As it turned out, waking up in another world was largely the same as waking up on Earth. Luz felt just as happy to wake up to a new day as she did on Earth, and the window she opened to greet the day shattered to pieces just as easily as the windows on Earth did; all in all, it was a collective good omen of things to come.
"Why is there broken glass? Are we under attack?" King asked from the foot of Luz's army surplus sleeping bag in an excited tone.
"Nope, just Murphy's Law, my little cutie pie," Luz said, kissing King on his skull mask. King recoiled at her touch, but as he did, he tripped over his feet and slid out of the room and across the hallway floor until he started falling down the stairs.
"I am in serious pain, now!" King shouted.
"Do you want a band-aid?" Luz shouted back.
"Yes!" With that being said, Luz pulled a Ducky Momo band-aid out of her backpack and went downstairs to help King; only six stairs broke beneath her feet as she did just that, and if that wasn't even more proof that it was going to be a good day, then she didn't know what was.
When Luz ran into Eda that morning, it was when Eda stepped around her on the stairs as she was in the middle of fixing the ones that broke due to Murphy's Law. It was a tough task since everything she used to fix them would spontaneously break apart, but she eventually got it done and with only a minimal amount of splinters to show for it.
"Well, I guess it's good to know you're gonna fix the stuff you break just by existing," Eda said from the kitchen down below.
"Hey, it's the least a Murphy can do," Luz said as she made her way downstairs into the kitchen. "Speaking of fixing things, what's the plan for fixing the portal?"
"Eh, I'll figure something out. But your mom really doesn't have a problem with you being stuck here?"
"I was pretty quick to tell her about it, so it's fine. She's been used to weird stuff happening with Murphy's Law ever since that ska-obsessed dinosaur came to life." Luz laughed a little as she remembered what was definitely a great episode of her life. "Besides, I got a cousin who lives in Danville, and boy, the stories he could tell about that place."
"I'm sure they're just fantastic. By the way, you're wearing a bathrobe and a dirty traffic cone." Luz gave her outfit a look over before concluding that Eda was spot-on in her declaration and removing the offending items.
"So I am." Luz considered tossing the cone atop her head aside, but then she decided to put it in her backpack; you could never have too many traffic cones, after all. "So much for dressing like a witch, I guess."
"You're trying way too hard. Go down to Waverly Place sometime, and you'll see that witches dress like any other person." Luz could feel that that was something they would need to come back to at some point. "You were looking less ridiculous than King, anyway."
"I heard that!" shouted King from the couch, King covered in Ducky Momo band-aids from head to toe.
"Good. I wanted you to." King stuck his tongue out at Eda before grabbing the plush bunny he picked out of the rubble of the Conformatorium and curling up with it. Eda moved to take a sip of her drink, but the handle on her mug snapped off and the mug shattered against the table. "Yeah, that figures."
"I've got duct tape and gorilla glue at the ready. Which one do you want?" Luz asked.
"It's fine, I'll just steal another one." Luz opted not to think about the implications of that. "More importantly, let's get to what you're gonna be doing today."
"Is it magic stuff?"
"Technically, yes." Eda picked a bag of assorted beakers and bottles filled with liquids up off from a dirty corner of the room and handed it to Luz; the bag started to rip, but Luz was quick with the duct tape to fix it. "Okay, moving on. My main business is selling potions and elixirs and whatnot to people around town. Most of it is prepaid and just needs to be delivered, but some of it is new product that I need you to try and sell."
"Is this really necessary? I thought you made money selling human stuff Owlbert steals from Earth."
"That's just a side gig, and with the portal being busted, I can't do it as much as I usually do. You want me to teach you magic? You gotta earn your keep."
"Okay, that's fair enough." With a smile on her face, Luz stuffed the bag into her backpack, taking care to not let anything break. For some reason, Eda looked at her with confusion, as if she didn't understand the logistics of how a giant bag like that could fit into a comparatively smaller backpack like Luz's. It would have been very easy to explain it all, but Luz suddenly found herself preoccupied with a more pressing matter.
"Do you have a map of the town somewhere? Not just a directional thing, but something with a lot of details of how everything is laid out? I should probably know everything that could be hit with Murphy's Law before I go in there," Luz said.
"Right, I guess it wouldn't be good if you made Bonesborough explode, or something. Where else am I gonna get my income?" Eda asked.
"We could evacuate the town, then let Luz blow it up," King said from the couch.
"I really think we should avoid things that end with towns exploding, though," Luz said. "Maybe I should put some bubble wrap around everything, too. That might be a good idea." Luz took the bag of potions and elixirs out of her backpack, but when she did, the tear got a little wider and a potion fell out. Miraculously, it didn't break upon impact with the floor and instead bounced into the air.
"Hey, guys! What's going—Ah, my eyes!" After that, it broke upon hitting Hooty, who had slid into the house for some reason.
"And on that note, you should probably go," Eda said.
"Is he going to be all right?" Luz asked.
"Yeah, he's fine, just go seize the day, or whatever." Eda pushed Luz out the door as Hooty continued to writhe around in agony across the floor of the Owl House. The door was slammed behind her only to be opened a second later as King was dropped outside next to her. "Take King with you. He can help you not die."
"Don't I get a say in this?" King's question went unanswered as Eda shut the door once more. "Just try and keep that Murphy's Law stuff directed at everyone except me, okay?"
"Doesn't really work like that, but I'll see what I can do, Boo Boo Buddy," Luz said. Much to her own surprise, she was able to put that to the test rather quickly when the door fell off of its hinges and Luz pulled King to safety.
"Aw, now my back hurts! Will this nightmare never end, hoot?" Hooty cried from inside the Owl House.
"And with that, we're out of here." Luz scooped King up onto her shoulders and made her way towards the town where, with any luck, Murphy's Law wouldn't affect her or anyone else too badly.
Luz didn't get a good look at Bonesborough when she and Eda were running away from the police in the midst of a rare Murphy's Law-free moment the previous day, but now that she had a chance to look around, she could see that there was an old-timey, medieval theme going on with the architecture of the town. The whole thing would have been quaint, if not for the giant bones and random assortment of monstrous structures thrown about.
"I sure hope none of these things try to eat anyone while we're here," Luz said as she and King walked through the streets lined with food stalls emitting smells that highly varied in levels of palpability.
"Honestly? It'd be weirder if we went the whole day and didn't see someone get eaten," King said as he peeled off his Ducky Momo band-aids and handed them to Luz to be thrown away; it was nice to know that even the King of Demons knew better than to litter.
"Well, let's try and keep that to a minimum and focus on work. The sooner we get this done, the sooner Eda can start teaching me magic, maybe." Luz took out the bag of potions and elixirs as she stopped by a pumpkin stand where a centaur was surveying the product; she decided that he would be her first customer. "Hey, you know what goes great with pumpkins? A little bit of magic potion from the most unmagical girl this side of the Boiling Isles. Care to try? First taste is free."
"Um, my eyes are down here," the centaur said, putting down a pumpkin to direct Luz to the face protruding from his chest, of all places.
"Ah! Great googly-moogly!" Luz couldn't stop herself from jumping back in shock.
"Hey, that hurts! I swear, you head-facers don't know anything about showing respect!" The centaur attempted to leave in a huff, but a potion fell out of the bag and the centaur slipped over the spilled liquid. The centaur's arms fell against the pumpkin stand so hard that it was broken apart at the seams and all of the pumpkins went flying about. Luz was quick to pull out an umbrella to shield King and herself, but the random passersby weren't so lucky as they were bombarded with pumpkins and the insides of the pumpkins that flew out when they collided with various things.
"Well, this took about as long as I expected. What was your over-under?" King asked.
"About this, but I wanted something a little more self-contained," Luz said. Just then, Luz heard the sound of flapping wings overhead. Looking up, she saw a three-eyed girl in a green shirt and a plaid skirt flying through the air with winged shoes. She was completely unaware of the danger she was flying into, so Luz, thinking quick on her feet, pulled a lasso out of her backpack and wrapped it around her leg to keep her from moving.
"Hey, let me go!" Suffice to say she was not very receptive to it, but that was understandable.
"Sorry, but there is a lot of messy stuff going on over here, literally and figuratively, so I just needed to get your attention so you wouldn't—"
"Shut up, nerd! Do not make me come down there and beat your bony little—" But as the girl yelled at Luz, her foot slipped out of her boot and she tumbled a few inches to the right at the exact moment a pumpkin exploded and sent a flurry of pumpkin seeds into the air in her direction. "Ow, my eye! What is—Ow, my other eye! What kind of monster would—Ow, my other other eye! That's all three eyes now!" Through a combination of blindness and having uneven flight-powered footwear, the three-eyed girl's flight path became uneven and she ended up flying straight into a giant arm sticking out of the ground, the arm wasting no time in snatching her up. A few seconds later, smoke began to flow out of its hand, and the three-eyed girl was launched towards the ground like a rocket. Luz was too far away to do anything, and she had no idea what she would end up hitting as a result.
"Hey Enid, it's me, Ted. Guess what I'm hauling today? ...Yeah, I wish. Nah, it's actually a bunch of kelpies. You know, those crazy horses that drag you into lakes and rivers so they can drown you and eat you? ...Yeah, those guys in the Beast Keeping Coven are pretty nuts, right? Sure made the right move joining the Delivery Coven." Completely oblivious to the chaos that was unfolding due to Murphy's Law was Carriage Driver Ted, a witch who did exactly what his name implied. Some people might find his life to be a tad boring, but not Ted. He loved delivering random things around the Boiling Isles almost as much as he loved expositing about it to whoever was on the other end of his ear-sized scroll at the time.
Because he was busy with all of that, he was unable to do anything about a girl being hurled into his carriage and knocking all of the kelpies he was delivering free. Each one let out a deafening cry as they charged through the streets with wet-sounding stomps, the sun glistening against their pitch-black manes as they tore down stands and ensnared people in their jaws, presumably to drag them off to watery graves.
"Enid, you'll never guess what just happened. Some kid just knocked all of my kelpies free. ...Yeah, it is bad. Sure hope I don't get fired for this. Also that, you know, no one dies a watery death."
"Sure hope that guy doesn't get fired for this. Also that, you know, no one dies a watery death," Luz said as she watched the kelpies, a creature she recognized from The Good Witch Azura, run about soaking the street as they tried to drag people off in their jaws to what she presumed to be watery graves.
"Now's probably a good time to run away and let other people sort things out. I'll get started." King didn't get far before Luz grabbed his tail and caused him to fall on his face.
"No. Things need to at least be brought down to a manageable level, so we're gonna do that."
"Ugh, fine. Hope you got silver bullets in that backpack," King said in a huff as Luz started rooting through her backpack.
"Nope, but I do have apple pie and carrot cake in silver trays!" Luz said as she pulled out five of each of the aforementioned items.
"You've had desserts in there this entire time?"
"Well, yeah, why wouldn't I?" King shrugged his shoulders and Luz tossed the desserts around the street. The aroma of apples and carrots filled the air and quickly caught the attention of the kelpies—except the one that was chewing on the head of the three-eyed girl, as he took an extra minute to take notice of it all. Nonetheless, they all eventually gravitated to the desserts and started eating them, upon which the silver in the silver trays took effect and made them all fall to the ground sick. "Yes! We saved the town, King!" Luz looked around at the mess of damaged property and shattered vegetables that appeared over the course of the last few minutes. "Sort of."
"Okay, now's the time for slinking away without making a scene." King squeezed himself into the flying boot they accidentally took from the three-eyed girl and floated into the air next to Luz's head. "And I'm gonna do it in style."
"Yeah, that's probably a good idea. Let me just…" Luz reached into her backpack and pulled out a note that said, "Sorry for the trouble I might have caused by existing." The note was signed with a crude drawing of Luz winking, and Luz put the not down on the ground next to the three-eyed girl before taking off with King.
"If we were a movie/You'd be the right guy/And I'd be the best friend/That you'd fall in love with in the end—" Quietly singing a Hannah Montana song to herself, Luz discreetly followed the floating King away from the wreckage to continue onward with her day.
All in all, it was going about as well as she figured it would.
With local law enforcement too busy cleaning up the mess Luz had a hand in to track her down, the rest of her workday went ahead with only minimal disruptions. There were a few occasions where some of the people—and in some cases, the architecture—tried to eat her, but Luz didn't know if that was due to Murphy's Law or just part of how the Boiling Isles worked; in all likelihood, it was probably both. Still, life went on, and as it did, it was time to make the last delivery of the day.
"Wow. This is a lot fancier than I'd expect from one of Eda's clients." Luz's statement was in reference to how the final delivery brought her and King to a large castle decorated in golden banners and intricate shrubbery. It was such a fancy sight that the sun even seemed to be shining on it brighter than it did anywhere else in town. Of course, that all stopped when a large bird somehow managed to fly through the sun, a sun that turned out to be some sort of magical artificial light source floating overhead that deflated like a balloon. "The rest of it looks nice, though."
"You don't think the fake sun is a reason to leave?" King asked, still floating next to Luz in the flying boot he stole.
"Hey, we shouldn't hold it against someone for wanting a little ambiance." The balloon-like artificial light source fell on top of Luz and King; fortunately, her blimp-cutting scissors made short work of it, even if it wasn't the intended use, and they were back on their way to complete the delivery. Luz went up to the front of the castle to ring the doorbell and the large doors swung open, which was immediately followed by them falling off of their hinges. "I'll fix that when we're done here."
"You really don't have to. In fact, let's just toss it in there and go home."
"Hello there! Luz's Delivery Service, at your, um, service! Sorry for the redundancy, and sorry for breaking your doors and your shiny balloon!" Luz ignored King's suggestion as she skipped inside of the castle. Lanterns lit up with each step she took, and soon enough, she ended up in the center of a library with a massive staircase leading up to a door, a door that was quickly opened as a bearded witch in sparkling robes decorated in stars stepped into view, his visage a perfect match for the large portrait that was hanging up above.
The large portrait that would have fallen on top of him, had Luz not been quick to lasso him to safety.
"Argh, you infernal little—I mean, thank you for assisting me, young lady," the bearded man said; it was odd that the thing he ended up saying ended up being so different from what he was first going to say, but it probably meant nothing.
"No problem, mister magic wizard man. It was probably my fault, anyway, so it's the least I could do," Luz said as she put her lasso back in her backpack.
"No, the least you could do is nothing, so let's do that," King said, floating close by.
"Now, now, no need to be in such a rush," the bearded man said. He drew two white spell circles in the air and summoned a pair of fancy chairs and a small table decorated with desserts. "Sit, stay, chat with me, play with my baby fox." The bearded man moved his beard a little to reveal a baby fox with adorable blue eyes tangled in it, although the tangling quickly came undone and it fell toward the ground.
"I gotcha, little guy!" Luz said. She reached into her backpack and threw a mini trampoline in its path. The baby fox giggled as it bounced up and down, but the giggling stopped when one bounce sent it flying in an arch right into a poorly placed sword.
"Oh, wow. Even I think that's in bad taste," King said while stuffing his mouth full of scones.
"Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! I'm so sorry! I didn't know the baby fox would land like that, I didn't have any time to grab something out of my backpack, and—Wait, why isn't there any blood coming out of the baby fox?" It was that observation that brought Luz out of her panic and put her in a state of questioning everything around her.
"Oh, well, you see, unlike the foxes in your world, magical foxes don't, um—" Luz ignored the bearded man's rambling as she stepped over to the baby fox's corpse to perform an autopsy. Admittedly, Luz had never done an autopsy before, and she still didn't need to try, because the second she touched the baby fox's corpse, it vertically slid down the sword and was split in half; a second later, both halves of the baby fox's corpse disappeared in a puff of green smoke.
"Oh, it wasn't a real baby fox. That's a relief; I almost had an existential crisis there about the effect I have on the world, but no need for that, anymore. Wait, why didn't you just say it wasn't a real fox? And why do you even have a fake fox?"
"Well, I think it's time for you both to be going. Goodbye, thanks for stopping by, please come back never." Rather than answer any of Luz's questions, the bearded man started trying to push Luz and King out of the library, but they both stood their ground.
"But I didn't give you your package!"
"And I want more scones!" King said. He was resisting the bearded man by grabbing onto the table, and as a result, the tablecloth was pulled down and everything went flying off. The desserts that King didn't catch in his mouth went flying to various spots in the library, a lot of them ending up smearing against the lock holding up the chandelier, and the dishes all shattered and sent their fragments flying about.
One particularly large fragment flew right into the bearded man's forehead, and a second later, he disappeared in the same puff of green smoke as the baby fox.
"This isn't a normal thing people do here, right?" Luz asked. King shook his head at her. "Well, now I'm even more confused. I mean, if that guy wasn't real, who's gonna sign for his package. I could bring it back to Eda, but she'd probably just throw it away."
"Enough!" Coupled with the mysterious new voice was the odd sound of slithering movement coming their way. The doorway atop the stairs was broken apart as what appeared to be a giant octopus monster charged into the library.
"Oh, is this your house? Great," Luz said. "I have your package, so if you could just sign for it—"
"Shut up, you annoying whelp!" the octopus interjected, the shouting making King take cover behind Luz. "This was supposed to be a simple scam! It shouldn't have been that hard to trick a dumb human like you into thinking that she was destined for greatness—"
"I think I'm pretty good the way I am now, honestly."
"Shut up! But you ruined everything! You destroyed my puppets, ruined by solar illusion, broke down my fancy door—I can't deal with you, anymore! I'll get rid of Eda in some other way, but for now? Now, you die, so says Adegast!" The giant octopus that was apparently named Adegast slithered over in Luz's direction to give what Luz assumed to be the fight of her life, and Luz, prepared to meet that challenge, drew the life-sized replica of Azura's neon magitek staff from Azura vs. Doctor Zone: Dawn of Merchandising from her backpack to meet Adegast head-on.
Fortunately, Luz never had to risk lowering the resale value of her staff, for at that moment, the cream from the desserts that went flying up toward the chandelier had fully loosened the lock on it and made it fall right on top of Adegast. Adegast let out a scream that more or less perfectly matched what Luz imagined the scream of a giant talking octopus would sound like, and when that was done, a much smaller octopus had popped out of the wreckage, presumably Adegast in some sort of weaker form.
"Curse you, human! Curse you!" Luz did her best not to laugh at Adegast yelling in a high-pitched voice.
"Hah! He sounds like a baby!" King had no qualms about doing just that, though.
"Don't mock me!" Every word Adegast said made it harder to not do just that. "This is not over, you hear me? One day, I will regain my power, and then I will have my revenge! Do you hear me? I will have my—"
At that moment, a raccoon, of all things, ran into the library from somewhere, scooped Adegast up in its paws, and scurried away from Luz and King, but not without giving them a wink, something Luz didn't even know raccoons could do.
He's Recurring Raccoo~oon. He's Recurring Raccoon!
"Well, that was weird," King said.
"Yes, yes it was, but despite what the song said, I have a feeling we'll never see that raccoon again. Ever," Luz said.
"So, with Adegast being taken by a raccoon for some reason, I took it upon myself to sign for his package and see what it even was. I never got to really find out because it fell out of my hands before I could get a good look at it, but it melted a hole in the floor, so it was probably better that I didn't," was how Luz finished recounting her day to Eda after she and King returned to the Owl House.
"Uh-huh. So, if I'm getting this right, on your first day here, you destroyed a pumpkin stand, blinded some flying punk, got said punk chucked into a carriage that released a bunch of kelpies that then went on to cause tons of property damage, snuck away from it all with only a note as an apology that probably got blown away by the wind, broke down a fancy door, and beat up some weird octopus demon?" was how Eda chose to sum everything up.
"Well, Murphy's Law did most of that, and the octopus sounded like he had some sort of convoluted scheme to use me to get to you," Luz said.
"I got a flying boot out of it all, don't forget that," King said, mere moments before the pot of tea Eda was boiling went off and blasted him in the face with steam, causing him to bump into a wall and fall to the floor, the flying boot then bouncing into Luz's hands.
"I'll just hold onto this for a bit," Luz said as she put the boot away in her backpack. "All that stuff wasn't bad, right?"
"Bad? Kid, that all sounds amazing!" Eda said as she tossled Luz's hair about. "It took me years to be able to cause that kind of chaos, and you did it without even trying! Almost brings a tear to my eye."
"Thanks. I think? Yeah, thanks." Luz didn't know how she felt about all of that, but headpats were always nice, so she didn't think about it, too hard. "Yep, even in another world, I guess Murphy's Law can't stop me from living my best life!"
"Wanna know what I do to live my best life, hoot?" Hooty slid inside without warning, but before he could say anything else, a bee stung him in the face and he slid back out with a scream.
"Sure are a lot of bees around here."
"Yeah, that's the problem." Luz didn't know why Eda felt the need to agree with her, but she was plenty happy for it, regardless.