The walk back to the Owl House was one of the most bizarre events in Luz Noceda's young life. But what made it bizarre had nothing to do with the walk itself.
While trying to help her find a way back home, Amity lost her job at the library, a job she loved. And to Luz, this was all her fault. The young human wouldn't let this stand. So she approached Malphas and, after completing the trials out by the master librarian, Amity was employed once again. When she went to tell Amity the good news, and being briefly distracted by Amity's new hair, it happened.
"Don't worry. You have a way of sneaking into people's hearts." Amity had said. Then, Luz felt Amity's lips on her cheek. The Latina turned, unable to fully process what just happened. It was only recently she realized that her feelings for the youngest Blight ran deeper than friendship. But now it seems as if Amity had those feelings as well. She looked at the mouth that was just recently against her skin.
Should I? Luz thought. She just kissed me, so this won't be like the first time right? Amity must like me. Amity…likes…me? That was when her brain, and briefly her legs, shut down. Eventually pure muscle memory and subconcious thoughts got her feet going and carried her to her Boiling Isles home.
"Welcome back Luz!" Hooty squaked in his high pitched voice. While the house demon was torn up when Lilith moving back to her childhood home, he did a good job of returning to his usual chipper self. But his greeting earned no response from Luz. "Luz?"
Luz still didn't respond. Her arm reached out allowing her to push open the door Hooty stretched out of, but no thought or effort was put into the closing of the door. There was a sound of small feet running through the Owl House as a small demon with a fox and cat-like body with a dog-like skull with two large horns from it sat on his head. The small demon jump onto Luz's leg and wrapped his arms and legs around it.
"Luz you're finally back!" King happily said, until he too noticed the lack of reaction caused by the maelstrom of mental fog and disbelief. Unconciously Luz sat on the couch, staring out into nothingness. "Luz? Luz answer me. Luz I demand your attention!" When that didn't work, King began to smack the human's cheeks.
"Curse these tiny adorable paws!" King shouted, unable to wake his favorite human from this trance, "Eda! Get over here, Luz is broken!"
"What are you talking about?" Eda asked joining her roommates in the main room.
"Luz is totally out of it." King explained.
"Yeah she totally ignored me too." Hooty added. Rather than a proper response, King simply walked over to the door and slammed it shut. Eda, ignoring the two demons, took the opportunity to examine her apprentice/teacher. After a quick examination by feeling her head and close look into her eyes, Eda snapped her fingers to get King's attention.
"Oh yeah, I know exactly what's going on here. I can fix her, but I'll need some ice glyphs and a mug of apple blood." Eda explained and King quickly scampered to gather the requested supplies. Thankfully they got in the habit of leaving a few pre-drawn glyphs around in case of emergencies so it didn't take long for King to gather a handful of the ice variety. With the supplies she requested now in hand, Eda went to work. She started by activating the ice glyphs turning them into a handful of small ice balls. She then dropped the ice down the back of Luz's shirt while calmly drinking from the mug.
"Ah! Frio! Tan frio!" Luz yelled jumping up off the couch desperately trying to shake the frozen spheres from her clothes. The coldness of the ice cut through her frazzled state like the sharpest of knives.
"There, all better." Eda said followed by another drink, "Now, care to explain what put you all zombie?"
"Oh nothing, I was just doing a favor for Amity. Welp, I don't know about you, but I had a big day so I'm gonna turn in early. Night!" Luz awkwardly said trying to leave any potential conversation. But before she could escape to her own little room, Eda had managed to send Owlbert to snare the cat-eared hood of her shirt and drag her back to the others.
"Look Luz, I know you always try to put the burden of situations on yourself, and believe me, there are a lot of times that's a great thing." Eda said slipping into her not-to-often seen mom mode, "But this isn't something we've ever seen you like before. I mean, even when you thought you ruined my life you were active in trying to fix things. So come on, what's wrong?"
"Amity kissed me." Luz eventually said after a few seconds of silence. "I mean, it was just on the cheek, but still. I think Amity likes me." Eda's faced showed a loaded witty retort, but she bit her tongue over it.
"Well isn't that a good thing?" Eda asked. "I mean, I'm far from Odalia and Alador's biggest fan, and I could tell you some real fun stories about what I did to them back at Hexside, but she's a pretty good kid."
"Well yeah she's amazing. She's smart, beautiful, brave, skilled, intelligent, kind…" Luz began to drift off while listing off Amity's better traits, her face glowing in joy and blush.
"You have a major thing for her." Eda added to the list.
"Wait you do?" King said jumping up onto the back of the couch, "Not acceptable! Nothing is allowed to take you from us. Not your mom, not the human realm, not even Amity!" Eda calmly simply pushed King back to the floor, not even acknowledging the small demon's even smaller rant.
"You knew?" Luz asked
"Well you weren't exactly subtle about it." Eda replied, King climbing back up to perch on the back of the couch.
"Well I didn't exactly figure it out myself until recently. For awhile, Amity gave me these weird feelings. But then, when Amity saved me from her parent's Abomiton I realized just what these feelings meant. And now…"
"You've fallen hard." Eda finished. "I'm still not sure where the problem is. You like her, she seems to like you, she made a move, follow up on it."
"But Eda, what if I'm wrong? What if I make the wrong move again?"
"Again?" King and Eda asked in unison.
"Yeah it's kind of a long story."
"Well if you want some help here I'm gonna have to hear it."
"Okay." Luz took a deep breath, and brought up one of her most painful memories. But it would be okay, she knew she could trust Eda. "It was about two years ago. I didn't have any friends then either. But there was this one girl. She was really nice to me, I thought it meant she liked me. It was my first crush. So I did something really stupid. One day, I tried to kiss her, but she dodged out of the way. It turns out she didn't even like me as a friend. Her mom felt sorry for me and wanted her daughter to 'be nice' to me. Once she found out I tried to kiss her however, that was over."
Eda looked at her. She wanted to say something, but what to say? It couldn't have been easy going through that with your first crush.
"But it didn't stop there. There were other crushes. Any time I tried to act on them, I got hurt. So eventually I just stopped. I figured when someone actually liked me like that I would know. But then there was Nevareth, who was a literal puppet of that jerk Adegast." Luz's eyes where swelling up with tears and her lips quivering. "Eda, what if I'm the kind of person no one can love?"
Eda was in the middle of taking another drink of apple blood when Luz asked that question. The shock of it nearly caused her to choke on her beverage, if such a thing was actually possible. It was hard to imagine Luz could even ask that question about herself, much less believe it. But truth is, there were times Eda thought if she made another person ask that question. If it could help here… Eda thought.
"King, leave."
"What? I didn't say or do anything."
"King, leave, now." Eda said. Her tone was harsh and sharp. Only slightly less so when she dueled Lilith on the Emperor's bridge. But it was more than enough to send King running upstairs to avoid Eda's wrath. "Alright kid, listen. The story I'm about to tell you is something I never share. So what I tell you today you take to your grave."
"Alright, truth is, I don't know if I've ever actually been in love. But there was one time I feel I almost could have been, but more importantly, I took advantage of someone being in love with me. It was years ago, I was in the human realm, more specifically a place called Las Vegas. There was this guy, he was doing pretty good and pulling in the cash. So I gave him a fake name, got married, divorced him 6 hours later, and bolted with the loot."
"Eda that's horrible." Luz said. Eda gave a sigh in response.
"It really was. He was head over heels for me, putty in my hands, and I took advantage of it. Looking back, sometimes I really hate myself for it. More than anything I've ever done." Eda forced her remorceful face into a more gleeful yet caring one, "But the point I'm trying to make is that he truly loved me. And I am possibly the last person in either world worthy of that kind of love. So someone like you, you're not only the kind of person someone can love, but a person someone pretty great could love."
"Thanks Eda." Luz said, "That actually helped a bit. But what should I do about Amity? I really think I'm in love with her, I really don't want to drive her away."
"I'd say play it cool until your comfortable to make a move. I mean, just being yourself earned you some serious ground. So I think you're pretty safe." Eda got up, stretched her back, and clapped her hands together, "But enough of that. Looks like you had a rough one with that favor. How about we get some supper in you?"
Luz gave an approving smile and nod. Eda went into the kitchen and began to cook. From the smell even this early it was clear she was preparing Luz's favorite. The human smiled a more content and soft smile. It would have been great to be able to talk with her mom about what felt like true love, ease her nerves with some of her mom's home cooking, but it was moments like these where Eda really felt like her mom, and it was that feeling that would make these days trying to get home bearable. Because, until she can actually get home, the Boiling Isles was her home.