execute her!"
"Kill the witch!"
"Hang the demoness at once!"
Amongst the jeering crowd standing before the gallows stood Philip and Caleb Wittebane, watching on with curiosity. Even before their parents' death, the brothers had been inseparable. In a world indifferent to their plight, Philip and Caleb had grown to depend entirely on one another, sharing everything- from their food, water, and shelter, to their grandest hopes and dreams. Their poverty did little to curb their ambitions for fame and fortune- for respect and renown. If anything, it only served to bolster their selflessness- their desire to protect others from experiencing the same hardship they'd endured ever since their parents' passing. Philip and Belos sought to be heroes- and there was no path more noble or heroic than that of a witch hunter.
It wouldn't be an easy life- the brothers knew that all too well. It was said that witches were powerful and sadistic- manipulative and merciless. They could be anywhere, posing as ordinary people, ready to prey on the innocent and the unsuspecting. They twisted the hearts and minds of those around them until all that remained were brainwashed sycophants. And most frighteningly, they supposedly drew their power from perverse deals with malevolent beings- demons- whose power transcended the human realm itself. And yet even with all the dangers the life of a witch hunter would entail, Philip and Caleb wanted nothing more than to embark on that path together- to protect one another from the evils of a cruel and indifferent world. On the day the brothers had lost their parents, they made a promise the pair would never forget- a promise that would go on to define their destinies for centuries to come. No matter what happened- no matter what it took- they would do anything to save humanity from evil.
Yet despite their ambitions, this was the first time Philip and Caleb had ever witnessed a so-called witch in the flesh. Escorted up the stairs of the gallows by a guard was a woman who would have looked ordinary, if not for her extravagant orange hair. Her skin was pale, her yellowish eyes tired- and heavy iron bindings weighed down her wrists. A flurry of insults was hurled from the crowd as the witch reached the top of the platform. But through it all, a certain unease had begun to well up in Caleb's chest- a feeling he'd quickly confess to his beloved brother.
"Is that really... a witch?" said Caleb, turning to Philip with a concerned look. "She looks weirdly... normal."
Philip shook his head.
"You know how devious these witches can be. Their disguises are convincing- but look closer, brother. Look at its ears!"
Turning back to face the woman, it was immediately clear what his brother had meant. Her ears, though they looked normal from a cursory glance, were on closer examination pointed to an unsettling and unnatural degree.
"That thing might look human..." began Philip, "But often the vilest of creatures hide themselves in plain sight."
The jeering of the crowd grew louder as the noose was fastened around her neck. But the crowd soon grew hushed at the sound of the guard's voice.
"The accused will now be permitted to speak their peace. But this woman has been found guilty of witchcraft, and denial of that fact will be met with swift and brutal retribution."
In spite of her position, the woman wore a proud smile, and there was a sinister glint in her eyes.
"Denial? Why would I deny it? I am a witch- and I'm not ashamed of it. It's you all who ought to feel ashamed!"
The audience erupted into an uproar, before once again being hushed by the guard.
"Insult me all you want," said the witch, "...but I'm not the one condemning an innocent woman to death. Yes, I'm a witch- so what? What have I done to hurt you? What have I done to hurt anyone?!"
Immediately, the crowd became a raucous concoction of furious vitriol- one even the guard couldn't control. Eventually, the many disparate insults had dissolved into a single phrase, chanted by the mob with overpowering ferocity.
"Kill the witch!"
"Kill the witch!"
"Kill the witch!"
Of the many people in the crowd, only two were silent- Philip, who watched the scene with a calm, cold detachment, and Caleb, for whom the witch's words had somehow stuck a chord. With the noose fastened, the chanting intensified as the accused was led to the edge of the platform- led towards her certain end. Philip watched with a morbid fascination. Caleb watched with an unexplainable dread. And then, the inexplicable happened. The gallows erupted into flame.
An enormous ball of fire grew to engulf the platform, throwing the guard backwards into the ground and knocking him unconscious. Thick smoke rose from the smouldering remnants of the wooden platform. The witch was nowhere to be seen. The crowd turned panicked, vacating the area as fast as they physically could- but through the stampede, Philip and Caleb stood their ground, clutching each other's hand for support.
"Cover your face!" cried Philip, lifting the top of his shirt to shield his mouth and nose from the smoke. Caleb nodded and did the same, before drawing a jagged knife from his belt.
"She's getting away!" yelled Caleb amidst the cacophony of the crowd.
But Philip's eyes were already locked onto something most peculiar- what looked to be a strange purple flame peeking out from the thick wall of smoke. Without a word and with his brother in tow, Philip rushed towards the mysterious glow, a relentless determination in his eyes. It didn't matter that they were alone. It didn't matter how fearsome these monsters were. All that mattered was ensuring the witch was brought to justice. And as long as they were together, Philip and Caleb knew they could do just that.
As long as they were together, they knew they could accomplish anything.
| [
"The Owl House Season 2 Spoilers",
"Philip Wittebane's Brother is a Good Sibling",
"Caleb is Philip Wittebane’s Brother",
"Bad Person Philip Wittebane | Emperor Belos",
"Manipulative Philip Wittebane | Emperor Belos",
"Moral Ambiguity",
"Moral Dilemmas",
"Canon Compliant",
"Character Study",
"Emperor Belos Character Study",
"Introspection",
"Angst",
"Villain Protagonist",
"Psychological",
"Owl House Pseudophilosophy",
"Aro's Trademark Brand of Pseudophilosophy"
] | Teen And Up Audiences | [
"Philip Wittebane & Philip Wittebane's Brother",
"Caleb & Philip Wittebane | Emperor Belos",
"Philip Wittebane & Philip Wittebane's Brother & Other(s)"
] | [
"Philip Wittebane | Emperor Belos",
"Philip Wittebane's Brother",
"Hunter | The Golden Guard (The Owl House)",
"Previous Golden Guards (The Owl House)"
] |
"Lilyyyy... are you sure you don't want to go outside? We could kick the Grudgby ball around - get some practice in... Oh! Or I could show you this place that-" Eda was cut off by her slightly older sister.
"Edalyn! Can't you see I'm studying right now, EC tryouts are only two months away!" Lilith shot back. She realized her tone, and then a little more gently added on a- "Maybe later though?"
Eda simply let out an exaggerated sigh and slumped back onto the couch, her legs now crossed over each other. Lilith was sat on the floor below her, flipping through a potions textbook while jotting down notes.
Eda laid there, fidgeting with her long yellow sleeves - still in her school uniform. Her attention shifted to Owlbert as he flew over from the kitchen, perching on Eda's lifted knee.
Scratching the top of his head, he let out a content coo. She focused her energy on Owlbert for a few minutes before being interrupted by her now buzzing scroll.
Rainestorm: Hey, are you around?
Owlbert moved to perch comfortably inside the top of her hair now. Eda bit her lip as she tried to come up with a reply to the bard's question. Attempting to keep the reply short, she wrote back "Yea!"
She reached up to pet Owlbert once more. Then focused back to her scroll, which buzzed again.
Rainestorm: Come to the hill. I've got something to show you!
Eda shot up off the couch, deep smile now planted on her pale face. She motioned for Owlbert to come forward, he did so and was quickly in his staff form.
She bent over near her sister, swiftly slamming her textbook shut, and ran to the door. Lilith grunted, clearly annoyed. "I'll be back later, Lils!"
-----
Though she had seen it hundreds of times, the sun setting over the hill that Raine and her had claimed as their own still left her speechless as she approached the hill, flying on her staff.
Raine was sat at the top. They looked to be messing with one of the strings on their violin. They too were still in their school uniform, with their red pants and long sleeves. Earring dangling, shinning in the light of the setting sun.
Landing as gracefully as she could, she hopped off her staff. "Whatcha doing out here? It'll be dark soon, Rainey."
They looked up from their violin with stars in their eyes. They had loved this hill for so many reasons. It was quiet, away from people, the snapdragons were beautiful, but mostly, the way the light hit Eda's face whenever they were atop the hill, was something Raine swore the Titan himself couldn't replicate.
Throwing themselves out of their thoughts, Raine spoke. "I was trying to study something for a performance I have next week. My moms were having some witches over for dinner tonight so I came here; it's quieter and I didn't want to disturb them."
Eda sat herself down beside them, her legs crossed. She was looking at them with amusement. Raine met her eyes and smiled brightly. "Anyhow, that's not what I've been doing."
Eda tilted her head, questioning. Looking at them in hopes they would elaborate a bit more.
"I wrote something. It's not long or- incredible or anything but- it's something. I uh, I'm kinda proud of it actually."
"That's great, Rainstorm! Let's hear it!" Eda exclaimed, enthusiastic as always.
Raine took a deep inhale, lifted their violin to their chin and begin to play. What they played wasn't too different than anything Eda had heard them play before but there was something about it... she couldn't exactly tell what it was, but something was different.
The piece they played wasn't being graded by one of their professors, it wasn't for a gig that their moms had helped them get, it wasn't a reworked edition of a known song, this piece was Raine's.
It was filled with emotion. It was deep with yearn but it had an element of joy to it as well. It told a story, and even though Eda wasn't exactly sure what that story was, she could hear it.
As they begin to wrap up their performance, Eda found herself enamored. She was looking at the bard like they were the Titan themself. Like they had hung the stars.
Raine slowly put down their violin, picking at the wood anxiously. They didn't take their eyes off of their hands, refusing to see Eda.
"That was incredible! Are you kidding?" Eda laughed, "I can't believe I know the most powerful, talented bard in the Boiling Isles!"
They could feel the blush rising to their cheeks now. Trying to gather themselves best they could, they looked up and finally met Eda's eyes. They didn't think they had ever seen her smile so big.
"How did you come up with that?" She asked excitedly, still wearing that smile.
Raine knew their face was a deep red now. They were unsure of what to say. They knew the real answer. They knew where their inspiration had come from. But how to say it? They had no idea.
"I just- I don't know... I was just out here... thinking, I guess. I think- well... I was thinking of you." Eda shot them a look that they couldn't quite decipher, nevertheless, they carried on.
"You're- well," they looked away from Eda and went back to picking at the wood on their violin, "you're so wild. You have this spirit to you that is unlike anything I've ever known. Not only that, but you have a softer side, filled with love and care. You care so much for your sister. You're so passionate about wild magic, you stick to your beliefs no matter what. You just-" Raine realized they were rambling and stopped for a moment to think.
Gathering some confidence, they lifted their head and looked at Eda. Her face was nearly the same shade as Raine's. In a soft yet deep tone, they confidently exclaimed, "you're my muse, Eda."
Eda, still hooked on the praise from their rambling before, reached out to put her hand on top of Raine's. They lifted their hand off of their violin and grasped Eda's, squeezing it lightly.
"Gee, Rainey, I'm supposed to be the one handing out compliments, after all, you're the one that just played for me. Thank you though, really." She hit their shoulder playfully. "Dingus."
Raine thought for a moment. Did she hear me? Why did I say that? Was that too much? Oh Titan, I screwed up. Does she not feel the same way? Of course she doesn't, I'm the one with the stupid crush.
"Shouldn't you be getting home?" She stood up, still holding their hand, arm now extended as they still sat. "You know I'm all for adventure but, I don't think your moms will appreciate you being out after dark," Eda noted.
Escaping their inner dread, Raine stood up, not letting go of Eda's hand. The two got on Eda's staff and flew off.
-----
"There you are Witchlet! Lilith told me you went out but didn't say where, I was starting to get worried." Gwendolyn was waiting for her daughter outside the door of their cabin.
"I was just dropping Raine off at their house, I was safe and all," Eda noted blankly.
The two walked into the house, Gwen closing the door behind her daughter. "Oh, okay then. That bard friend of yours really needs to get themself a staff."
Eda let out a quiet laugh, thinking of how scared Raine was to start carving. She swiftly walked up the stairs and into her own room.
She sat down on her bag, letting Owlbert fly off the staff to sit peacefully on the bed frame. Eda changed out of her school uniform, switching it out for shorts and an oversized black t-shirt.
She laid out on her bed, Owlbert standing on her stomach now. Peaceful for a moment and then her head shot up, now holding a confused expression.
She stood up, left her room, and walked across the hallway to knock on Lilith's door. Once... then twice... then... the door opened suddenly to reveal Lilith leaning on it.
Eda invited herself into her sister's room, pushing Lilith out of the way slightly. She sat herself down comfortably on her sister's bed, still wearing the same confused look.
"Has anyone ever called you their 'muse' before?" She asked, using air quotes mockingly.
Lilith rolled her eyes, then thought attentively for a moment. "No? Why are you asking me this?"
Eda ignored her question and replaced it with one of her own. "What exactly is a 'muse?'" she asked, using air quotes once more.
"Traditionally, it's someone or something that is a source of inspiration for... an artist." Lilith answered blankly.
"So it's not some weird bard term? You know, muse? Music?"
"No it's not a bard term. You know it actually originated from- wait. Why did you think it was a bard term? Why are you asking me these questions to begin with- bard term? Did a bard call you their muse?"
Eda was looking at her sister confused again. "Yes?" she said unsure. "Is that a bad thing?"
"I would say it's a love confession, if you ask me. In every book I've read being called someone's muse is the equivalent to that person telling you that they're in love with you."
Taking this in, the two sisters sat in silence for a moment. Eda was deep in thought. Lilith was as well.
"Bard term? Wait. Wait. Did Raine say something to you? Is that who you went to meet earlier?" Lilith thought for a moment. "I mean, I guess that would make sense."
Offended, but not sure why, Eda shot back, "what would make sense?"
Lilith chuckled slightly, oblivious, she thought. "Raine is CLEARLY in love with you, of course you're their muse. They are a musician after all."
"What? You're crazy! There's no w-"
"Come on! You two are obnoxious. They insist on sitting with us everyday at lunch, they follow you around the school all day like a lost palisman, you two even have that secret hide out! And you both insist on trading juices everyday even though you could just get the type of juice you wanted from the start! Plus, have you seen the way they look at you?"
Eda was blushing suddenly. Taking in what her sister said, not exactly sure what to make of it. She got off the bed, yelled a quick- "thanks!" and dashed out of her sister's room
-----
They looked over at their bedside table, taking notice of the time. It had gotten late fast. Raine had been pacing in their room thinking for a long while now.
Why did I say that? Who calls someone their muse? That's so dorky? I'm so dorky? Eda would never consider being with someone like me. I'm just best friend material. Dorky best friends are cute and fun, dorky partners are... dorky. No one wants that... right?
They let out a groan, and planted themselves on the floor next to their bed. Lifting their arm up, they drew a circle with their finger, summoning a wooden lute.
It was dark in color, made of wood, and was rimmed in a lighter almost tan colored wood. Raine saw it a week ago when their moms had taken them to the market.
Eda had wanted to learn bard magic, she wanted you to teach her, they reminded themselves why they had purchased the lute that they now held in their hands.
Figuring they could use a distraction from their thoughts, they moved into a more comfortable playing position, still sitting on the floor, they started to bring the instrument closer. As they went to string the first cord, their scroll summoned itself.
It floated in the air in front of Raine's face. Placing down the lute, they shifted once more and read the notification.
Calamity: You're crazy if you think I don't also think of you as my muse. Goodnight, Rainestorm.
It was simple, but it was just enough to put Raine's nerves at ease. They clutched their scroll slightly, then let it disappear. They looked back to the lute, smiling deeply now.
I think it's about time I gift this to her, they thought.
| [
"Young Eda Clawthorne/Raine Whispers",
"Young Eda Clawthorne and Lilith Clawthorne",
"Young Eda Clawthorne",
"Young Raine Whispers",
"Young Lilith Clawthorne",
"Friends to Lovers",
"Crushes",
"Raine Loves Eda So Bad",
"they're so in love",
"Owlbert is Eda's ESA",
"Inspired by Twitter"
] | General Audiences | [
"Eda Clawthorne/Raine Whispers",
"Eda Clawthorne & Raine Whispers",
"Eda Clawthorne & Lilith Clawthorne",
"Eda Clawthorne & Owlbert"
] | [
"Eda Clawthorne",
"Lilith Clawthorne",
"Raine Whispers",
"Owlbert (The Owl House)",
"Gwendolyn Clawthorne"
] |
Amity had gone to the owl shack one day, a habit that she had developed since she and Luz had decided to start an Azura Bookclub, their meetings every weekend.
The witchling approached the door with a giddy smile on her face, a little surprise for Luz in her bag. Lifting her fist, she rapped her knuckles against the wood of the door.
Hooty opened his black beady eyes, a happy shriek escaping him and Amity groaned. How could she forget that this demon was embedded in the house- basically was the house! “Hoooot! Hello little Blight, what brings you here to my humble abode?” His shill voice asked.
“I came for mine and Luz’s bookclub meeting,” Amity deadpanned, “like I do every weekend. How could you forget that?” Hypocritical question considering Amity always forgot about Hooty.
“Oh…” suddenly the house demon was downcast, which was a rare sight. “Luz isn’t here.”
“Did she go out?” Amity giggled softly, leave it to Luz to forget that she had a bookclub meeting. “Do you know where she went?”
Hooty sniffled, then wailed; his body extending until he was nothing but a pile of… whatever he was on the ground. “Luuuuuz!”
The door opened slightly, not fully though with Hooty blocking it. “Hooty, what are you crying about out here? Why can’t I open the door?”
“Owl Lady!” Amity was relieved to see the elder witch, she saw the woman like she did a rebellious aunt. Definitely not a mother figure, Eda lacked the affectionate tenderness that mothers had. “Have you seen Luz? I’m here for our book meeting.”
“Oh,” Eda kicked against the door until she could open it all the way. “About Luz, kid. She went home.”
Amity’s heart dropped but she still smiled. “Oh, that’s fine, she must have been getting homesick and decided to go home for the weekend instead. Can you tell me when she comes back, then?”
The woman frowned, her gaze being casted away from the witchling. “I mean that she went home… for good.”
“…what?”
“She said she wanted to go back home and she did, she came here to do one thing, and that was to learn to be a witch. And… she did, in her own way.” Eda spoke her words slowly, trying not to hurt the little witch girl’s feelings anymore. “Something about camp ending and she needed to go home so that her mom didn’t get suspicious.”
“But… she’ll come back eventually, right? Like, she can visit, can’t she?” Amity was hopeful, too hopeful. This was why she never let herself be vulnerable, it made her easy to hurt. “Luz wouldn’t just leave…”
Eda held open the door, inviting Amity into the house, which she accepted. “Luz… she… Titan be damned, I don’t even know what to say. The kid was like a daughter to me and it hurt me when I watched her go through that door.”
Amity’s ears twitched as she listened, plopping herself down on the couch.
“Apparently, before she had even stepped foot into the Boiling Isles, her mom had sent her to this summer camp that was supposed to help her focus.” Eda sighed, “One thing led to another, my palisman led Luz here and she ended up staying to learn to be a witch.”
“And she did,” Amity muttered. “She is one of the best witches I know, Owl Lady, uh, after you, of course. Luz liked learning all about magic, I even helped tutor her.”
“Mhm. Anyway,” Eda dragged her hand through her wild mane of hair. “Luz was supposed to be in that camp for three months, and those three months, she was here. But then… she had to go back home. To her mom.”
The elder witch groaned, turning away. “I can’t put it any simpler, kid, Luz left and it’s pretty likely she won’t be coming back. She’s going to go to her human school and she’ll probably forget all about this place, all about us.”
Amity looked down at her boots, trying to process the information. “Forget? But… Luz loved this place. She loved us. Why- how!- could she forget?”
“You know Luz,” Eda barely looked over her shoulder, “she’s pretty forgetful.”
The witchling shook her head, “She didn’t even say goodbye to me. What about Willow and Gus? Did she bye to them? Did she just leave without a word to anybody?”
“Hey, calm down. Shit, this is why I was trying to simplify the whole thing,” Eda came to sit next to Amity, pulling the witchling into a hug. “I’m sorry, baby Blight, but Luz didn’t want anybody trying to stop her so… I let her leave without any goodbyes.”
Amity trembled, holding back emotions of sadness, anger, confusion, and anxiety. How would she break it to Willow and Gus that their best friend left the Isles? How could Luz leave them all without at least saying goodbye? Not even a card in the mail.
“Can we visit her?”
“Unless you want to be burned in a stake,” Eda said softly, rubbing Amity’s back, “I wouldn’t suggest it. Humans there can be pretty… violent.”
Amity sniffled, “I’ll wait for her, Owl Lady. I know she’ll come back.”
“Kid…”
“She wouldn’t just leave! I know her, she… she’ll come back.”
That was 3 years ago, and now she was 18, about to graduate from Hexside… without Luz. Gus and Willow had a pretty similar reaction when Amity had told them back then, but neither were as committed as Amity because they learned to move on.
But Amity didn’t. She still had hope, visiting the owl shack each weekend like always. Eda opened the door each hour, and Amity would sit with the woman to see if Luz would come back.
Luz didn’t come back through the door though, and Eda gave up. She gave Amity the key, suggesting that she should stop too, that it wasn’t healthy.
Amity didn’t care though, she… she needed Luz in her life.
“Amity Blight,” called Bump from the stage at graduation. “Valedictorian of this year of students, top of classes each year, and already has a bright future ahead of her. Would you like to make a speech?”
She scowled, approaching the stand. Her appearance had changed over the years too because of Luz leaving, she entered a depressive state, became easily irritable. Her features were much sharper, but she also looked so, so tired. Clearing her throat in the microphone, she leaned into it. “Thank fucking Titan, school’s over for me. And thank you to a fond friend of mine for messing me up, really appreciate it. She isn’t here, and none of you remember her. So fuck you all, fuck this school, and fuck Luz Noceda the Human.”
The crowd gasped and muttered about the scene, watching Amity storm out of the graduation early even though she wasn’t supposed to.
“Uh,” Bump came up to the stand. “Moving on…”
Amity cried as she ran from the school’s campus, she needed to hide. She couldn’t see past them blur of her tears so she started to frantically wipe them with the sleeve of her graduation gown.
Blinking her eyes open again, she looked down to the necklace under the gown, pulling it out. She had to try, she needed to try. Running off, she made her way through the town until she was in the library, pushing past people until she could get to her hideout.
Once behind the closed bookcase, she pulled the key necklace over her head, fiddling with it between her fingers. “Okay, just- just… press the button.” Amity’s thumb hovered over the button on the key, hesitating. What if Luz once again didn’t come through? She could…
Amity pressed the button, the portal door summoning in the hideout. She opened the door slowly, narrowing her eyes against the blinding light.
From what she knew of how Luz got to the Isles, the portal should bring her to an abandoned cabin in the woods, directly behind the house Luz and her mom lived in.
Cautiously, she took a step into the light, squinting in hopes of being able to see what she was doing.
Creaking beneath her foot, rotting wood. The stench of something dying, probably also the wood. And trash everywhere, scattered all over the floorboards of the cabin. Amity looked behind her, the door was still open behind her. She looked ahead, the door to the cabin was wide open, showing off the scenery of the forest outside.
Smiling, she ran out of the cabin, tripping over her gown as she sprinted through the forest. “I’m coming, Luz, just you wait,” she said to herself, gasping between her words. Tears were forming in her eyes again from excitement.
Breaking through the forest, she had to stumble into a stop before she ran into the road where a strange, loud, and fast machine whooshed past.
Amity choked on air, trying to breath. That was close. Right, the task at hand… Luz.
Looking to her left, she saw a small house, the mailbox on it was painted to say: “Home of the Nocedas!!”
The witch giggled, Luz hadn’t changed at all.
Going up to the front door of the house, she rocked back and forth on her feet, her hands trembling. After all these years, all this waiting, she just might see Luz again.
Luz didn’t come to her but Amity… Amity didn’t give up, so she came for Luz.
Knocking on the door, her other hand grasped at her gown. What if Luz didn’t answer? How could she explain to a complete stranger that she wasn’t normal; that she was from an entirely different realm.
The door was slowly opened and Amity leaned forward, “Oh thank Titan, you—”
Who… who was this blonde girl?
“Uh,” the girl blinked at her, looking Amity up and down. “Who are you?”
The witch scrunched up her nose, “Who are you?”
“Amber Bright,” she said. “Are you a friend of Luz’s? A cosplayer…?”
Amity didn’t bother trying to understand what the actual hell a cosplayer was, shaking her head. “Um, yes. I’m an old friend of Luz’s. She and I used to go to school together and then she left, and I’ve really missed her.”
“Right…” Amber closed the door slightly. “Hey, Ms. Noceda, there’s a girl at the door claiming to know Luz!”
“I’m not claiming anything,” Amity hissed, pressing her hand against the door. “Where’s Luz?”
The door was opened and an older woman came into her view. Amity froze, those features were similar to that of Luz’s. This had to be Luz’s mom. The woman examined her, “I don’t remember you, Luz has never brought you around.”
“I… I don’t know how to explain it to you, ma’am. I’m from another realm, you see, I’m a witch!” Amity smiled, wiggling her ears. “Luz had came there and we were friends but three years ago, she left.”
“Luz was in summer camp three years ago,” the woman frowned. “I’m a doctor, a vet, but I still know about people. Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, please,” Amity tried to look past the two, “where’s Luz?”
The woman looked at Amber and whispered something to her, then looked back at Amity. “I don’t feel comfortable with you seeing my daughter, you… you seem to be rather unhinged, no offense.”
Amity panicked, she couldn’t leave, not without at least seeing Luz. “Please! I need her in my life again, she left without saying goodbye and I’m mad but I also miss her. She ruined my life but I love her, okay? Please, just—”
Her pupil’s dilated when she saw her, Luz. Amber had an arm around Luz’s waist, guiding her into another room out of Amity’s view. “Luz! Look at me! It’s Amity, remember?”
The woman frowned, pushing her further back, “It’s time that you leave, miss, have a good day. And get some help, please.”
“Luz, please, please, please! Look at me!” She begged.
Amber was still trying to guide Luz away but the girl looked back. Amity gave a broken smile, this was all she needed. To see Luz. For Luz to see her. “Hi,” she called.
Luz pushed Amber off, running to the door and squeezing past her mom. “Amity, you… you’re here. How? Why?”
“Mija…” The woman warned, reaching for Luz’s hand, but Luz just stepped further outside.
“It’s fine, mama, she’s an old friend,” Luz grinned at Amity. “How are you?”
“Really fucking mad,” Amity gasped, feeling tears pricking at her eyes. “You left without saying goodbye and I waited, every weekend I opened the portal in hopes you’d come back.”
Luz reached for Amity’s hands, “I’m sorry, Ams, I just… I didn’t want anyone to talk me out of leaving. I still had a life here, after all. It’s nice to see you.”
“Yeah.” The witch grasped Luz’s hands tight, smiling at how amazing it felt to be able to touch her again. This wasn’t a dream. It was real. She had Luz back. “I missed you, a lot.”
“I missed you a lot too,” Luz chuckled. “Oh, how is everyone? I bet that King probably took it the hardest…”
Amity suddenly felt a surge of anger. “No, they all forgot about you. Or gave up. I’m the only one that fucking waited. You know, I’m really mad at you, you left on the day of our bookclub meeting.”
“Oh…” Luz frowned, “I must have forgotten about it… sorry.”
“It’s fine. Um. Luz?” Amity looked up, her ears going up and down as she built up courage.
“Yeah?”
“I love you.”
Amity leaned up to press her lips against Luz, warmth spreading through her body. She’d waited for this day for so long, it was so… lovely.
Luz pulled back abruptly, breaking the moment. Amity blinked, unsure why Luz pulled away so quickly. “Amity, listen… I…”
Amber stepped forward, frowning at Amity. The witch was piecing it together slowly, taking a step back. No…
“I admit I liked you back then but I came back and accepted that I’d probably never see anyone again and… Amber became my confidant. I told her a lot,” Luz chuckled, “nothing about the realm but about you guys. I guess I just grew feelings and one thing led to another…”
The witch was taking more steps back, tripping on the step down the porch. “Haha, you’re… you’re funny, Luz. This is… this is just a joke, right?”
“No,” Luz tried to reach for Amity. “Hey, it’s okay. It doesn’t matter, you didn’t know. And hey, nice gown- oh! Today must have been your graduation day! Good job!”
Amity swatted Luz away when she reached out for a hug. The brunette pulled back, her eyes wide with shock. “Ams?”
“Don’t,” Amity screwed her eyes shut. “Don’t call me that. You lost that privilege.”
“What? Amity, just come inside, we can talk in there.”
“I waited for three years, developed feelings, fucking gave up my future in the hopes that I’d be able to see you and we could have our own happy ever after like Azura and Hecate.” Amity slapped Luz’s hand when the human reached for her again. “Don’t touch me!”
Luz pouted, “You can’t blame me for that, Amity. I never told you to do any of that.”
“You didn’t tell me anything!” Amity whipped around, “You left without any goodbye and- and- I don’t even- fuck you. Goodbye.”
“Shit,” Luz looked at her mom and girlfriend, “I’ll be back. Amity!”
Amity stormed back into the forest. She was a fool for allowing herself to open up, for growing feelings, for waiting, for coming to the Human Realm. She was a fool for Luz.
“Amity, come back!”
She shook her head; forget her, don’t think about Luz. She played with Amity’s feelings, with her heart. Did Luz actually even care? Ha… what a turn of events.
She walked up the stairs of the cabin, pulling out the key and pressing the button to summon the door.
“Amity, wait!” Luz caught up to the witch, grabbing her wrist. “Let me speak!”
“Let go of me,” Amity muttered.
Luz only held on tighter, pulling her away from the door. “Hey, look at me.”
The witch glared up, scowling. Stupid Luz and her stupid face, and stupid hazel eyes, stupid mocha skin, stupid curly hair… stupid, stupid Amity for still liking the human.
“I’ve missed you, Amity, at least tell me how you are, if not anybody else,” Luz smiled softly.
Amity snarled, ripping her hand from Luz’s grip. “I am Amity Blight,” she began, pushing Luz back, “and I only hang out with a select few. You used to be my friend Luz, but you played with my heart. I should’ve never let you become my friend.”
Luz faltered, “Amity, you… you don’t mean that. Right?”
“Go be with your girlfriend. Could’ve been me but you know what, you both deserve each other,” Amity turned around and stormed to the portal, not bothering to hear another word from Luz.
“Wait, Amity—”
Luz reached for the witch but missed, Amity going through the portal and closing it before she could get to her.
She stared at where the door used to be.
Amity was the only person that had still hung on for Luz. Eda and King gave up, Willow and Gus forgot. The witch had waited years upon years until deciding to come and find Luz herself. And Luz ruined their reunion.
And Amity was the one with the key now, she’d never open the portal now. Luz grabbed at the air, she had been so close to grabbing Amity and maybe being able to convince the witch that she could make it up to her.
She heard footsteps coming from behind her, the weight of them creaking the floors of the cabin. A groan, “Ew, this place is gross.” It was Amber. Luz looked over her shoulder at her girlfriend. “Did she leave? Good, honestly. She kissed you right in front of me and you and I both know that this face,” Amber patted her cheeks, “and these lips,” she tapped her finger on her bottom lip, “are mine.”
Amber sighed, “Whatever. She’s gone now and your mom finished the food. Come on.”
“She… she waited for me, Amber. For 3 whole years.”
“And?”
“She loved me,” Luz touched her lips. “I had feelings for her too… I still kinda do but.”
Amber scoffed. “Um, hello? Your girlfriend, me, standing right here.”
“Go back Amber. Amity waited for me, the least I can do is sit here and wait for her to hopefully come back.” Luz sat down on the floor, crossing her legs.
“What? No, come on, get up. I’m willing to let this whole debacle slide if you can just get up and come with me. I’m your girlfriend Luz, not her,” Amber said, pulling at her arm. “Listen to me.”
Luz frowned. Amity probably wouldn’t be like this. She wouldn’t demand anything for Luz, she wouldn’t coax Luz into things she didn’t like, she wouldn’t make her do everything she asked.
“I’m breaking up with you, Amber.”
“Are you serious right now?” Amber stepped in front of Luz. “We’ve been dating for a year now, perfectly fine, but now that elf girl comes into the picture for all of fifteen minutes and you’re dumping me?”
Luz glared at Amber, “Yeah. That’s exactly what’s happening. And her name is Amity, and if she comes back, she’ll be my girlfriend, because she’d be leagues better than you.”
“Oh my God, you’ve actually lost it,” Amber sighed, walking off. “I put up with your fantasy shit in hopes that maybe it’d blow over and you’d be normal and I could actually like you without it being embarrassing but clearly I was wrong. Whatever, bye Luz.”
The brunette sniffled, quickly wiping a tear from her eye. This was okay, she had to get rid of Amber, obviously she wasn’t the right person. Now she just needed Amity to come back, to hear her out and they could have the happily ever after that Amity wanted.
She waited, and waited… and waited.
It was dark out and Amity didn’t reopen the portal, not once. But Luz was determined. If Amity could wait for her, she could too.
Patience. She just needed patience…
Amity never reopened the door.
| [
"Angst",
"no happy ending",
"Prompt Fic"
] | Teen And Up Audiences | [
"Blonde Cheerleader (The Owl House: A Lying Witch and a Warden)/Luz Noceda",
"Amity Blight/Luz Noceda"
] | [] |
Luz Noceda was freaking out.
After Amity had left, she had flopped down on the couch with a monumental sigh. She was exhausted, her bones weary after such an eventful day, but her mind raced at a million miles a second. All she could think about was the smile on Amity’s face when she said yes to Luz asking her out - and her palm still tingled with the phantom warmth of Amity’s hand held in her own. They’d held hands before, but this was different. She was going out with Amity. They were girlfriends.
And it hadn’t just been about her. Luz looked at King with a fond smile as he snoozed next to her, recalling how he’d saved her and Amity’s lives with the powers of his… voice? That was what Eda had said, anyway. And speaking of Eda…
Luz’s mentor was posed in front of the mirror, brushing back a lock of her hair. She’d returned to normal once they had gone back inside the Owl House, but Luz still wanted to ask so many questions about Eda’s so-called ‘harpy’ form. She knew Hooty must have been somehow involved, but she had no idea of the specifics beyond that.
Luz swallowed, remembering Eda’s surprise when Luz had said she wanted to ask Amity out. She had talked extensively about Amity to Eda, Eda had watched them dance together at Grom, and she’d even seen the blushing mess Luz had been when she’d returned home the night Amity had kissed her on the cheek. Granted, Luz hadn’t told Eda the exact details of that particular incident, but she knew as a general rule, she was very unsubtle when it came to her crush on Amity.
So the fact that Eda had been shocked… was she conservative? The idea was almost laughable, but perhaps homosexuality was frowned upon here in the Boiling Isles, like it was in so many places back in the human realm. Perhaps, despite her obvious feelings, Eda had only seen her and Amity as platonic gal pals the whole time, because that was the only thing they could be.
All in all, Luz was long overdue for a chat with Eda. And she was freaking out.
“I can feel you staring at me, kid,” Eda said, before turning around. She looked the same as ever, no hint of disgust or discomfort on her face. But who knew what she was thinking under the surface? “Is there a flesh eating bug on my back?”
“Um, no,” Luz said, feeling her fingers start to nervously twist around each other, and wishing she had something to fiddle with. “I was just wondering. What did Hooty do to you?”
“Ah! That,” Eda grinned, stretching before making her way over to join Luz on the couch. “That is a long story. I was out cold for ages! Hooty gave me a sleeping potion that… also makes nightmares and dreams more vivid.” Eda chuckled. “And I have a lot of nightmares about the Owl Beast in the first place.”
“Oh,” Luz said. “So did you have a horrific nightmare about the Owl Beast that made you go all harpy mode when you woke up?”
“Not quite,” Eda replied. “After all, the Owl Beast is a part of me, and I couldn’t imagine anything too horrific about myself. That’s sort of what I realised, actually. In the dream, it felt like I was awake, and walking through a bunch of memories of my life. Memories that all related to the Owl Beast, of course. None of them good. And then it was just me, alone on the beach, with a much smaller and less terrifying version of the Owl Beast. We came to an agreement, so to speak. And then I woke up… like that. Not bad for my age, eh?”
“So you and the Owl Beast are like… working together now?” Luz asked.
“Something like that. I’ll keep taking my elixir, but I’m done trying to battle the Owl Beast like it’s an external force. It’s a part of me. Has been for three decades now.” Eda ruffled Luz’s hair, and Luz’s racing heart was calmed by the familiar gesture. “And hopefully I can use my harpy powers for some good instead of going on wild rampages now.”
“...You used them for good today,” Luz said, with a little hesitation.
“So I did,” Eda laughed. “I gotta say, I didn’t think the first thing I’d be putting my wings to use for would be playing matchmaker, but life surprises you sometimes.”
Luz studied Eda’s words, her tone of voice, and her body language in excruciating detail. Eda was relaxed, her head thrown back against the couch, and she was turned towards Luz with a smile. Absolutely nothing about her suggested hate, or possible rejection of Luz’s sexuality, but Luz’s stomach still twisted. She couldn’t be sure until she just asked.
“You’re not mad about it, are you?”
Eda’s eyebrows shot up. “Mad? Why the heck would I be mad? You like her, she likes you, and despite Hooty’s shenanigans, everything turned out okay. The only thing I could be mad about is that I have a bit of house repair to do, which will be a pain without magic. But again, that’s on Hooty.”
Luz paused. Eda seemed totally clueless. Either she was a really good actor, or she was so laid back that she didn’t even see the point in acknowledging the elephant in the room. Which was encouraging, but Luz couldn’t ignore it herself.
“But Amity and I… we’re both…” Luz fumbled for the right words.
Eda leaned forward. “Kid, seriously. If there’s something worrying you, you can always tell me.”
“We’re both girls!” Luz blurted. “And you’re not mad?”
Eda’s eyes narrowed, but not in repulsion. “I’m not following.”
Luz stood up, her nervous energy overflowing. “Eda, please. You don’t have to lie to make me feel better. If you’re homophobic, just say it!”
“Homophobic? Isn’t that a music thing where all the parts are in harmony? I don’t know much bard magic myself, but it’s rather impressive.”
Luz faltered. “Do you… Do you really not know what I’m talking about?”
Eda shrugged. “I said as much. I don’t get why I would object to you and Amity being together. Especially because… what was your reason? That you’re both girls?”
“Oh,” Luz mumbled, feeling the familiar rush of heat rising to her cheeks. It came from embarrassment, though, and not because Amity had done something cute.
Eda stood up to meet her, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t worry. I’m gonna assume this is another human-witch culture difference. Do you mind filling me in on what exactly you mean?”
Luz sighed, allowing Eda to gently lead her back to the couch. Her hands twisted around each other again. She wasn’t quite sure where to start. “Back at home, there are a lot of strict rules about love. About exactly what a relationship should look like. Everyone thinks that if you’re a girl, you’ll meet a guy, fall in love with him, eventually get married, have lots of children and live a perfect life together. And if you’re a guy, it works the other way around - you’ll meet a girl.”
Luz breathed out. “But there are people who don’t exactly fit into that happy lifestyle. People like me.”
Eda said nothing, but she nodded, signalling Luz to continue.
“I didn’t always know I was different.” Luz chuckled. “At least, not in that way. I found loads of guys cute growing up, but then when I was around thirteen… I started finding girls cute too. And a lot of people from the human realm just don’t approve of that. So I didn’t really tell anyone."
Luz’s fingers twisted together again. “I’m bisexual.”
“And I,” Eda said softly, “have never heard that word before. But I’m glad you’ve told me. I assume it means what you said - liking both guys and girls?”
“Yep!” Luz said. “People like me might be uncommon, but we’re out there. There’s a whole community of us. I just didn’t meet anyone like me personally in the human realm.”
“Hmm…” Eda frowned contemplatively. “During my visits there, I picked up on a lot of the general differences between our world and yours. But asking too many questions would look suspicious, and I was more focused on getting human junk to sell than doing a culture study. But what you’re saying is… there are people in the human realm who wouldn’t like your relationship with Amity? Because you’re both girls?”
“Yeah,” Luz replied. “That’s what homophobia is. It’s disagreeing with anyone who’s attracted to the same gender, and any relationships that come of it. Relationships that aren’t like the ‘normal’ ones everyone expects. Some homophobic people are quiet about their views, but some people can get really mean.”
Eda indicated for Luz to shuffle closer, gently wrapping an arm around her. “And you thought I’d be one of those people?”
“Well, you seemed kinda surprised that I wanted to ask Amity out!” Luz replied. “Even though I’m pretty obvious. I just thought you might disapprove in some way.”
Eda laughed loudly, but not unkindly. “Okay, kid, now it’s my turn to tell you a few things. I was surprised when you told me what Hooty was trying to help you with, not because I couldn’t smell the romantic tension from a mile away, but because I wasn’t sure if a relationship would come of it. I’ve been able to tell that girl liked you since Grom, and I had a pretty big suspicion you liked her back. But I didn’t know if either of you would actually ask each other out. I should’ve known you’d do it, though.”
“Actually, Amity beat me to saying it,” Luz mumbled.
“Did she, now? Well, I suppose it’s good to have her keeping you on your toes. But, Luz.” At this, Eda’s tone turned serious. “Please don’t get it in your head that I would ever disapprove of someone you liked. Unless you were trying to romance a slitherbeast, or something. I do not care one bit that you and Amity are both girls. In fact, that thing you described? Homophobia? We don’t have that here.”
Luz sat straight up. She thought back to everything she’d seen since coming to the Isles - Willow’s dads, those two guys dancing together at Grom, and the fact that Hooty had never questioned that he was trying to romantically set up two girls. She had thought she’d just been lucky enough to drop into an accepting part of the Isles, and that house demons had better things to worry about than homophobia, but-
“Homophobia doesn’t exist?” Luz shrieked, leaping up from the couch. Eda made a concerned face, but Luz turned to her, beaming. “No one- no one disapproves of two guys or two girls loving each other here?”
“No,” Eda said. “Unless it’s for some other reason, of course.”
“I can’t believe this,” Luz yelled, her heart soaring. “I knew this place was amazing, but this is just-”
“What’s all the noise about?” a cranky yet adorable voice piped up from the couch, and Luz swooped in to pick up a now awake King, holding him close to her chest.
“Sorry for waking you up, buddy. I’m just excited. Did you know homophobia isn’t real here?”
“What’s homophobia? Some kind of human dessert?” King grumbled.
“Eda!!” Luz cried again. “I can’t believe this!”
“Well, you’d best believe it, kid. We don’t have any homophobia here.” Eda smiled.
“This is officially the best day ever! Man, I gotta tell Amity. Wait-” Luz paused. “I don’t wanna tell her that homophobia exists, that would just make her sad. But… Eda, didn’t you say you hadn’t heard of bisexuality either?”
Eda shrugged. “We don’t have words for who you’re attracted to. Some people only date women, and some date both guys and girls like you described. But you can only really tell their preference if you pay really close attention to their love life.”
“So that means that Amity doesn’t know what her sexuality is?” Luz thought aloud.
“If by sexuality you mean who someone likes, I’m pretty sure Amity has a good idea about that,” Eda snorted. “She likes you.”
“I-I know that,” Luz mumbled.
“We all know that,” King decided to add.
“But generally- she might only like girls, or guys too, or maybe she just doesn’t have a preference! I should ask her, and then maybe I could tell her what her human label would be?”
“Hold on, kid.” Eda frowned. “You’ll have to tell me more about this stuff. Didn’t you just say you didn’t want to tell Amity about homophobia? Wouldn’t informing her about that just hurt you both?”
“Well, yeah, in a way,” Luz replied. “But… it’s not all bad. You guys don’t have labels because there’s no prejudice. Which is still awesome, by the way. But because of the hate in our world, we came up with ways to identify ourselves as people outside of the norm, so we could find each other. We formed a community. There’s a lot of cool history, actually - I had barely started looking into it before I got here…”
Luz trailed off, realising she’d started word-dumping, as she was very prone to. But Eda was simply nodding and smiling encouragingly, so she breathed out and sat back down on the couch. King immediately settled himself between Luz and Eda, getting back to his nap. “Anyway, I just… think it’d be cool to share a bit of my world with Amity, I guess? We’re proud of who we are. I’m proud of my identity. And also, we have pretty flags.”
Eda grinned. “Well, you’re the number one human expert around here, kid. I’m sure Baby Blight would love to learn more about your world. And, hey. Maybe you can give me a history lesson about this stuff too. It sounds fascinating.”
Luz didn’t hesitate a moment before wrapping her arms around Eda, squeezing tightly. “Thank you, for being so cool about this. I love you.”
Eda reciprocated almost instantly, with no complaints about the ‘parallel arm thing’. “And I love you, kid,” she replied easily. “Don’t forget that.”
Luz relished the hug for a moment longer, before letting go. “By the way, can Amity come over tomorrow? Also, can I borrow your scroll to ask if she wants to come over?”
Eda smirked at Luz. “Ah, so this is the part of supporting you where I have to deal with two lovebirds in the house. But yeah, she can come over. I kind of assumed she was going to, anyway.”
Luz pouted. “We’re going to work on the portal together! She’s the one who can get the Echo Mouse to work - it’s serious business, Eda!”
Eda snorted. “Sure kid. Tell yourself that. I’ll just start betting with King on which one of you will blush first in the other’s presence. Now, everyone would think it’d be Amity, but you’re a mess around her yourself-”
“Eda!”
Truthfully, Luz didn’t mind Eda’s teasing one bit. Her mentor casually poking fun at her over her relationship with a girl, not caring one bit that she and Amity were in a non-traditional relationship, was all she could ask for.
Hopefully, Amity would help her get the portal working again. And then she would go home and see her mom - and work up the courage to introduce Amity as her girlfriend.
“Titan, after the day we’ve had I think we deserve some takeout. I’m not cooking, that’s for sure. What do you fancy, Luz?”
“Um, I don’t mind. I’m so tired I’d eat anything right now,” she honestly replied. It had been a long day, but the exhaustion that made her bones ache also made her feel all tingly inside. She was Amity Blight’s girlfriend.
“I’ll just get your favourite, then,” Eda replied, ruffling Luz’s hair again. Luz smiled at the gesture, playfully batting Eda’s hands away.
And she could be herself here in the Isles, free of judgement.
| [
"Post-Episode: s02e08 Knock Knock Knockin' on Hooty's Door (The Owl House)",
"Fluff",
"Good Parent Eda Clawthorne",
"Discussions of Homophobia",
"Culture Differences",
"Bisexual Luz Noceda",
"Coming Out",
"(kind of)"
] | General Audiences | [
"Eda Clawthorne & Luz Noceda",
"Amity Blight/Luz Noceda"
] | [
"Luz Noceda",
"Eda Clawthorne",
"King (The Owl House)",
"Amity Blight (mentioned)"
] |
"Chapter 1 ____________\nLUZ’S POV\nLuz was bored. Even though it was her birthday, nothing overly(...TRUNCATED) | ["Luz Noceda Needs a Hug","Lesbian Disaster Amity Blight","Pining","Protective Amity Blight","Parent(...TRUNCATED) | Mature | [
"Amity Blight/Luz Noceda"
] | [
"Luz Noceda",
"Amity Blight",
"Philip Wittebane | Emperor Belos",
"OC - Character"
] |
"Sitting on the coffee table sat 5 wooden creatures. None of them moved, nor showed any particular s(...TRUNCATED) | ["the human realm isn't magical","Post-Episode: s02e21 King's Tide (The Owl House)","Dreams and Nigh(...TRUNCATED) | Teen And Up Audiences | [
"Amity Blight/Luz Noceda"
] | ["Hunter | The Golden Guard (The Owl House)","Flapjack | Cardinal Palisman (The Owl House)","Luz Noc(...TRUNCATED) |
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