Everyone stared at her for a second, confused. "Wait, what? The past? What are you saying?" Dipper asked.
"Guys!" Luz explained breathlessly. "I was born a few years after you two, but I'm older than you by a few months! Meaning, I'm from a different time than you! I'm trapped a few years in the past! You guys are, like, out of high school in my time!"
"Shut. Up!" Said Dipper."Seriously? The future? What's it like? Do you have robot servants? Has Time Baby taken over yet?"
Luz looked confused. "Who?"
"What my dear brother is trying to say is-LUZ, THAT'S THE COOLEST THING EVER!" Mabel cheered, hugging her. "So, what's it like?" She eagerly asked. "Future Earth?"
Luz thought for a moment. "Pretty good. Well, until Fortnite dancing became a thing."
"Fort-wha?" Mabel questioned.
Luz laughed. "It's pretty nice, is what I'm trying to say. I..just can't believe I'm stuck behind it."
She sniffled a little, and Gus and Willow hugged her again. "It will be okay." Said Willow. "We'll get us home, and, we promise, Luz, we'll get you back to your own realm, and your own time."
"Don't even worry, guys." Said Mabel. "Great Uncle Ford's the smartest person we know! He'll get you back! He probably has a brilliant plan ready as we speak."
"Everyone, to the basement!" Ford's voice suddenly called from downstairs.
"See? Right on cue!" Said Mabel. "Coming!"
……
When they all reached the vending machine, Dipper entered the code and the heavy door swung open. The three newcomers gasped. "Luz!" Gus exclaimed as they walked down the stairs. "Are all doors like this in your realm?"
"Heck, no." She said in wonder, feeling the wall of the passage. "This is beyond cool!"
In the secret lab, Stan, Ford, Eda, and Lilith were already waiting. "Ah, you didn't die." Said Eda. "Come on in."
They hurried to join the adults around a large table, where several papers with complex equations written on them were scattered. Ford stood in the midst of all of them, writing and calculating furiously.
"So, did you find an answer?" Luz asked hopefully. "Can you send us back to the Isles?"
Ford looked up. "I'm sorry, kids, but this is a little harder than just drawing up a map. That flower, as Lilith here explained, brought you here for a reason. Its reaction was triggered by magnetic attraction between realms. You can't stop something like that too easily. In fact, we probably won't be able to at all."
"What? So, we really are stuck here?" Eda asked. "Great."
"Hey, it ain't so bad." Said Stan.
"But you're here." She muttered.
Stan glared. "Hey, I'd rather not be, if you're gonna stick around, you lying, slimy little-"
"But that doesn't mean it's impossible!" Ford said loudly. "I can construct a rather unstable portal, but it will take a few days. And, I'll need assistance." Said Ford. "In fact, I'll need all the help I can get. How 'bout it?"
The kids excitedly agreed to help, while Lilith said, "Just show us what to do."
"Gladly." He said. "Now, any of you witchlings ever used a screwdriver before?"
"No. Teach me! Teach me!" Gus urged.
"I have." Said Luz. "Funny story, actually. I am a human from this world. But, I think I don't really belong here."
Ford looked intrigued. "Really? What do you mean by that? And how did you land yourself in the Isles?"
Luz hesitated. "Um, what year is it, exactly?"
Ford told her, and she sighed. "Yeah…I'm from…not that." She explained the incident with Eda's portal months before (or would it be years later?) and how she had realized she was from the future of this time.
Ford nodded slowly. "Yes, portals made haphazardly by witches can cause small time anomalies when their effects are reversed."
"Haphazardly?" Eda replied angrily. "Look, wise guy, I stole-I mean, I worked on that portal for months! Surely, if you're so smart, you'd know that it takes some powerful magic!"
"Well, why don't we just use that thing?" Said Stan.
"The Emperor wanted it for his own twisted reasons, so I had to destroy it." Explained Luz.
"That's…unfortunate." Said Ford. "It would have been much easier…oh, well, we'll just have to do things the long way." He got to work, and the others quickly followed, Stan and Eda stealing occasional annoyed glances at each other.
"What are you all up to?" Came King's tiny voice. Luz looked over and smiled at her friend, but realized that she was about the only one who did. The entire Pines family glanced uneasily at him.
"Guys? What's wrong?" Luz asked. "This is just King, my friend. He's harmless, see?" She picked him up and wiggled one of his cute little paws.
"I'm a ferocious king of demons, for your information." He replied. "And, right now, I demand tummy scritches!"
Luz giggled and granted his adorable request.
But the other Pines all looked at each other with suspicion in their eyes."Where did you say you were from?" Dipper asked hesitantly.
"I dunno. The Isles, I guess? Why?" King asked.
"N-no reason." Said Dipper.
"Oh. Okay. Welp, I'm gonna go chase down one of those deer things."
"King, deer are like, three times your size." Eda replied, facepalming. "It'd be funny to see you try, though."
"Oh, no worries. I just bring out my secret weapon: rip out their teeth with this thing!"
King threw a pair of pliers over his shoulder and scurried out a hole in the ceiling of the lab.
Eda snorted and laughed heartily. "Yeah, right. How's he gonna get a deer to hold still long enough to-guys?"
The entire Pines family's faces were void of color.
"S-so, how about that boring portal thing?" Stan asked awkwardly.
And the Pines suddenly loosened up and were completely back to normal.
Huh. Weird. Thought Luz. Oh, well, science-y portal time!
……
After a long day of hammering her fingers by accident and Ford letting her use a blowtorch, Luz curled up in the twins' room with Gus and Willow in borrowed sleeping bags and listened as her new and old friends all drifted off to sleep. However, Luz found that she couldn't.
Instead, she lay awake until the early hours of the morning, thinking. Was she really trapped five years in the past? How did the time stream work, anyway? Was there another her somewhere right now, preparing to enter fourth grade, or did her mom not even have a daughter?
She looked up at a familiar sky full of familiar colors and familiar constellations, finding that it made her homesick for her view from the window of her bedroom back at the Owl House. And, of course, homesick for her time.
Suddenly, a shadow moved, and King wriggled in through a triangle-shaped window. He saw Luz lying awake and scampered over to her. "Can't sleep?"
"Not if I tried." She said. "I feel so…lost, King. And I'm in my own dimension. That shouldn't even be happening, should it?"
King plopped down next to her. "I know what you mean. This place feels…familiar to me. I can't explain it. As if I've been here countless times. Oh, well, it's probably nothing. Night!" He scurried back out the window, leaving Luz to finally fall into a confused sleep.
……
The next day, Luz awoke, feeling a lot better. She looked over to Gus and Willow's sleeping bag spots, which were both vacant. The Pines' twins beds were empty as well.
Luz stretched out of her own sleeping bag and tiptoed downstairs, almost getting a few splinters. "Old wood floors." She muttered. She made her way to the kitchen, where she found Mabel, Dipper, Stan, Ford, Eda, Lilith, Gus, Willow, and King. It was very noisy in there.
"I still can't believe you guys haven't even heard of apple blood!" Eda complained to Ford.
"So, then, there was a huge plant that just exploded out of the little seed, sending all the Abominations sprawling, and Luz managed to escape, or so I'm told." Gus finished telling a story to the Pines twins on the other side of the kitchen.
"Oh my gosh! I love that so much! I wanna go to Hexside." Mabel pouted. "Don't you, Dipper?"
Dipper didn't respond. He was too busy re-reading his old journal entires.
Stan stopped him. "Hey, kid, you think you could take over pancakes this morning? I got bit by something last night and Ford says I should get it looked at by someone in the weird crawl space market." He showed off a rather large bite mark on his cheek. "Weird, right? It ain't like nothing I've ever seen before."
"Me neither." Ford agreed. "How on earth did you sleep through that? Almost looks as if it were a giant, fanged bird of some kind."
"Birds don't have fangs. Pointdexter."
Eda spluttered and spit out a couple of gray feathers into her mug. "Yeah, weird.." She chuckled nervously.
"We're heading out!" Called Ford. "Stay out of trouble! We'll be back in an hour or so, if we survive!"
The elder Pines twins exited the house.
……
King scurried up to the cabin, having smelled something odd. As he neared the house, he saw that that kid was inside, trying his best to make pancakes. It wasn't exactly working and it smelled awful to King's sensitive snout, but that's not why he hesitated to enter the house.
Why were the Pines so scared yesterday? He asked himself. Everyone thinks I'm adorable, right? We obviously got off on the wrong foot. I just need to try harder!
He crawled into the house and slithered up onto the table next to Luz. "Hi. What you guys talking about?"
"Magic, duh." Said Gus. "Did you know that we can still do magic here?" He drew a small blue circle in the air and a little pile of dead pine needles appeared on the table. "Summoning spell! I got 'em from outside. I summoned them! I know, I'm pretty amazing."
"So. Darn. Cool!" Said Mabel, fingering the pine needles. "Do another one!"
"Well, these pine needles do look kind of dead." Said Gus. "Willow?"
Willow nodded, drew a green spell circle, and the dead needles became a little pine tree in a pot, barely big enough to be a houseplant.
"So cute!" Gushed Mabel. "You guys are amazing!"
"Oh ho, they can both do better than that!" Luz said.
King looked at the cute little tree Willow had conjured. "Hey, look, it's a little pine tree, like Dipper's hat! Imma call him Pine Tree now. Can I call you Pine Tree, Pine Tree?"
Dipper, in the middle of flipping pancakes, flipped the pan sharply over his shoulder with a strangled yelp, accidentally sending the half-cooked pancakes across the room, where one landed on Luz's face.
"Agh! It burns! It burns us!" She yelled in a muffled voice. "Help!"
"Oh my gosh, I am so sorry!" Dipper said. "Uh, just hurry and wash your face off!"
"I can't see!" Luz's muffled voice responded.
Eda, out of instinct, drew a spell circle. It shattered in midair. "Gosh darn it!"
"I got it." Said Lilith, drawing a circle. The scalding pancake disappeared, and Luz breathed a sigh of relief, fanning her red face. "Thanks, Lilith."
"Anytime." She said, panting slightly. "I suppose you'll want these back." She drew another circle, and the pancakes and griddle disappeared from the floor and reappeared on the stove, sizzling. "Don't worry, they're clean and all that." She rubbed her head, exhausted. "Oh, I shouldn't have done that!" The curse was definitely beginning to strain even her most basic magic use.
"You guys are so cool!" Mabel moaned joyfully. "I want to be magic!"
"Well, you could always come visit us on the Isles sometime, and we'll teach you about glyphs. That's how Luz does magic in our world." Willow said, showing off Luz's little sticky notes with the strange symbols on them.
"You can still do magic if you're a human? With little paper-y things? Luz, tell me everything!" Mabel shook the girl by the shoulders.
"Okay, okay!"
"Pancakes are done!" Dipper called from the kitchen.
"'Bout as black as charcoal, but, yeah, done." Eda added from over his shoulder.
"Hey!" Dipper said.
Mabel and the witches laughed.
At the table, Dipper delivered what looked like several chunks of obsidian on a plate. He looked at his culinary achievement in disgust. "Alright. Welp, who wants not pancakes?"
Everyone raised their hands. Dipper laughed shakily. "Yeah… Okay. Any ideas?"
Gus looked at the charred stack thoughtfully. "I've got this." With a simple circle, the pancakes were perfectly done. Everyone cheered and applauded, then started digging in.
"Eda, why aren't you using magic?" Dipper asked. "You're probably pretty powerful as well, right?"
Eda sighed. "Look, kid, sad truth is, I kind of used all my magic up. That's what the black gem means." She gestured to the black gem, shining dully on her chest.
"Weird!" Said Dipper. He got out his journal and started scribbling. "Gem…connected..to…magical ability…somehow. But why is your sister not totally out of magic and you are?"
"You know what I don't get?" Asked Gus, quickly changing the subject. "What made you fling the pancakes on Luz?"
"Oh, uh, King just..startled me, that's all."
"All he did was call you Pine Tree." Said Willow.
Dipper shuddered.
"You…okay?" Luz asked.
"Yeah, yeah, I'm good. And sorry about earlier, that was…dumb. Sorry."
"Hey, you're fine, I just want to know what spooked you so much."
"Well, it's time for my daily check on the forest!" Dipper announced, pushing himself away from the table. "Got to make sure that statue's still…not moving. Bye!" He bolted out the door, accidentally leaving it wide open.
"What a weirdo." Muttered Eda. "What's up with him?"
"Yeah, I'm not even gonna ask." Said King. "I was just being friendly!"
Mabel picked awkwardly at her sweater. "Okay, I guess you guys should know. Last summer was…pretty crazy and scary, and Dip-Dip's not completely over some of it yet."
At that moment, the door shut from the front entryway, and the Stans walked in, Stan's lower face heavily bandaged by a live sky blue octopus. "Okay, who broke Dipper?"
"Grunkles!" Mabel greeted cheerfully. "How was the crawl space?"
"Sketchy." Said Stan, voice muffled. "Had to cover ourselves in trash as a disguise. This crow in a bow tie told me I'd been bitten by a cursed being and to keep my head wrapped in live octopus at night to avoid… also being cursed, I guess?"
"Yeah, sorry 'bout that." Said Eda. "Last night was wild."
"What?" Asked the Stans in unison.
"What?" Eda said, quickly trying to remedy the slip-up.
"Either way, we should get working on the portal again." Said Ford. "Who's up for it?"
The witchlings, Mabel, and King excitedly followed the Grunkles downstairs.
Lilith and Eda, now alone, glanced at each other. "So…last night…was that you or me?" Eda started.
"I don't know." Said Lilith. "I didn't wake up with any feathers in my mouth, thankfully, so…"
"Don't say it." Eda said.
"You tried to eat your ex-husband's face last night! Perhaps you really aren't over him, and the curse reveals it." She laughed heartily. Eda folded her arms and grouchily replied, "Aw, come on Lily, don't tell me you're in on all this "Stan and Eda" shiz."
Her sister stopped suddenly, pulling her most businesslike face.. "I'm not; I'm only saying…anyway, if the curse decides to show itself again now, even if it's only for a night at a time, it could be disastrous. Humans are very fragile, Edalyn, and I don't think they need two gigantic owl beasts wandering about without their meds."
"So, what do we do?" Eda asked.
Lilith gave a strained smile, grey eye twitching. "Pray. Desperately."
……