Grey. It was all she'd ever known. For all her life, Luz had heard the term 'colourblind' be thrown about as if colours were a thing that existed. People insisted that they did. That she must be able to see at least a little of them, but she couldn't. She never had and she never would. Complete achromatopsia. That's what she had according to the doctors and they'd said there wasn't a cure.
She'd gone for extensive tests when she was little. Endless appointments with specialists and optometrists and none of them could explain why she even had it. Why she couldn't see these 'colours' they all seemed to love so much. Her genes were fine. Her eyes were fine. Nothing was unusual or broken or out of place. She just couldn't see them and no one knew why.
But Luz knew the truth. Colours were a lie. A myth. The world was grey. Grey and cold and lonely and that was the way it always would be.
Why believe in something that was so obviously not real? Especially when there were far more plausible things to believe in. Magic? Good witches like Azura? Spider breathing gryphons? These things made sense to Luz. But colour? A world filled with beauty and light? That was beyond imagining. No, it was dark and grey and that was how things were.
Maybe she was being a little dramatic, but it was hard not to when you spent every day being overlooked by everyone around you. Her classmates all largely ignored her, labeling her as that weird girl who said colours didn't exist. The weird girl who had nearly been run over by a car on her first day at school because she hadn't been able to read the traffic lights. That weird girl who was always talking about fantasy worlds and spent her free time drawing about them in colours that didn't make sense.
Who cared if her trees were orange and her sky was more purple than blue? Those shades of grey looked nice together! But they were wrong, apparently and that made her wrong. And kids didn't like you if you were wrong. They ignored you. As a result, she'd taken to more and more grandiose attempts to be seen, which in turn, had led to her classmates liking her even less. To be fair, the snakes had probably been a bad idea… but the sausages in her audition had been genius! If she just kept smiling… Just kept being herself like all the books and movies said she should, eventually, someone would accept her.
No one seemed to appreciate her attempts though, so Luz had grown up friendless, alone, sometimes bullied and unwilling to tell her already overworked and stressed out mother about any of it. Her mami had had to deal with enough already, she didn't need Luz to add more problems onto the heaping pile that was her daughter.
Luz knew her mami loved her, she really did, but there was no hiding the disappointment in her dark grey eyes whenever she got called out of her very busy work day to visit the Principal's office. It didn't matter if Luz had been the victim of bullying or if she'd just done something that other people didn't understand. All that really mattered was that she'd gotten in trouble again. So she stayed quiet, put on a smile and did her best to make friends. To be noticed. Maybe someday, if she was lucky, someone would see her.
"Green is a Blight colour, my dear, it's distinguished. People recognise us for it," her mother said, in that aggravating tone that made it sound like she was talking to a small child. "I'm sure your brown hair is lovely, but you would prefer to look more like me and your siblings, wouldn't you? You would look so lovely in green and then we would all match!"
The day Amity's mother told her she would have to start dying her hair had been an odd one for her. Odalia Blight's explanation hadn't exactly made sense to Amity. After all, they already had the same grey hair. Sure, she supposed her own was a different shade to the darker grey of the twins' hair, but the dye hadn't done anything to fix that. If anything, it had lightened her hair and made them look even more different. But her mother had seemed happy about it so she had just let it be.
What was one more little thing her mother got to control anyway? Green. Brown. What did she care when those two colours were the same? All colours were the same. They had been her whole life and nothing would change that.
Her parents had certainly tried of course. When they had found out that Amity couldn't see colours they'd taken her straight to the most highly sought after healers in the Boiling Isles. Not because they cared about her well-being. No, all that mattered to them was that she was apparently broken in some way and that would not do for a Blight. But no amount of spells, potions or magic rituals had been able to change the fact that the world was grey.
What they had done though, was label her as a liar. Her parents had declared that if magic could not fix the problem then the problem clearly did not exist and she was just seeking attention. They'd reprimanded her for it. They'd even forced her to break off her friendship with Willow over it, claiming the girl was filling her head with fantasy and rebellion. Willow had been the only person to believe that Amity couldn't see colour and they had not appreciated her trying to stand up for Amity. So she'd had to go and they'd made Amity do it, only to replace Willow with friends they'd chosen for her. Friends that didn't talk back and who Amity had never told about her little colour problem.
After that, things had settled into a pattern. Amity would somehow accidentally remind her parents that she couldn't see colour and they would punish her for it. The twins would hear her mistake one colour for another and make fun of her for it. Eventually she had just learned how to hide it well enough to get them off her back.
She'd memorised the words people used to describe certain things. Her hair was green. Her eyes were golden yellow. The trees were orange. Her hexide uniform was pink. Things she saw everyday had colour words she could assign to them and, if she encountered something new, she would avoid trying to describe it until someone else did.
Labelling them never changed what they were though and what they were was grey. Grey and cold and lonely. She'd heard people describe certain colours as being warm, but that had never made sense to her either. The only feeling she ever got from the world around her was cold. Cold greys. Cold family. Cold friends. What she wouldn't give for a little warmth... Maybe one day, if she was lucky, she would finally get to feel it.
The Boiling Isle were both vastly different and very similar to Earth. Every myth she'd ever heard of back home proved to be real here. Magic and witches were real! Maybe not quite like Azura but Luz sort of like these better anyway. They were snarky, and adventurous and you never knew quite was going to happen next here, which made it all the more exciting. And oh gosh, gryphons! With spider-breath! She'd been right about that too. They all existed!
All the magical things she'd dreamed of for so long were real. Except for colour. That one was still fake news in both worlds. It was ok though because here it didn't matter how weird she was; by Boiling Isles standards, she fit right in.
She had finally found a place where she belonged.
Luz would forever be grateful for the day Owlbert had stolen her Azura book and led her into this crazy, sort of messed up, amazing fantasy world where she didn't feel so out of place. Sure, the world was still grey but she wasn't alone anymore. She'd met Eda and King, her surrogate family of weirdos who were just as strange as she was and who seemed to like her, quirks and all. She'd even made friends! Witch friends to boot!
She'd stumbled upon Willow and Gus in the market one day during her usual potions delivery for Eda and she'd helped them get away from a three-eyed bully named Boscha that had been picking on Willow. They'd all become fast friends after that. After some shenanigans and misadventures, her friends had even managed to convince Eda to send Luz to Hexide. An honest to goodness real magic school! And today was her first day.
Walking up to the building for the first time, Luz was glad she'd met them before ever setting foot in this place because the school was intimidatingly big. Without them around to guide her, she would definitely have gotten lost. Thankfully she shared classes with both of them that day and they'd promised to help her find her way around.
Most people only studied one Track but Luz had convinced Principal Bump to let her study a little of everything and that had proved to be a source of both joy and trouble.
Classes at Hexide were thrilling to say the least. Plants and Illusions had been great since she shared them with her friends and they could chat and help her with the course work, but Potions was one she shared with Boscha, which had led to a lot of glares being thrown at her back. Also ingredients.
Boshca had excellent aim and Luz had very nearly caused a serious explosion when she'd mistaken the volatile Pepperberries that Boscha had thrown onto her desk for the Elder berries she was meant to use. Her Potions professor had yelled at her for five straight minutes about it, demanding to know how she could possibly confuse the bright red berries for the pale blue ones. When she had carefully explained that they looked the same to her, her professor had almost blown his top and only the bell signalling the end of classes for the day had saved Luz from being sent to detention on her first day. Eda would have been so proud.
After that rather stressful end to her day, Luz was desperately happy to see her friends waiting for her at her locker. She ran to meet them with a huge grin on her face, waving her arm wildly to catch their attention.
"Friends! Am I glad to see you!" She said happily, rushing in to give them both a big hug before she started trying to force her many books into her less than cooperative locker. It growled at her and gnashed its teeth, unhappy at being so over fed. She supposed it made sense. No other lockers had to hold books for nine different tracks after all but she needed to keep them in there and they needed to stay in order or she'd lose track of which books went with which class. They were supposed to be colour coded but they were all similar shades of grey, so that didn't really help much.
Luz had become intimately familiar with every shade of grey there ever was and ever could be. She'd even named them all in her head. But it was still hard to tell them apart sometimes and her locker spitting out all of her carefully organised books did not help. Glaring at the sentient storage space, she hastily shoved her books back into its mouth, resolving to reorganise them in the morning. Luz turned at the sound of Willow chuckling at her and grinned at her friend. Gosh, it was so nice to have people she could call that!
"How was your first day, Luz?" Willow asked and Luz's grin widened.
"I almost made Potions class explode but other than that it was great!" She said excitedly. Willow and Gus glanced at each other with wide eyes but seemed to think better of asking questions. They knew chaos tended to follow Luz and it was best to just roll with it. It was part of her charm after all!
"Do you have to deliver potions for Eda today? Because if you're free, we have a proposition for you," Gus said with an eager look that Luz found immediately intriguing.
"Nope, no deliveries today so I'm all yours! What did you have in mind?" She asked, leaning in conspiratorially. She was always down for magical hijinks and she got plenty of those when she hung out with her witchy friends.
"Well," Willow said, clasping her hands behind her back and leaning in to play along with Luz's almost dramatic pose. "How would you like to go watch the big Grudgy game that's happening this afternoon? Glandus High challenged the Hexide Bashees to a little exhibition match and we thought you might like to go see it. The games are always really exciting!" Luz popped upright and tilted her head curiously.
"I have no idea what half of those words mean but it sounds like you're talking about watching a magical sport so I'm in!"
"Great! We should head over to the stadium now then. The stadium fills up fast and you'll want front row seats for your first game, trust me," Willow said with a knowing smirk that only excited Luz more. She'd never been a big fan of sports, what with her weak nerd arms and preference for books, but this was a magic sport and that could only mean good things. Gus whipped out a set of flags striped in different shades of grey and waved them enthusiastically in the air, drawing her attention.
"Well then let's get going! I spent all night making these bad boys for the big game. It took forever to get the Hexide blues just right and I'm gonna dazzle everyone with them!" He cried before darting off down the corridor with Luz and Willow in tow. Running down the halls with her friends, Luz couldn't help the twinge in heart at the small reminder that she was still an oddity here.
Magic was real but colours sure weren't and people here still seemed to think they were. It was enough to make her think that maybe she really was the one that was wrong and that thought really sucked.
Even with her new magical school and all the amazing things she'd seen, the awesome people she'd met and the incredible things she'd learned to do, there was still something missing. Something she had been longing for without fully knowing what it was or why it meant so much to her. The feeling had gotten stronger recently and she felt closer to understanding it than she ever had before. So close in fact, she could almost touch it. But it was still just out of reach.
Frowning determinately, she rushed to keep up with her friends as they burst out the doors to the school, headed round to the back area she hadn't yet explored. She was being silly. So what if colours weren't real? She'd never needed them before and she didn't need them now. She had amazing friends and a new exciting life and magic! What more could she possibly want?
She'd almost gotten into trouble today. Again. Something had been nagging at the back of her mind for the last few days, distracting her enough that she'd made several slip ups that she hadn't in years.
She'd come very close to leaving the house in her sister's uniform the other day and only Emira's annoyed questioning of why she'd stolen it had saved her. It had also earned her a lot of pranking from the twins that day but she could deal with that.
What Amity couldn't deal with was accidentally grabbing the wrong vial in Abominations class and ruining her brew. Usually she was very meticulous about checking for the exact shade of grey she needed but that damn nagging feeling had made her lose focus and she'd had to hang back after her last class of the day to mop up the mess she'd made when her resulting Abomination had gone nuts and tipped over three separate cauldrons.
Thankfully her professor had been kind enough to agree that her parents didn't need to know about her screw up. Provided she left the classroom spotless and, in his words, made more of an effort to stay focused during class in the future. Her parents already put enough pressure on her as it was and it had been ages since they'd had to punish her for her little affliction. The last thing she needed was for them to hear about her embarrassing herself in the middle of class because she'd gotten vial colours mixed up. There was very little they could do to her that hadn't already been done at this point but she didn't feel like testing their creativity.
With her luck, they would force her to quit Grudgby, despite how good her position on the team made them look. It was all she had left in the way of freedom and she did not want to have to give it up. She'd chosen to play the game all on her own. She was good at it and she loved the thrill of it, but that was exactly why they'd likely take it away from her if she made any more careless mistakes. After all, it wasn't a punishment unless she was miserable afterwards.
Unfortunately her little mess had made her late for the pregame meeting, which wasn't great considering she was captain of the team. The Banshees were counting on her to strategize for the game and she was going to have almost no time for it now. One of her teammates, Boscha, was waiting for her at the entrance to the school when she slipped out and the girl snapped at her angrily for being late before dragging Amity towards the stadium that was already starting to fill up.
As Boscha tugged her through the throngs of people, headed for the locker room so they could get ready for their big exhibition match with Glandus, Amity felt that nagging feeling grow. It was almost buzzing in her head now, getting louder the closer they got to the stands until her ears were practically ringing.
Squeezing her eyes shut at the awful, high pitched noise echoing in her head, she didn't see the girl walking backwards in her direction until it was too late. They slammed into one another sending them both stumbling so that her arm was yanked free of Boscha's grip.
Amity groaned at the suddenly almost deafening ringing until she looked up at the girl that had knocked into her and her breath caught in her throat. The ringing stopped and everything went quiet the second she looked into her eyes. Eyes that were decidedly not grey.
The world around her bloomed suddenly into colour as if a veil had been lifted from it, so many vibrant shades and hues dancing at the edge of her vision that it might have been overwhelming, had she been able to look away. But all she could see were those eyes. Those deep, inviting eyes that she wished she could name the colour of, because it was the first colour Amity had ever seen and she already knew it was her favourite.
They were both frozen, staring at one another in wide-eyed wonder and Amity found herself utterly captivated. Neither of them were capable of looking away, which was fine really because Amity had never seen anything quite so beautiful in her life. Her throat tightened, tears building behind her eyes as her emotions swelled with a new understanding she'd never imagined she could have.
It had never made sense to her before but now, looking into those gorgeous eyes, Amity understood with crystal clarity what people meant when they called a colour warm.
Everything about this girl was warm. She was made of it. She radiated it. Amity wanted to drown in it. A warmth unlike anything she had ever felt before was filling her to the brim and she couldn't get enough. It was soft. Welcoming. It felt like home. The way the other girl was looking at her told Amity that she felt it too. She understood. Something somewhere deep inside Amity told her that this girl knew exactly what she was experiencing because she was experiencing it too. An entirely new world filled with colour that she had never quite believed existed but here it was. All thanks to her.
The spell was broken by a hand tugging hard on her arm, forcing her away from the girl with the deep, warm eyes and towards the locker room that she had completely forgotten about. Boscha was snarling at her about wasting time, practically dragging Amity through the doors to the locker so they could get ready for a game that she couldn't care less about at that moment. She'd just discovered something far more important.
Half scared that the world would go back to grey if she lost sight of her, Amity turned back for one last glimpse of the girl that had unveiled all the colours in the world for her. The girl looked over her shoulder from where Willow was guiding her into the stands and their eyes met for a fleeting second before her view was blocked by the locker room door slamming in her face. Just like that, she was gone. The world remained in colour but Amity suddenly felt colder than ever.
It started as they were walking to the stadium to find their seats. Luz's head started to feel fuzzy and the closer they got the worse it became until her ears were ringing so loud she could hardly stand it. She'd kept up her smile, not wanting to upset her new friends with her weirdness, but it was becoming almost painful. Wanting to appear like her usual chipper self, she had started walking backwards just ahead of Willow and Gus, trying to keep up with their conversation despite not really being able to hear it anymore.
Distracted by the awful racket in her ears, she missed Willow's warning and walked right into someone, sending them both reeling. Thankfully, she'd managed to stay on her feet but her legs threatened to give out when she looked up and met eyes so bright that she found herself suddenly unable to breathe. And then the world exploded.
Colour unlike anything she could have imagined seemed to flow from within those eyes and leech into the world around her, washing away the dull grey of her existence and filling every little corner with things Luz could barely comprehend. Finally, after years of denying they existed, she could see them. Colours weren't a myth after all. They were real and Luz could see them all but she found that the only colour she cared about was the one in those bright eyes staring back at her.
Except they weren't only one colour. They were a million different shades of the loveliest thing Luz had ever seen. Little flecks of different hues danced in them as they both stared. They sparkled. They glittered. They were practically glowing and Luz never ever wanted to look away, because how could anything ever compare?
Far too soon though, she found herself being pulled away from the girl who had turned the final myth in her life into glorious reality. Willow was frantically pushing her towards the stands and when Luz looked over her shoulder to see her again, she only got a brief glimpse before Boscha dragged her away and slammed the door behind them.
She moved in a daze after that, allowing Willow to guide her into a seat somewhere near the front of the stands where they could get a good view of the game. Luz hardly cared about watching Grudgby at this point though. She'd just discovered the one thing she'd been missing in her life and she knew it had nothing and everything to do with colour.
Now that she wasn't under the girl's spell anymore, Luz could look around and take in the thing she'd denied existed all the years of her life. Colours, she decided, were beautifully overwhelming. She was surrounded by them. Everywhere she looked she saw more, blending and clashing and flowing into one another in a visual cacophony so intense it was starting to give her a headache.
She shut her eyes against the loudness of it all and grit her teeth. Hearing about them all her life had done nothing to prepare Luz for the reality of a world in full colour. It was beautiful and wonderful and all the things she'd ever been told. It was too much. She needed something to ground her. She needed her.
All she wanted to do was run into that locker room and find that girl. See those bright eyes that had captivated her like magic and feel safe in that singular point of colour. But wait… She had gone into the locker rooms. The ones meant for players. Was she on the team?
Eyes snapping open, Luz looked for the doors that the players would be walking through and locked onto them. Focusing on that one spot helped. It made the rest of the colours easier to handle as they dimmed in her peripheral vision. After what felt like an eternity, the doors finally opened to reveal the Hexide Banshees. Boscha came first, strutting out into the field and absolutely oozing confidence. Just behind her was another girl with short hair that Luz didn't know, an almost hungry smirk spread across her face. Then, finally, it was her. The girl.
It was like Luz could suddenly breathe again. She felt grounded. Safe. Colours were real. The girl was real and now Luz could really look at her. She could take in her pale skin, smooth features, long, slender, well defined limbs. She was amazing.
Luz's mouth felt a little dry and she swallowed hard. It was a little like looking at the sun. She was so bright and beautiful and… she looked kinda like she wanted to be sick. Her shoulders were hunched and her eyes were trained on the dirt at her feet, hands clenched tightly into fists and face screwed up in an almost pained expression. Luz understood. She wasn't sure how she knew, but there was no doubt in her mind that she was just as overwhelmed as Luz was. Except Luz didn't have to focus on playing a magical sport right after she'd been awoken to a world of colour. Oh cramity.
Her throat tightened and an irrational urge to call out to her rose in Luz's chest, wanting to somehow make her feel better. But what could she possibly do to help her now? There was a game to be played and Luz was stuck in the bleachers, utterly powerless. She watched as the girl froze at the centre of the field, standing unsteadily across from the opposing team, not even capable of looking at them. Oh this was going to be bad. Then a whistle sounded and the game began.
It was hell.
Grudgby, as it turned out, was a very good example of what life on the Boiling Isles was like. Violent, fast paced, ridiculously dangerous and absolutely filled with magic. On any other day Luz would have adored it. The astounding feats of magic. The death defying stunts! There were spikes and flames and was that a freaking giant swinging axe?! On a regular day, Luz would be losing her mind with excitement. But today was no ordinary day.
The game was impossible for Luz to follow. Traps sprang to life, magic wooshed across her vision, plants swung, girls ran, flaming balls hurtled and Luz felt panic creeping up her spine. The colours. The beautiful, amazing, overwhelming colours. There were too many. She couldn't focus. She couldn't stop looking. She needed out!
She tried desperately to find the girl in the mess, needing something to focus on, but she couldn't see her anywhere in all of that. It was too much! Breathing heavily, pulse thrumming in her veins and heart beating wildly in her chest, Luz had only one thought. Run.
Launching herself out of her seat, she bowed her head to stare at the floor and ran for dear life. Willow called after her, confusion evident in her voice but Luz ignored her and kept going, making sure to keep her eyes fixed on the solid colour of the dirt path beneath her feet. She had no idea where she was going, only that she needed to get away from the colours.
She was definitely going to be sick. The locker rooms had been sort of ok. A lot to take in but the lockers themselves were mostly all the same and, other than their uniforms being different, there hadn't been anything too intense in there. But the stadium. The game! The second she'd stepped foot on the field Amity had known she was done for.
Thousands of cheering fans all in different clothes, with different hair and skin, surrounded by the million different hues of the sky, trees, buildings… She drank it all in and felt the weight of it crushing down on her, making her stomach churn and twist until she forced her eyes down onto the field. Panic crawled across her skin. There was no way she was going to be able to play like this. Everyone would see her fail. Her classmates. Her family. Her. It was going to be a disaster!
She needed out. An excuse maybe, for why they had to postpone. Would it be better if she just let her already swirling stomach go? That would certainly end the game fast. It would be mortifying sure, but being laughed at for getting sick on the field was better than being labeled a failure as well as a liar. Anything as long as she got out of this! But then the whistle blew and it was too late. The game had begun.
She was so intent on keeping her eyes down, Amity missed the ball toss and the Glandus team got an immediate advantage. It only got worse from there. It was all she could do not to get seriously injured. Grudgby had always been a thrilling game and she loved it. The adrenaline! The cheering crowds! The triumphant feeling she got when she scored the winning goal! But she'd never really thought about how much went on in the games. There was so much movement! So many spells and obstacles thrown about in a whirling typhoon of chaotic colour and Amity was stuck in the middle of it.
She heard Boscha's angry scream, the crowd's booing, her own pounding heart and it was too much. She was useless out there. A liability. She was going to get herself killed! She had to get out. She had to run. So she did. At the first sight of an opening, Amity bolted.
She rushed to the edge of the field and vaulted over the barrier, ignoring the startled shouting from the spectators as she made a mad dash for the quiet safety of the school. The team would be fine but Amity definitely would not be if she stayed. They would be pissed but they could handle one game without her. They could just sub in another player to replace her for the day.
Her feet led her around the side of the building, past the Beast Keeping animal pens and the greenhouses to a little hidden alcove tucked away in a garden the Plant Track kept in immaculate condition. It was quiet and relatively private. It was also filled with flowers and bushes and surrounded by trees with little benches dotting the pathway that led through it. It was the perfect place for Amity to catch her breath and just… take it all in. The garden was filled with colours just like everything else but it was peaceful and she didn't feel quite so overwhelmed in here. That is, until she looked up and saw her.
The girl was sitting on a bench deeper into the garden, clutching a little box in her lap. She was taking deep, slow breaths, as if she was trying to stay calm, her fingers curled tightly around the box in her hands, eyes darting between it and the flower bed across from her. Amity watched as she looked at the flowers, then down to the box and muttered something to herself, a slight frown of concentration on her face. Amity drank in the sight of her, marvelling at how pretty she was. Her short, dark hair and smooth skin glowing in the sunlight streaming into the garden in shades of that same warm colour Amity had seen in her eyes. Her eyes fell on the girl's round ears and widened for a second. She was a human. Well that explained why she'd never seen her before now. It raised a multitude of other questions though and Amity wanted to know the answers to them all.
It took everything in her not to rush to her. She wanted so badly to join her on that bench. To find out what she was doing there. To ask her about Earth. The colours. Her name.
Amity took an unconscious step closer and it was enough to draw her attention. She looked up and their eyes met again. Just like before, Amity was frozen. Trapped in the deep warmth of those eyes and unwilling to escape. Then she smiled and Amity was certain nothing could ever be as lovely. It was small, tentative. Curious. She tilted her head slightly and Amity's heart fluttered at the adorable action.
"Hi…" She said quietly and Amity let out a shuddery breath at the sound of her voice. Swallowing thickly, she reached up to give an awkward little wave, smiling tremulously at her.
"H-hi," she replied. They stared at one another for a moment before the other girl's smile tugged into a grin and she patted a spot on the bench beside her in a clear invitation. Amity didn't need to be asked twice. She settled in beside her, eyes never leaving hers.
"I'm Amity," she said, hoping desperately that the girl would take the invitation in that simple statement. Her grin widened a little and Amity's breath hitched.
"Luz," she replied. They were quiet for a beat before Luz's eyes widened a little. "Wait… did you leave your game?" Amity grimaced and shrugged helplessly.
"I had to," she said quietly. "I couldn't… the colours…" She swallowed and glanced away at the flower bed Luz had been staring at before.
"You couldn't see them before either." Amity's head snapped back and relief flooded her. She had been right. Luz really was like her.
"No," she admitted. "Not until…"
"I saw you," they said in unison.
They stared at each other for a long moment then, just basking in the knowledge that this connection they had, whatever it was, was mutual. Real. Neither of them knew what it meant or why it had happened, but they didn't care. A slow smile spread across Amity's lips and Luz followed, her eyes brightening until they giggled together at the strangeness of it all.
They relaxed there on the bench together, content to simply enjoy the comfortable ease between them and take in this new world they found themselves in.
"It's a lot to look at, huh?" Luz asked, her eyes roaming about the garden in wonder. Amity nodded.
"Yeah. I never thought they were real before," she admitted. Luz smiled.
"Me neither." She glanced back down at the box in her lap and Amity followed her gaze to see that it was filled with crayons, each one turned so that a word printed on the side of it was visible. She leaned forward a little and gasped. Red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple. Her eyes scanned the crayons and drank in the words. For the first time, the words she had memorised as a child had meaning. She looked back up to find Luz watching her, an understanding little grin tugging at her lips.
"I was trying to learn their names," she said, glancing back down at her box of crayons before she met Amity's eye with an almost teasing grin that made Amity's heart leap into her throat. "You have a favourite yet?"
Amity flushed but she wasn't about to back down from the challenge in her tone. Scanning the box, her eyes landed on the crayon she was looking for and she plucked it from the box to hold it up between them.
"Definitely this one," she said, tilting it so Luz could see the word 'brown' written across its side. She grinned in satisfaction at the way Luz's cheeks darkened at her obvious flirting. She clearly knew the name of her own eye colour, just like Amity knew hers. "What about you?" Luz smirked through her blush and plucked her own crayon from the box without hesitation for Amity to see.
"Yellow, for sure," she said and Amity felt her own cheeks flush hotly in return. She was fairly certain she was smiling like an idiot but that was ok, because Luz was too. She hesitated before carefully setting the crayon back into the box, her eyes scanning hungrily over their names.
"What do you think it means?" She asked curiously, knowing she didn't need to elaborate. Somehow, she knew Luz had understood what she was asking.
"I'm not sure," she replied quietly, before dropping the yellow crayon into the box with the others. She reached out to take Amity's hand, lacing their fingers together with the softest smile Amity had ever seen. "But I want to figure it out. Together." Amity stared up at her in quiet awe, heart racing and stomach fluttering wildly.
They didn't know anything about each other. They were total strangers from different worlds but she couldn't care less. There was something there. Something warm and bright and beautiful as all the colours she'd finally gotten to see thanks to Luz. Her life was still a mess and who knew what baggage a human in the Boiling Isle must have, but none of that mattered. Amity wanted to learn everything about her. To embark on a journey into a world of colour with her and discover what exactly this thing between them was. No matter how long it took. She just knew, as long as she was with Luz, everything would be ok. She smiled and squeezed Luz's hand in silent agreement.
"Together."
Heeey look at that, a one shot. I know I'm late on updating A Luminous Bond but I needed a mental break. Its the end of the semester, which means TONS of extra stress at work and it was kinda killing me a little. Just needed to do something short and simple and fluffy (with some slight angst tossed in for balance) to get out of the negative headspace I've been stuck in. Thankfully the winter holiday is only two weeks away and I plan on using all that glorious free time for writing!
So yeah, hopefully you enjoyed this little one shot inspired by art that was inspired by a prompt, with a healthy smattering of JulipCord saying "but make it jock Amity" lol. I'm a hopeless romantic and soulmate fics just give me life man. Like I explained to one of my friends on discord, I don't see soulmates as being a predestined thing that takes the choice out of love. To me its more about the idea that two people could be so perfectly suited to one another that the literal universe just goes "you know what? You two crazy kids should meet. Here's a helpful little hint that you'd be great together, do with it what you will". That right there is just... hhhhhhhhhhhhhh too perfect.