AN: Woo! Honestly wasn't sure how long this would take, especially when i got stuck around the middle. Sometimes, it really does help to step back and take a different tact. I'll also note that I have been keeping up with the new season of the Owl House, and I will be integrating stuff from Season 2 into the story, but I will *not* be editing previous chapters to further align with future episodes. If I get it wrong, then I get it wrong.
Anyway, thank you for joining me on this continuing adventure.
"I'm sorry, how much?" Camila demanded as she shot to her feet. She was tempted to theatrically clean out one of her ears with a finger, but she suppressed the urge. She was a grown woman, after all; better to leave such childishness to her daughter.
"I can, like, say it again, but the number's totes not gonna change," the contractor said, not looking up from his phone as he gave her a careless shrug. When she'd opened the phone book that morning, looking for a repair expert, her first priority had been getting someone out here as soon as possible.
Perhaps she should have spared the extra hours it would have taken to get an actual professional, instead of *this*.
The stubbly, pimply, barely out of his teens young man sighed when he looked up from his phone and saw her expression. "Listen Babe, if you was looking for me to just plug your holes or something, that'd be one thing. Just gotta shove some plaster in there, maybe put some spackle on top, and it's all good, ya know? But that floor is another story, yo."
He gave the surface in question a little kick, his boots sending up a small spray of splinters. "Now, I ain't looking to get all up in your business or nothin', but you got some mondo scratches all over the place, you know? Ain't gonna be able to sand that out, no way, now how, so's we gonna have to replace the whole lot, and that's expensive yo."
Camila sighed, and sank back into her chair. "You'll understand if I look for a second opinion?"
"Hey, ain't no skin off my back," he said with another shrug. "They payin me just for show in' up here, yo know? If you want, I can totally hook you up with a pal of mine who does glasswork, he'd be happy to fix up your windows and shit for dirt cheap."
"I'll keep that in mind," Camila said, holding out her hand to accept his card.
Camila rubbed her head as she watched the last contractor drive away, before letting the door swing shut. "Oh mija, you are lucky I love you so much," she sighed, rubbing at her eyes in exhaustion.
Fifteen calls, to fifteen different repair crews, and fifteen different answers that all amounted to spending an arm and a leg to get this fixed. Assuming that nothing went wrong, and if she didn't mind waiting the better part of six months to get her house in order, because getting it done quickly would cost more, of course.
The insurance would help a bit, but she'd mostly been banking against one of her daughter's experiments getting out of hand in the backyard. A spontaneous animal invasion wrecking most of the house simply hadn't been in the cards.
"Maybe I should ask Eda to magic me up a new house instead," she grumbled to herself as she sank into a mostly intact chair and rubbed at her eyes.
And hadn't that been an eye opener? It had been less than a day since she had found her daughter, bizarrely transformed and rampaging through the house, as well as the disreputable old witch who had taken it upon herself to mentor Luz. Less than a day since she had discovered a whole other world beyond a magical door, populated by her daughter's wildest dreams, and monsters straight out of Camila's nightmares.
Less than a day since she had crossed back over into the human world, and left her daughter behind…
It had been the smart decision, as much as she had tried to argue against it. If nothing else, it was better to keep Luz close to a ready source of curse elixir, and at least on the Boiling Isles she wasn't at risk of being carted off to the nearest government facility.
Still, a part of Camila regretted not arguing a little harder, or at least finding an excuse to stay with her daughter. Unfortunately, Eda had rightfully pointed out that there had been a hole in Camila's house when they had last seen it, which was the sort of thing which required prompt handling.
A grumpy, yet exhausted Camila had been unable to come up with an appropriate counter-argument, and had ended up coming home just in time to run into the concerned police officers who had been wondering why half of her living room window was spread across the lawn.
By the time she had gotten all of the cops out of her house, it had already been tomorrow, and she'd ended up calling in sick to work so that she could get some sleep, before calling the closest repair shop.
"Try and look on the bright side, Camila," she told herself as she looked over the figures she'd jotted down onto a notepad. "It's only money, after all." She had some savings lined up, enough for the repairs if she kept it cheap and slow, but it'd pretty much wipe her out, and she still had Tibbles to think of. The porcine shopkeeper had been kind enough to give her a short grace period before the first shipment, but buying good clothing in bulk wasn't cheap.
And she wouldn't be seeing any profit from *that* particular expense, not for a while at any rate.
Still, it wasn't all bad. After all, Camila still had her health, her home, and her daughter, even if two out of three were feeling a little ragged at the edges. Speaking of which…
Camila reached under her sweater, and clutched the ornate wooden key which hung from her neck beneath it. Maybe a quick visit wouldn't hurt. Eda wasn't really expecting her until dinner, but Camila wasn't expecting any more workmen, and it'd be nice to get some fresh air, stretch her legs…
"No girl, don't even go there," she scolded herself, shoving herself out of her seat with a stubborn frown. "You're a grown woman, you've got a job to do, and you know better than to put it off."
She strode across the room, mindful of the deep gouges that had been scored through the wood. "You can play later," she told herself as she walked. "Right now, you need to focus on cleaning up the rest of the glass, finishing that report for the police, budgeting for that first delivery…". Her steps slowed as the list of tasks grew and grew, until she found herself stopping in front of the open door, her fingers clutching the key.
Walking back onto the Boiling Isles felt like missing a step, and barely catching herself at the last second. Suddenly the air smelled strange, and everything was the wrong color, and the earth felt like it was the wrong shape beneath her feet. Honestly, Camila had no idea how her daughter had come to love this place so much.
Still, there was something nice about seeing the Owl House waiting in welcome, a long streak of smoke rising merrily from the chimney. Camila closed her eyes to enjoy the evening Bree, the fallen leaves and branches crunching beneath her shoes with every step. Maybe this place wasn't so bad after-
"Hey, watcha thunking about?!"
"Gah!" Camila jumped in surprise, her hand lashing out in a sharp chop at the round face that had just popped into view.
"Too slow, hoot!" the creature squawked as it dodged the blow, its serpentlike body weaving expertly around her strike. "Luz likes to play that game too," it added as it weaved closer, until its beady eyes were uncomfortably close. "We play it every morning, when I surprise her in the bathroom."
"You're...Hooty, right?" Camila said, as her tired brain dug up a faint recollection of the bird-faced, tube-like creature who had greeted the last time she had arrived at the Owl House. She had barely seen the so-called 'house demon' outside of the initial greeting, but Eda and Luz had both been willing to share their anecdotes about their awkward, clingy, and downright bizarre houseguest.
Five minutes later, she was wondering what the big deal was.
"And then I coughed up this bug and it flew over and started eating this other bug, so I squashed them both and smeared their guts all over the window," Hooty declared, his ceaselessly chattering presence easily keeping pace with Camila. "Then I went and I dug up a bunch of rocks and I tried to use them to make another chimney, but I couldn't get them to stick together so I piled them into a big nest like Eda does."
"Oh, muy increíble," Camila said, clapping her hands together in (somewhat) sincere delight. "You'll have to show me later, that sounds amazing."
"Yeah, I don't like to brag, but I'm something of an artist," Hooty said, pressing close enough that she could feel his feathers tickling her cheek. "One time, I covered the whole house in leaves, like a giant leaf pile! And then I set it on fire, like a giant leaf pile!"
"That's...wow," Camila said, privately making a decision to lend Eda a fire extinguisher. "Anyway, it's been wonderful to meet you Hooty," she added as they reached the front door, which swung open obediently at her touch. "But I think they're expecting me inside."
"Okay! See you later, Luz's mom!"
Camila felt more than heard the door slipping shut behind her, and let herself relax. "Just like dealing with your average four year old," she said to nobody in particular. Honestly, they made him sound like such a terror, when he was just looking for a little attention.
"Hey, was that the door?!" Eda shouted, her familiar voice coming from further into the cottage. "Hooty, you better not be letting in raccoons again!"
"This place has raccoons?" Camila said to herself as she studied the front room. It was still a mess, of course, but more in line with what she assumed to be Eda's usual clutter, rather than the scene of a natural disaster. Most of the damage was already gone, dents and gouges smoothed away like magic, maybe even literally.
'Maybe I should pay the bruja to fix my house instead,' she thought to herself, before she raised her voice to shout, "it's just me, Eda."
"Oh hey Luz's mom," Eda called back a moment later. "Come on back, I'm in the kitchen!"
"Wasn't expecting you back until later," the witch added as Camila followed the sound of her voice. "I'd come out to greet you, only I've got my hands full right now."
"I can see that," Camila said as she stepped out into the kitchen, and spotted Eda over at the stove. The witch was hunched over a literal boiling cauldron, busily stirring the roiling contents with a wooden spoon clenched in both hands. "I hope that's not supposed to be dinner."
As appetizing as Eda's project smelled, the thick purple goop did not look like anything Camila was prepared to eat.
"What, this? Nah," Eda said, heedless if the way her careless gesture with the spoon sent slime spilling everywhere. "Just a bit of spellwork, that's all." As she returned to stirring, the goop that she had spilled started wriggling furiously, the bigger pieces inching their way back to the cauldron.
"Yeah, Luz was so disappointed about missing class today, I figured she'd appreciate a chance to see a master at work for once," Eda continued, blithely unaware of Camila's quiet horror.
"So what is it," the nurse asked as she struggled to tear her eyes away. She could swear that some of the goop was looking back at her, too. "A potion?"
"Hah!" Eda snorted. "Sure, I guess you could technically call it that, but I wouldn't recommend trying to drink this stuff. This, my dear human, is what we in the witch business refer to as protean ooze, or abomination goop in layman's terms."
"Abominations?" Camila said as she blinked at the goop, and watched it blink back. "Like an abomination of science, or…?"
"I dunno, what's a science?" Eda said, before bursting into guffaws when Camila spun around with an outraged expression. "Nah, I'm just messing with you," she admitted, still stirring away with both hands. "Luz gave me the down-low on all that stuff after her first day of Hexside, even if I didn't believe her at the time. Honestly, I still can't believe that you people managed to make learning sound more boring than trying to pick needles out of a cactus."
"Anyway, this is something totally different," she continued. "Your average abomination is basically a puppet working for whoever animates it. It's got just enough brains that it can act on its own without needing constant attention, it's tough, it's decently strong…. Basically, any time a witch needs an extra pair of hands, or someone to lift a heavy load, then this is the spell to use."
"Oh, that does sound convenient," Camila agreed, her eyes going distant as she thought about all of the inconvenient little tasks that kept a hospital running. Her job would be so much easier if she could just pull a Mickey Mouse, and hand off her chores to a summoned servant. "But if they're so useful, then why doesn't everyone have one? Why not use one to try and keep Luz corralled last night?
Eda rolled her eyes and huffed. "Okay, so maybe it isn't quite as simple as I was making it sound. For one thing, you gotta prep this sort of stuff before you can start summoning anything, and even the best brew will only last so long. Most people don't have the free time to cook up a new batch every month, so if they need an extra hand they end up summoning one from the professionals instead."
"Honestly, it's not a bad business model," she continued, putting out the fire with a wave of her hand before bending over to examine the cauldron of goop. "The Abomination Coven has a huge reservoir of this stuff just lying around. Sign up for a membership, and in exchange for a monthly fee you can conjure yourself a brand new servant whenever you want."
"Assuming, of course, that you're not a criminal who's being hunted down by every single guild on the island," Camila pointed out. "I imagine that there's not a lot of people willing to make a contract with you."
"Eh, shows what they know," Eda retorted. "I can make a better abomination than any of those old fuddy-duddys any day of the week, and by the time I'm done with her Luz will be just as good."
She gave the side of the cauldron a hearty slap, heedless of the way the contents bubbled and roiled with heat. "I figure we can start by letting our kid play around with this stuff for a while, see what she can make of it, before I teach her how to start making her own."
"And you think that'll work?"
"Eh, it has so far," Eda said with a shrug. "Anway, you wanna call Luz down while I get this stuff outside? Abomination lessons can be a bit messy, and I only just got this place put back together."
Camila watched the witch haul the cauldron outside, her arrival in the back yard heralded by Hooty's… distinctive tones, and found her thoughts latching onto a curious thought. 'Our kid?' she thought to herself as she walked over to the stairs. 'Never took Eda for the maternal type…'
Then again, maybe it wasn't so surprising. King definitely had a lot in common with a kid, and Eda had been tolerating him for Lord knows how long…. Not to mention her cohabitation with Hooty. Maybe there was a motherly spirit, beneath all that cynicism and carnival showmanship.
"Luz?!" Camila called out as she walked over to the stairs. "Come down! Eda says she wants to show you some new magic!" She frowned when there wasn't an answer, and stomped down on a twinge of fear. It took her a few moments, but she relaxed when she eventually heard the faint sound of her daughter's voice, coming down from her room.
'Guess she's just busy,' Camila thought to herself as she started up the steps, the wooden railing sliding smoothly beneath her fingers as she listened to Luz's chatter. She almost called out again, before she heard a second voice, one that she recognized, coming from the same place.
"No, no, the eyes were way smaller," King declared, his energetic whine coming through clearly despite the mostly closed door. "And the teeth were definitely bigger. They were, like, huge. Gigantic. Ginormous! Seriously, they were almost as big as mine."
"Wow," Luz said, her tone audibly distracted. "That sounds terrifying. You must have been brave!"
"Of course! Nothing scares the King of Demon!" the diminutive and self-declared demon lord declared.
"Well then, Mr King of Demons, tell me what you think."
Camila opened the door just in time to see the picture that her daughter was holding up and she felt her heart stop at the familiar visage sketched out across it. The long, jagged teeth were stretched out in an awful snarl, and the beady eyes were narrowed with intent, their fierce glare almost leaping off of the page to pierce through her.
Camila's heart clenched tighter when she saw how accurately her daughter had managed to depict the creature's twisted form, with the twisted hunchback beneath a thick ruff of fur, and the too-thin limbs that ended in overlarge paws, tipped with jagged claws. She had even managed to capture the dark, alien quality of her cursed form's face, the way the familiar features of her daughter had been turned into something dark and horrible by the curse.
She didn't register the sudden weakness in her legs, or the way she slumped to one side, not until she saw Luz darting across the room to reach her. "Mami, are you okay?" her daughter asked, reaching up to hold Camila steady.
"I'm...I'm fine," she stammered, finally pulling her eyes away from that jagged, sneering maw. "Just a little surprised, is all." She smiled down at her daughter's face, and did her best to banish the memory of seeing it twisted into something else. "Just wasn't expecting to see...well, that, quite so soon."
"Sorry Mami," Luz said with a sheepish smile of her own. "I wanted to see what my curse looked like, but nobody managed to get a picture last night, so I asked King to help me draw it out." She laughed nervously, and rubbed at the back of her head. "Guess I did a better job than I thought."
Camila felt her heart sink at her daughter's expression, which had gone from proud to embarrassed in an instant. 'Don't just stand there,' hissed a part of her mind that sounded a lot like Eda. 'Give her some props. Kid's a damn good artist, so you might as well tell her so.'
Almost against her better judgement, she let her eyes drift to the picture, and started really focusing on it. It really was a magnificent drawing, she realized; somehow, Luz had even managed to capture the rough, bristly texture of the beast's fur, and it's awkward posture as it crouched on all fours. Although, now that she was actually looking for it…
"The ears are too big," she said, walking over to trace her fingers across their shape. "I remember being surprised at how small they were. More like a bear, than a dog."
"Huh," Luz said as she walked over, already pulling out a pencil. "I figured they'd be more like Eda's ears, cause hers got huge from her curse. Guess it affects humans differently, though." She rubbed out the ears, and drew them back in at about half the size. "Better?"
"I dunno, she looks kinda funny now," King said from just behind them, his head tilted to one side as he considered the drawing. "Maybe you should make the fangs a little bigger, see if that helps."
Mother and daughter exchanged a quick glance, and the tension crumpled like a house of cards as they collapsed into shared giggles.
"What?" asked a bemused King as he stared between the two of them. "What'd I say?"
The throne room always felt slightly too warm for Lilith, like there was a fire pressing up against the wall that she couldn't see. It always left her uncomfortable and sweaty inside her dress, until she was eager to peel it off and wring it out at the end of every day.
If she didn't know better, she might have thought that Emperor Belos kept it that way intentionally, just to torment her. Of course, that was complete nonsense; an Emperor had better things to do than indulging in that sort of pettiness.
"My liege," she said as she sank down on one knee. "You summoned me?
"Ah Lilith, as punctual as ever," Belos said, his blank mask coming up to meet her gaze from where he lounged atop his throne. "I assume you have good news to report."
"Yes sir," she said, lowering her head so that she wouldn't have to keep seeing the dark holes he had for eyes. 'The emperor is great, the emperor is merciful,' she told herself in a silent mantra. 'The Emperor is always right.'
"I have just received a report that Edalyn's pet, Luz the human, has indeed been inflicted with the same curse as my sister," Lilith began. "However, rather than making the rational decision, and coming to me, Edalyn remains stubborn. I believe that she has engaged in some sort of alliance with a member of Night Market."
"Hm." Belos's tone was pensive as he straightened up in his throne, fingers pressed tightly together in contemplation. "How unfortunate," he finally said. "When you convinced me of this plan, you assured me that it would send your sister straight into our arms. Instead, she remains a rogue, and I find myself faced with not one, but two cursed beasts rampaging across my Island."
His voice was light, and unbothered, but as Lilith began to register a low pitched throbbing echoing across the throne room, she felt a thrill of fear. The throne heart moved at Belos's will alone, mirroring his moods, and she could feel his displeasure with every pulse that rocked through her bones.
"I assure you, sire, it is only a matter of time before Edalyn sees reason," Lilith hastened to add. "If not for her own sake, then for the sake of her pet. She's always had a soft heart for small, helpless creatures."
"Hm, very well then," Eblos said. "I suppose I can afford to wait a little longer. My patience, however, is not infinite."
"I...understand, my liege."
"Now then, anything else to report?"
It was no doubt intended to be a dismissal, but Lilith was nothing if not conscientious in her reports, especially if there was a chance it could make up for her earlier failures. "There is one thing, Emperor Belos. Our spies in the night market reported that Eda was accompanied by another woman, a human woman. One who bears a striking resemblance to her pet."
"Ahhh," said Belos. "So it seems that the Owl House has one more member, and a most interesting one at that." He cocked his head at her, his eyes flashing a piercing blue through the dark holes of his mask. "Find out what you can about your sister's new guest. Maybe she'll provide the leverage you have been so sorely missing."
This time, the dismissal was unmistakable, and Lilith rose to her feet just long enough to dip into a quick bow, "As you command, Emperor Belos."
Camila didn't know what she had been expecting when she had finally ferried her daughter downstairs and into the yard. Everything she saw on tv had implied that a witch's spells should be accompanied by glistening candles or grinning skulls, and performed in the light of the full moon, but whenever she tried to insert Eda into the picture, the whole thing just fell apart.
Then again, maybe she should have been taking her cues from King, who had vanished soon after spotting the cauldron, rather than stereotypes. Because in retrospect, and especially when considering her daughter's participation, it was probably inevitable that today's experiment would end in an explosion.
"Well, that didn't go as expected," Eda said as she untangled a flowery vine from her hair and tossed it aside. "Who knew that abominations were so volatile?"
"Yeah," Luz said, trying to wipe off the worst of the mess, and mostly succeeding in smearing it everywhere. "That didn't happen the last time I tried this."
"I thought that the last time you tried this, you fed the result to the monster trapped underneath the school," Camila said, slowly forcing herself to relax her grip on the weed clippers she had grabbed from inside. "Or am I getting my history of life-threatening events mixed up again?"
"No, no, you're right, this is definitely how Luz managed to blow up Gromethius," Eda agreed, her thoughtful expression at odds with the goop currently plastered across her face like a slimy beard. "I guess this is what happens when you mix abomination magic with a plant glyph, and don't feed it to a monster. Who knew?"
Eda's cauldron fell from where it had settled atop a handy oak, landing with a splash of purple goop in the middle of the loosely defined yard. Where in other circumstances, this might have made a mess, in this case it merely served to more evenly spread around the semi-solid ooze which currently covered most of the trees, the grass, and the closer parts of the house.
In the middle of the mess, the remains of a ravenously carnivorous plant was quickly withering away, its tangled roots still planted firmly in the pile of sludge that had once constituted a living abomination. The fact that its sloppy, half-formed face was contorted in a blissful smile merely added an extra touch of horror to the already bizarre scene.
"Note to self," Eda said, relaxing the rest of the way when she decided that the plant-monster hybrid wasn't going to get up again. "Gonna need to see if it's just glyph magic, or if mixing any kind of plant magic and abomination spell will do this. Titan, I hope it's just the glyphs, I'd hate to think that Belos had a point about keeping people from mixing magic…"
Camila was handling the situation somewhat less sanguinely. "Is this sort of thing normal around here?" she asked, one eye still fixed firmly on the leafy corpse.
"Hm?" Eda paused in the middle of poking at the pile, looking up at Camila with a distracted expression. "Nah, this has actually been a pretty slow day. Figured I'd take it easy, seeing as how Luz is still recovering."
"I still think you're worrying too much," said the girl in question, trying to shake her hands clean for the third or fourth time. "I feel fin-"
"Hello Luz's friends! Did you bring me a present? Huh, did ya?"
Luz immediately perked at the sound of Hooty's enthusiastic greeting, her eyes darting over to Eda in an unspoken question. The witch smiled, and waved her away. "Go ahead and rescue your friends before Hooty scares them off," she said, already spinning up a spell circle. "I'll finish up here."
Luz darted off almost before her teacher was finished speaking, only pausing at the backdoor to wipe off the worst of the gunk before slipping inside, and ignoring the way that the room went from too dark to too bright as she walked inside. It wasn't like being half blind was *that* big a deal, not when she knew the Owl House well enough to navigate it with her eyes closed.
She hadn't told anyone about this part of the curse, not yet. At least, she assumed it was the curse causing this. She couldn't see any other reason for the world to be both too dark and too bright, like a tv with the contrast turned way too high. It wasn't so bad when she was staying in one place, but moving through the house was like having a strobe shining in her face.
She refused to let it bother her, though, and her smile was as wide as ever as she tugged open the door and said, "Hey guys, welc-ohmygosh, what happened to you two?"
"Us?" Willow said as she tugged a rotten nanner peel off of her shoulder. "What happened to you?"
Both of Luz's friends looked like they had picked a fight with a trash slug and won...only for it to barf on them in their moment of victory. Willow had the worst of it, with pieces of garbage stubbornly sticking everywhere, but even Gus was covered with a rainbow's worth of stains.
"I have been experimenting with Eda in the backyard," Luz proudly declared, her words accompanied by yet another muffled explosion from behind the house. "Frankly, I think it's going well."
Willow and Gus exchanged looks, before the plant witch declared, "That's great, Luz."
"Yeah,"Gus agreed. "That's way cooler than getting trash dumped on you by Bosch-ow!" He glared at Willow, who had just jabbed him in the ribs. "Hey what was that for!"
"We agreed not to mention that!" Willow hissed.
"Oh. Oh!" Gus said, smacking himself in realization. "That's what you were talking about! I thought you were asking me about the homework, and I remember thinking that was weird because we don't even have the same classes, but then I thought-"
"Wait," Luz said, her expression coming somewhere between anger and concern. "You're saying that Boscha did this? Has she...has she been bullying you?" She stared at Willow, who looked away shamefaced. "Why weren't you going to tell me?"
"It's just dumb school stuff, Luz," Willow said, one hand rising up to fiddle with her hair as though she was expecting to find something there. "Boscha being a jerk isn't a big deal, and you have enough things to worry about already."
"Are you kidding?" Luz shouted, gesturing wildly at the state of her friends. "Boscha tries to turn you into a modern art piece, and you think I'm gonna let a little curse get in my way? Nu-uh, no way! She messes with one of us, she's messing with all of us, and that goes twice if she's messing with two of us!"
"Luz…" Willow began, before Gus cut her off.
"Yeah!" he yelled, pumping his fist. "We can take her! I mean, what does she have that we don't?!"
"Sports talent, popularity, money, a school willing to cater to her every whim," Willow said, counting them off on her fingers.
"Yeah, well, we've got something that she doesn't have," Luz countered, striking a dramatic pose. "We have… a plan!"
"Great!" Gus said, rubbing his hands together. "What is it?"
"...okay, so maybe I don't have a plan yet, but I'm gonna," Luz admitted. "We just need to find out what makes Boscha tick, and go from there."
"Well, she's always talking about Grudgby," Gus said. "And she's even the team captain to the Hexside Banshees."
"Oh is she," Luz said, tapping her fingers together with a menacing smile. "Oh yeah, it's all coming together…"
After watching Eda trying (and failing) to spell the mess in the backyard back out of existence for the better part of forty-five minutes, the last thing Camila was expecting when she went back inside was to find her daughter plotting in the living room.
The process was unmistakable, even if her daughter's friends were a new addition , and Camila found her heart fluttering with fond exasperation at the sight. "Oh no," she said, even as she hid a smile. "She's storyboarding again."
"She's what?" Eda asked, digging a particularly stubborn piece of gunk out of her ear. The goop had proved itself immune to fire, frost, lighting, most common forms of disintegration, and every cleaning product she had in the house. Luckily, the mess was also water soluble, and so a quickly summoned flood had been enough to wash it all into the forest, where it could be someone else's problem.
"Storyboarding," Camila said, pulling Eda closer so that they could peer through the doorway together. "She's done it since she was a little girl. She'll get some crazy idea in her head, and once she's had a bit of time to think she'll start trying to plot it all out."
"Like the thirty foot Azura statue?" Eda said, giving her student a curious look. "I didn't even know I had one of those," she added, when her eyes landed on the whiteboard that Luz had apparently pulled out of a cluttered corner. It was already full of colorful drawings, which largely seemed to feature a miniature grudgby ball, of all things. "Neat."
"It's frustrating, is what it is," Camila retorted, the edges of her smile dropping away. Somehow, Eda got the feeling that Luz's mom wasn't talking about the whiteboard. "She's so smart, but she never seems to realize when she's following through on a bad idea. No matter what I do…"
She trailed off as Eda gave her a comforting pat on the shoulder. "Yeah, well, whaddya expect?" the Owl Lady said with a shrug. "Sometimes the dumbest ideas are the most fun. Speaking of which…"
Camila didn't realize what was happening until Eda had already burst into the room, hands planted firmly on her hips. "Alright, what're you little hellions planning this time?" she demanded with a fierce grin. "You better not be planning to animate my house again, I only just got the mess straightened out from last time."
"Actually, I think that *we* were the ones who straightened out that mess," Gus pointed out from where he was huddled on Eda's couch, pencil and paper held at the ready.
"Eh, semantics," Eda said, waving the thought away. "Now spill."
"Oh, it's no big deal, nothing special," Luz said, nonchalantly walking over to the edges of the board. "Just a little something I like to call...beating Boscha at her own game!" She flipped over the board to reveal a rather well done sketch of a girl with three eyes lying crumpled in the middle of a sports field, with Luz and her friends standing over her in triumphant poses.
"Sounds great," Eda said with a small shrug. "But who's Boscha?"
"And what's Grudgby?" Camila asked as she gave up the ghost and came out of hiding.
"So, basically," Camila said once she'd picked out enough details from the rambling four-way argument about what, exactly, the rules for Grudgby really were. "Boscha is the head jock at your school, because she's the team captain, only right now she's using that to bully you."
"That's right," Luz declared, gesturing grandly with her pen. "But not for long! All we've gotta do is challenge Boscha, and beat her at her own game, and then she'll have to respect us! It's your classic underdog story, just like Good Witch Azura 2: The Field of Deadly Fates!"
Camila blinked at the declaration, before letting out a quiet sigh. "Niña, what have I told you about trying to act out movies in real life?" she asked, folding her arms and leaning back in the ratty (but surprisingly comfortable) armchair.
Luz's smile withered like a dandelion beneath a desert sun. "Not to," she grumbled, before adding, "But it can totally work this time! We have enough people for a team, and we'll have hours we can spend training for the big game! Once we get on the field with her, she's toast."
"Luz, the reason why it looks so easy in the movies is because nobody wants to watch the hard parts," Camila pointed out with a patience she didn't really feel. "This Boscha will have had months, maybe even years to get good at the sport, a few hours of practice isn't going to make any difference."
"Oh." Luz looked away, as a little of the shine went out of her eyes. "Sorry. I guess...I guess I was just being silly again."
"Hey, it's okay," Willow said, reaching over to give Luz a hug. "We know you're just trying to help."
"Yeah!" Guz shouted, waving his flags again. "I'll bet that if we work together we can work up an even better, more amazing plan for getting rid of Boscha. Oh, oh! What if we turned her into a frog? Or feed her to Hooty!"
"I do have an elixir of Amphibian Transformation," Eda said from where she was lounging against the wall with a fond smile on her face. "But if you try feeding any people to my house, you and I are gonna have words, kid."
"Hoot, hoot, but I like eating people!" Hooty squawked as the door swung open. "And I can totally make sure that you never see her again!"
"Sure, until she pops up in my toilet, again," Eda retorted. "Just like the mailman, and the Ghoul Scouts, and those door to door salesmen who kept trying to sell me carriage insurance. I don't even own a carriage, why in the Titan's name would i be trying to insure one?"
Luz's smile, which had reappeared while in Willow's embrace, only widened as she listened to the byplay between the witch and her permanent 'houseguest', and Camila felt a little pang in her heart. She wanted to be the one who made her daughter smile, instead of just being the one to force her to be sensible.
She cleared her throat, just loud enough to get everyone else's attention. "I might have a few ideas of my own to offer."
"You?" Luz asked, so incredulously that Camila had to wince. It shouldn't have been *that* surprising.
"I did have to face my share of bullies, sweetheart," she said. Camila hadn't been the only Dominican American back at her old school, but they had definitely been an unpopular minority. Finding ways to keep the more popular girls off of her back had been the only thing to get her through high school.
"I'm not sure how well they'll work here," she admitted. "But I'll bet that if we work together that we can hammer out a pretty good plan."
