The bones of the Isles, Amity's always felt, have a life within them that few see. They reach towards the sky in the midst of maelstroms. They curl towards their centers in the heart of winter, as if to shelter the island's denizens from even a little of the weight of the snow. There's a song somewhere in the hollows of their marrow. She's heard the way the tides whistle between the Titan's wrist bones. The winds that night had been cold upon the coast. Demons had carved their claims into the cartilage. She'd been convinced, standing there amidst the stones, that if she could have listened for just a little while longer, she might have been able to make out the words.
Right now, the Titan protests the drawing near of sunset. Its ribs cast their longest shadows across the belly of the land. The darkness filters through the branches above Amity's head and mingles with the red of the leaves. Failing light dances upon the paper of her textbook in vermilions.
She turns a page. The Irony of the Star-Chewer, Glutton of Worlds, the chapter reads: an account of a conqueror felled by a peanut allergy. Multiple choice questions dot the margins of the page. The Demon Realm always had a curious way of resisting any efforts at control.
Maybe it's irony, the way the Isles seem most alive after a plague. The morning's boiling rains have brought new shoots, hemoglobin-red, from beneath the litterfall. The forest is sharp with the smells of sulfur and ozone and tea, and the trees, steeped in rainwater, shed the ancient iron from their leaves.
She thinks of how each leaf will rust and dwindle and bleed back into the earth; the way they'll heal again in the dark of the Titan's bones. The iron of wildwoods past lifts the new buds off the forest floor and colors the blood in her veins.
There's a shifting in the boughs above her. Luz peers downwards from her perch atop a branch, leaves dusk-red around her shoulders, eyes bright in the forest's premature night.
And Amity amends, in the breath of the moment before Luz speaks: Maybe it's not irony at all. The clouds haunt the skies in the wake of the rains, and the most beautiful parts of the Isles emerge to watch them pass by.
"Penny for your thoughts?"
Softly, Amity settles against the tree at her back. Its roots, stained with burgundy moss, rise around her from the forest floor. The strange idiom has her crinkling her brow, but the meaning gets through. Still, though — "Thinking you should be studying instead of using your made-up words on me," she deflects, lowering her gaze quietly from the ribs arcing through the sky. The motion is practiced. Hiding the wanderings of her thoughts comes to her like a second skin.
Luz rears back in indignation. The deflection strikes true. "I'm not making up anything! Pennies are real things, I swear! I'll bring one back here for you to see one day, and you'll all rue the day you decided to doubt me!"
Unaffected, Amity flips a page. "Just like the Rubik's cubes, the emails, New Zealand, and artichokes?"
"Some of those might be a little harder to do than the others," Luz concedes to herself. A moment later, the wind redoubles in her sails. "I'll get a map! Or the prime minister! I'll wow your facile minds." The branch beneath her rustles as she springs to her feet, sunlight cascading around her heroic pose. "You'll all be sorry you ever crossed Luz Noceda!"
"Yep," Amity sighs. She inspects the nails of one hand. "Pretty sorry right now I ever crossed paths with you."
A few minutes and a compromise later ("I'll accept your 'pennies' — so long as you admit that artichokes are ludicrous make-believe"), Amity inclines her head towards the sheaf of notes abandoned where branch meets tree. "My point still stands, though. That Potions exam won't study for itself."
The noise of dismissal that Luz makes rustles the leaves of the canopy above her. "Potions, shmotions. I already know how to pour all the things into all the other things."
"Truly, the mark of a top student," Amity murmurs drily; but she knows, despite her words, that Luz really is more than prepared, and that even if she weren't, the sheer force of her enthusiasm for magic would carry her through. Amity hadn't thought it was possible, that anyone could care for learning in such earnest — but then Luz had appeared in her life, and had cared for everything around her with total abandon. Every school of magic had merited her attention. Everyone she met had deserved her unwavering faith — even Amity — even the witch who'd long before lost faith in herself.
If she presses down just a little harder than necessary when turning the next page — well. The trees keep the secret in the wood of their rings.
Above her, Luz stifles a chuckle. "I wouldn't dream of taking that title from you." She picks up her notes, sifts halfheartedly through the alchemical diagrams, and then, with a sound of resignation, flops back against the tree again. "Really, though. Some days just aren't meant for studying."
She lifts a hand skywards, and Amity's gaze follows. Sunset blooms across the clear spaces between the leaves.
"Look at the sky, and the colors, and the giant bones, and — everything." Luz punctuates the word with a sweep of her arms outwards. The leaves of the branch beneath her whisper in the breeze. "It's all so incredible. Sometimes, I still can't believe that I'm really here. Everything may want to eat you, and probably has too many eyes, but I've never seen anything like it." Her next words fall with reverence. "Not even in my dreams."
It kills Amity, in moments like these, how freely Luz entrusts her with the sincerest of her thoughts. It bewilders Amity every time how much Luz can make the simplest words mean.
"It is," Amity manages quietly in response. "Incredible, that is." (You are, she nearly says —) She ducks her head forcibly towards her textbook. Hair falls across her eyes from the violence of the motion. The history of the Demon Realm swims across the pages, the meaning of its empires and wars suddenly elusive. Was reading always this hard?
"You really think?" comes the inquiry, hesitant, from the leaves.
Amity looks up. The last of the sunlight frames Luz like a halo. The clouds are golden against the wonder in Luz's eyes and the softness with which she looks at Amity.
It's funny: Amity could have sworn there was solid ground beneath her a moment ago. The forest seems to float towards the watercolor of the sky. Somewhere along the ascent, the last of her cognition jabs her in the side, and she nods, not trusting herself to speak.
She watches as Luz leans back against the tree, leaf-light and sun-shadow tangling around her silhouette. She waits as considerations flicker across Luz's face, as she casts her eyes upwards through the weave of the trees.
The leaves trail like constellations across the forest canopy.
"Do you ever wonder where clouds go?" Luz asks.
Very profoundly, Amity blinks. "Clouds?" she repeats.
"Yeah. Clouds." Luz brings a hand up to the back of her head as she speaks. "A lot of things here are new and kind of crazy to me, but the clouds are still the same. They always seem like they're going somewhere. I could never figure out where that was." She turns, as if remembering something, to gaze out across the shadowscape of the understory. "They were always my favorite thing to watch back at home."
The word catches Amity's attention. Her ears perk up at the sound: home. Discreetly, she lets her book fall shut. For all that Luz may run her mouth, she never speaks of the world from which she came.
"After school," Luz says, "around this time of day, I'd always sit and watch the clouds go by. You couldn't really see them a lot of the time with all the buildings in the way, not like you can here, but I'd make do. You can fill in the spaces with your imagination. Sometimes I'd bring a book, or draw." She picks up her Potions notes with a small smile. "Sometimes I'd study. Actually, I didn't realize, but I guess that's part of the reason why I dragged you out here with me. The clouds are the prettiest after it rains."
Maybe Amity's died, and whatever remains of her spirit is leaving for the next life. It might explain why her heart wants to rise towards the stars.
"I didn't know anyone could be so happy about a plague," she manages to mumble at last. Luz only beams, as if given a great compliment.
There are mushrooms, now, emerging timidly from their hiding spots as the sun recedes from the theater of the sky. Some glow in the curls of the roots around Amity. Some blink the sleep from their eyes. She looks up at the clouds, iridescent in the light of the setting sun. They drift towards the end of the sky like fragments of another world.
Lightly, she digs a hand into the soil beneath her, nearly airy with rainwater. That hadn't been what she'd wanted to say; not really.
Light falls in cataracts through the prism of the leaves. She sweeps the back of her hand across the cover of her book: an artist's rendition of the passage of history, witches in the wild of the ancient woods, the salt and smoke of their wars. She takes a steadying breath. It trembles beneath its weight in the liveliness of the air.
The last remnants of the rainwater drip from the forest around her — a quiet song.
She closes her eyes.
"They are pretty," she says, quietly. "I think I used to watch the rain like that when I was younger. Ed and Em and I, we'd sneak out in the middle of storms to feel the wind, and to see the lightning above the waves. Everything always looked so… different, in the rain." She quirks an eyebrow after a moment of thought. "Probably because it was being boiled alive."
Leaves shuffle, softly, in the boughs above her. "You think you used to?"
"It was a very long time ago." A faint huff of amusement escapes Amity. "Let's just say our force field spells weren't very good. After Edric came back with half his hair burnt off, our parents caught on and forbade us from ever sneaking out again. We usually make a point nowadays to stay away from the outdoors after a plague —" Here, she opens her eyes to shoot Luz a very pointed look — "So… I'd nearly forgotten what it was like."
The clouds are heavy with waters unwept, so low in the sky that they seem nearly to brush the treetops.
"They look so close you could almost touch them." Her words are light as frost. "Wouldn't it be nice to be up there?"
There's been a strange expression upon Luz's face while Amity speaks. She blinks rapidly now, as if remembering herself. "Yeah," she echoes distantly. "Wouldn't that be nice." Balanced in the canopy's shifting twilight, she reminds Amity in that moment of a forest sprite.
A chill breeze, harbinger of the lengthening dark, scuds by, and Amity drops her gaze to her textbook again, suddenly self-conscious. The fallen leaves scatter before the insistence of the wind. The ancient earth shivers.
She doesn't know why she shared any of that. She grits her teeth. The breath is tight in her chest.
Stiffly, she flips through the pages. She tries to remember which battle in the Tumescent Tussle she'd left off at. The words are nearly indecipherable now in the gloom. Shroom-lights wink to life in ghostly blues in the sun's wake.
She thinks, unbidden, of the sound of the rain. The electricity of thunderstorms distantly recollected crackles across her fingertips. She remembers how she'd laughed as Emira had pulled her by the hand through puddles.
She shuts her eyes again. Something shakes in her breath as she lets the pages fall from her grip.
The ghost of the rain curls around her in the wind.
What are the storms in the human realm like? She wonders if the earth there rises to meet each lightning strike as well. She thinks of Luz alone beneath an alien sky, peering up through buildings so tall as to blot out the clouds.
Her chest is tight now for a different reason. The feeling falls like a star, like snow. She looks up, leaf-husks cascading around her in the breeze.
The branch above her is empty.
Heart leaping from her chest, Amity surges to her feet. "Luz?" The leaves whisper in response. When did the forest get so dark? "Luz!"
Her stomach plunges in the ensuing silence. How could she have not been on the lookout for demons? How could she have not been on the lookout for Luz? She rushes into the dark of the trees. Scarcely a few steps in, she stumbles over a furrow in the ground.
She stops. Her eyes trace the fresh trail as it carves across the forest floor to form the largest glyph she's ever seen.
The brush rustles. Luz emerges, dragging the end of a branch through the soil. She terminates her pattern with a triumphant jab earthward. She leaps into the air.
There's truth in the old saying: Amity's life really does flash before her eyes. "Luz, what are you doing, NO —"
"AND LIFT-OFF!" Luz cries as she hits the forest floor.
A seismic rumbling rises through the island from the Titan's core. The forest floor glows like the forge of a star.
Amity grabs hold of the nearest tree.
The forest explodes in a cataclysm of leaf and light, and the earth tears asunder before a colossal cylinder of ice. Ripping the trees above it from the ground, it soars towards the sky, crystalline prisms blooming jagged from its sides and spirals of ice wreathing around its form like vines. The swathe of forest at its apex is borne unwillingly with it into the sky. Amity might be screaming. She can't tell for sure. She considers seriously evaluating her social choices. At least with Boscha, she'd never needed to fear being torn bodily from the face of the earth.
Just as quickly as it'd started, the ascent of the pillar begins to slow. Loops and arcs of ice twirl through the sky like the weave of spring flowers, the wheeling flight of birds. With a last, resounding shudder, the column rumbles to a halt. Wild magics ripple in auroras across its surface, sealing the ice in place; and the world resettles, and stills once more.
The silence, sudden, is deafening.
Bits and pieces at a time, Amity comes back to herself. Her limbs are still intact. The bark of the tree she's clinging to is dry beneath her grip.
Hesitantly, she cracks open one eye.
What's left of the forest around her clings to life with its last breath. Trees teeter and skew as if clawed through by a cyclone. Leaves flutter in a daze from the air-blasted canopy. A flock of disgruntled demons, nearly smashed out of the sky by the pillar, flaps overhead, spitting sibilant curses and cries at the ice.
With an eruption of leaves, Luz lurches out from beneath a snarl of brush. "Woah-hoh-hoh," she says, stumbling in unsteady circles. "I can't feel my sense of direction anymore."
Amity sees red.
"Luz…" The bark splinters beneath her grip. "What have you done?"
Luz freezes in her swaying tracks. She turns, hunched, to look back over her shoulder, eyes very, very wide. "H-hey, Amity… Long time no see! How are you liking the, uh, weather… around these parts… of the sky?"
Cracks begin to fracture outward through the wood of the tree.
Luz laughs very nervously.
"WHAT WERE YOU THINKING? WERE YOU EVEN THINKING AT ALL? HOW ARE WE SUPPOSED TO GET BACK DOWN? DO YOU UNDERSTAND WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO MY GRADES IF I DIE HERE?"
Luz appears to be trying to melt into the forest. She shrinks back into the brush with every word. "I didn't know the ice would go so high. The spell wasn't supposed to just keep on going. I mean, I have been training, and sure, I may have added some teensy modifications to the glyph that probably shouldn't have been there, but believe me, I had no intention of sending us up into the lower atmosphere."
Amity's eye twitches.
"The lower what?"
All of the color drains at once from Luz's expression. "You didn't know how high up we actually were, did you," she whispers.
Amity whips her gaze towards the ice's edge. The trees of the forest seem very small from this distance.
Something seems to be funny with Amity's vision. She lets her forehead fall against the tree as spots begin to swim before her eyes.
"We're actually going to die up here," she whispers.
There's a shuffling of brush — a muted sound. Luz moves as if to cross the ice towards Amity, but stops herself. The fragments of leaves and twigs caught upon her clothes trail in her wake like dragon's scales.
She seems to lose the war with herself. She looks down, grabbing her forearm loosely. "Hey." The word might vanish against the silence of the sky. "I'm sorry."
The air is cold in the iridescence of the setting sun, and Amity's breath rises from her in thin mists. She looks up.
"You're right. I wasn't thinking." The shadows cast by the remnants of the trees spill around Luz as she speaks. "Magic is a privilege, and it needs to be used responsibly. I'm still not used to the freedom or the danger that comes with being able to cast spells. I don't know if I'll ever be." Her eyes are pleading — not for forgiveness, but for something from the trees around them — as she looks at Amity. "I could've hurt you."
Amity wonders why she can't put name to the feeling weaving between her bones.
"So… I'm sorry," Luz says again. The ice gleams from beneath the soil in patches, splashes of glacial color, like puddles. "I just —" She drops her gaze. She seems to crystallize, closing in on herself, like the ice, fathomless, beneath her feet. "I just wanted to bring the sky to you."
Frost feathers, cartilage-white, cling to the red of the leaves falling around them. Amity almost fears to breathe: Luz might shatter.
She might shatter.
She closes her eyes against the aging light.
She remembers the twining flight of the rain.
The sky falls away around her.
Carefully, she unwinds her grip from around the tree. She looks, for the first time, at the vastness of the space around them. Her eyes widen.
She crosses the distance, wordlessly, to Luz, and leads her out to the edge of the ice, where the darkness of the tree cover breaks.
"Huh?" Luz mumbles, blinking against the sudden light. "What —" She breaks off sharply as the sun dazzle clears from her eyes.
Clouds tumble around them from the globe of the sky. They tower like mountains. They spill like worlds. Sunlight suffuses their feathers, rose and ethereal gold. Mists wreathe through the air in garlands. The sky hangs suspended, sun-stained, the dream of a Titan.
Amity stands, motionless as the ice beneath. The setting sun washes across her in a palette of gold.
Beside her, Luz seems nearly to collapse on the spot. "Oh my gosh." Roseate light tangles in her hair. "It's beautiful."
She takes a halting step forward, and then another, leaves swirling past her towards the open sky like petals. "It's so beautiful," she says again, as if unable to help herself. "Eda took me and King up here once, when I first got to the Boiling Isles. I never thought —" Her voice buckles. Tentatively, almost as if afraid, she pads towards the very edge of the ice and sinks to her knees, heedless of the cold. She trails a hand through the mists drifting past the pillar. They lap in gentle motion against the ice. They unfurl like a snowfield towards the horizon. "I never thought I'd be back here, without a staff of my own."
Amity stands. Leaves coat the ice around her in red. Her breath rises from her in the cold of the air towards the clouds. She lifts a hand up before her, as if seeing it anew. Twilight dances between her fingers. The last of the sun drifts beneath the sea.
"Hey."
Amity blinks the raindrops from her vision. Clouds pile around her towards the first of the stars.
Luz looks back over her shoulder, silhouetted by afterlight. "Everything alright?" she asks, attentive, but without pressure.
Amity gathers herself for a moment. "Yes. I'm — alright."
Night drifting downwards from faraway space, Amity makes her way across the ice. The sky looms large around her as she lowers herself carefully to sit by Luz's side.
The first of the lights have begun to wink on across the Isles. The last of the sunset, strewn across the arc of the sky, donates its colors to the mists around Amity even as it fades. Amity looks out, one more time, across the vast, quiet world of the clouds. Even at this height, the tallest of the Titan's bones rise beyond her. Distantly, she sees that their points are wreathed in snow.
Alright. Never has she felt any word so inadequate. How can she describe the way it feels to come back to life?
Beside her, Luz lowers her gaze from the budding stars. Half a world above the ground, she flashes Amity a lopsided smile, warm enough to light up the clouds.
And suddenly, it's alright. Some part of Luz belongs up here too. There are bones upon the horizon and the blood of ancient forests in Amity's veins. The clouds form a canopy above their heads: shelter from the sky.