"I don't think I'll ever understand how you keep getting yourself into these situations."
"To be totally honest, at this point I'm not sure how I keep getting myself into them either."
The response had come so deadpanned and matter-of-flatly, Amity couldn't help laughing gently. She felt Luz's hand squeeze hers, and when she looked back at the human , she was smiling at her in that way that never failed to make Amity's cheeks redden and her heart flutter.
Classes at Hexside had wrapped up for the day, and the two of them were making their way back to Bonesborough, with no particular plan in mind once they got there. The dirt path they took went through a dense patch of woodlands, which was seldom travelled by other residents of the Boiling Isles. It was one of the lesser-known routes back to Bonesborough that Amity had discovered over the years. As such, Amity guided Luz through the woods, walking very slightly ahead of her, though not by much at all. Neither walked particularly quickly. They weren't in a rush.
Luz was telling Amity about her day's classes, like she always did. Today had involved a giant pair of Acid-Scorpions from the Beast-Keeping Track, the Construction Track homeroom, and what Luz described as a conga-line of monsters chasing after her throughout the halls during fourth period. Amity had recalled hearing a ruckus around that time, and somehow, she'd had a feeling Luz would be involved somehow.
What Amity hadn't counted on was the sheer absurdity of the story, and how normal that absurdity seemed to her now.
But then again, these days, there were a lot of things that had seemed absurd not long ago, but were now a regular part of her life. Even if sometimes, a part of her still struggled to believe them.
Like the hand she was holding, and who it belonged to — Luz. Her girlfriend , Luz.
"I don't think I'm going to be allowed near the Acid-Scorpions again." Luz laughed lightly, looking up at the trees and sky. "I don't think they like me all that much."
"Well, I'm just glad you're alright."
To that, Luz looked back towards Amity, and when she realised what she had said, Amity looked towards Luz. A brief pause followed, their cheeks both reddened at the same time, and they looked away from one another, silly smiles on their faces.
It still didn't feel quite real to Amity sometimes, even though she and Luz had started dating at this point, weeks ago. Small phrases like that, shared dozens of times before without even thinking about it, still hit differently than they had before they asked one another out because, well, things were different now.
In a good way. But still. Different.
A part of Amity was still convinced that she was going to wake up any moment, and reveal their whole relationship had been a dream. It felt too good to be true. It almost made her afraid to go to sleep, worried that when she woke up, she'd wake up in a world where she'd never found the courage to ask Luz out.
Every morning though, she found herself right back in this one — The one where she got to hold Luz's hand. Where neither of them were entirely sure what they were doing, and were figuring it out as they went along. Where she felt nervous and happy and excited and everything in between whenever she got to be around Luz.
And awkward. Very awkward — Even if logically, it didn't make much sense to be.
Mercifully, she clearly wasn't the only one who felt like that.
"S-So, er…" Luz stammered, scratching the side of her flushed cheek, while she kept smiling like an idiot. She looked up, past the trees and into the sky, and pointed to it. "The, uh, that sky, huh? It's very… grey, today."
"Um, very." Amity quickly agreed, looking upwards herself. The sky had been covered in grey clouds all day, but fortunately, the weather Oracle's predictions had held out so far — No Boiling Rain would fall today. The overcast weather was only temporary as well, and supposed to clear up shortly after classes wrapped up. Still, it was hard not to miss the blues and oranges that made up the sky. Days like this normally felt rather dull to Amity.
"It er… It kinda looks like it's gonna rain." The Human said, both trying to fill in the flustered lulls of conversation, and with legitimate concern in her voice. "Are you sure we're gonna be fine?"
"Well, the Oracles said that there wasn't any chance of boiling rain during the day." Amity assured her. "It's supposed to clear up soon."
The answer seemed to calm Luz, at least slightly. She shrugged, "I used to enjoy the rain, back on Earth. It was kind of relaxing to watch. And less dangerous."
"You've said that the rain there doesn't boil, right?"
"Yeah."
"I can't even imagine that." The Witch pondered out loud. "If the rain there doesn't boil, what does it… do , exactly?"
"Just kind of... soaks you, really." Luz said. Amity just looked at her with a bewildered expression, and Luz laughed slightly, and scratched the back of her head. "I er, don't really know how else to say it, that's pretty much all it does."
Whenever Luz talked about Earth, all Amity could think about was how alien the Human Realm seemed to be — Grass that grew green and not red, trees without eyes, no magic at all, and rain that didn't give people first-degree burns. Luz would describe buildings that reached into the sky, paths that stretched inconceivable distances, and giant, metallic beasts that Humanity had apparently constructed, tamed, and rode upon said paths that she called 'cars'.
All of it sounded less like a different dimension, and more and more like an alien planet.
Eventually, the path came to an end, leading the two girls out of the woods, and back onto the main pathway. Bonesborough was within sight as soon as they were clear of the flora, and they began to make their way towards it.
"Every time it's rained here, it's been boiling rain. I can't imagine rain that doesn't scald if it hits you."
"I'll show it to you someday." Luz said, smiling. She glanced up towards the sky again. "It's really… Really…"
Her voice began to trail off, and eventually, she stopped walking.
"Luz?" Amity came to a halt, and looked back towards her girlfriend. Her eyes were as wide as Amity had ever seen them, and she was frozen in place, just… Staring at something. "What's wrong?"
"...What…" Luz said, slowly pointing towards the sky, "...The heck is that?"
Amity looked towards where Luz was pointing — There was a break in the clouds as the overcast weather began to fade away. However, instead of the normal, vibrant blues and oranges that made up the skies of the Isles, what Luz was staring at was…
Green. Emerald green.
As the clouds parted and revealed more of the sky to the denizens below, it became more and more self-evident that the sky wasn't just an odd colour today, but that there was something else present— Something enormous .
More clouds faded away, and a curve began to make itself known. A sphere. And it was huge. Far bigger than either the sun or the moon.
Or just a lot closer than either of them.
It travelled across the sky, visibly moving from one point to another. Something of such a size moving at such a speed — Luz found herself frozen in place, awestruck and overwhelmed by the sight. How Amity hadn't seen it until it was pointed out was beyond her, but even so, she found herself just as awestruck.
"Oh, wow ." She whispered with a smile. "The Oracle's never mentioned that it'd be visible today…"
"What… Is it?"
For a good half-second, Amity was confused by Luz's reaction, until she reminded herself that Luz wasn't a native to the Isles, and that this was the first time that she would have borne witness to such an event. She returned to Luz's side, held onto her hand again, and offered her a reassuring smile. "That's the Elliptical-Moon."
"It's the what now?"
"The Elliptical-Moon." Amity repeated. "It's a moon that orbits around the world in an elliptic orbit. Once every so often, it gets close like that," she gestured to the huge celestial body in the sky, "so we can see it up close."
It took Luz a few seconds to register what Amity told her. The explanation seemed to ease her slightly, but only slightly. She kept her eyes focused on the Elliptical-Moon, totally in awe of what she was looking at. As it moved across the sky, she kept her eyes focused firmly on it.
"I've been here for months ," she finally said, "and I've never even heard of this thing."
"It's not something that comes up often. Or regularly. It only shows up once every few months or couple of years."
"...Wait, that… seems kinda… odd ?" Luz finally looked away from the moon, and back towards Amity, an eyebrow raised. "Shouldn't it show up fairly regularly? Like how a full moon happens once a month? Isn't that how… orbit… works?"
Amity shrugged her shoulders. "That's just… Not how this moon works. It's totally unpredictable."
"Does it have something to do with magic?" Luz looked back at the moon, eyes fixated on it. Her voice was quieter than normal, and she was slightly breathless.
"That's the best guess our astronomers have." Amity nodded. "It's pretty much the only way we can explain… All of the weird things it can do."
As the moon crossed over the sky, it moved close enough that one could make out individual craters, valleys, and mountaintops on its surface. There were some craters, and other regions, that almost seemed to glow and shimmer in reds, blues, and golds. It was a barren moon, but it was colourful, like the surface itself was alive.
"Like how it can move so quickly?" Luz asked, not looking away.
"And why it's so unpredictable."
Both of them just watched the Elliptical-Moon for a while, as it crossed over the sky. For Amity, it was a rare, but familiar experience, being something she had seen several times since she was a child. But for Luz, such a thing bordered into the utterly supernatural, seeing another world as up close as this with her own eyes. Occasionally, Amity would glance at her, and see that wonder in her expression.
"…it kind of looks like the Emerald Moon ." Luz finally said. "From the third Azura book."
To that, Amity blinked, and then looked back at the moon. She then narrowed her eyes, and blinked again. "It… Actually kind of does."
"Oooh, does this moon enhance magic too?"
"Unfortunately not."
"Aw."
Eventually, the Elliptical-Moon began to travel away from the Isles, its orbit and presumably its magic taking it away, far faster than anything an object its size could have done in the Human Realm. As the sky returned to normal, both Amity and Luz began to realise just how much time they had spent simply staring at the Elliptical-Moon - The regular one was now visible, surrounded by dark blues more than colourful oranges. Evening was starting to arrive.
"How… Long have we been here?" Luz asked, once she realised how late it had become.
Amity summoned her scroll, and checked. When she saw the time, she felt her own eyes widen in surprise. "Two and a half hours, apparently."
"Oh. Wow." Luz blinked. There was a brief moment of silence between them, and then Luz scratched the back of her head, awkwardly. "I, er, sorry, I got… I didn't think I'd see something like... that today."
"I didn't either. What're you apologising for?"
"Just for... Getting super distracted, I guess." Luz offered, uncertainly, like she wasn't even certain if she should be apologising or not. "I've never seen anything like, well... that."
"You don't have anything like that in the Human Realm?"
"I'm… pretty sure some planet somewhere has something like that, but not on Earth, no. Heck, we've only got one moon. Well, one big one, anyway." Luz held up her hands in front of her, wriggling her fingers randomly. "Unless you count all the tiny rocks that orbit Earth, I guess."
"I didn't know you were interested in astronomy."
That made Luz's checks redden slightly. "I er… Heh, to be honest, it was kind of the Emerald Moon in Azura that made me interested. I wanted to know if there was anything like that outside the books. There wasn't, at least not back in the Human Realm, but it was interesting, so I just kept reading about it every now and then, and I just picked stuff up."
Without either one of them really taking note of it, they finally began to walk towards Bonesborough again, though this time, even slower than they had been before.
"Being a witch isn't exactly a viable career option on Earth." Luz continued. "So I thought that I might be a writer. I thought maybe I could use some planety-moony… stuff to explain how magic worked in any stories I wrote. Since, y'know. Humans can't do magic like witches can. I thought I'd have to come up with a reason why they could."
"Have you ever looked into the astronomy of this world?" Amity asked, tilting her head in curiosity.
Luz blinked, then shook her head. "It… never crossed my mind to. What with, y'know, everything else. Learning magic, Eda's curse, Hexside, dealing with the portal being destroyed, trying to find a way home…"
She then squeezed Amity's hand, and smiled.
"…This."
Amity's cheeks reddened. Luz's cheeks went redder.
"I-It's just not something I've thought about since I got here.'
A brief pause followed.
"…Do you… want to?"
"Huh?"
"I-I mean!" Amity floundered slightly, trying to find the right words. Even after dating Luz for this long, she still felt awkward asking her to do anything like this. "T-There's a lot of really good places on the Isles to just stargaze. We could rent a telescope or something, maybe just… do that? If you wanted to?"
"For real?"
"I-I just thought, since you found it interesting-"
Before Amity could explain herself further, she found herself wrapped up in a giant hug by a beaming Luz that nearly, literally, swept her off her feet. She had her answer, at least.
After a couple of seconds without reacting, Amity finally let herself hug her girlfriend back.
Renting a telescope out was easy enough, as was buying a scroll on stargazing that would tell them where exactly to look, and what settings to have the telescope on for the best image. Brief trips home followed, for a change of outfit, and to inform people in each respective house where they were going to be, and what they were doing — Just in case.
Amity had never been stargazing before — Astronomy wasn't a subject she even knew all that much about. Only about as much as the average person on the Isles could be expected to know. Things like the Wailing Star, Moonlight Conjurings, a few other important events, celestial bodies like the Elliptical-Moon and the names of the other planets, but that was generally it. Luz could probably tell Amity more about the Human Realms' solar system than Amity could tell Luz about the Demon Realms'.
She took advantage of the time she and Luz had split up to read through the scroll she had bought with the telescope, once she had changed and prepared a small picnic for the pair of them, sensing that they were going to be out there for a while. She also skimmed over the instruction manual for the telescope, enough to make sense of it at least.
Her suggestion that they go stargazing had been impulsive; now, she just wanted to make sure that Luz had a good time. And Amity wanted to share that with her. And so, she read, and picked up what she could, both while she got everything ready, and while she waited for her girlfriend to meet her just outside Bonesborough.
"Six hundred moons and a giant set of fangs?…" Her eyebrows raised. "How the heck do the moons keep replenishing themselves?…"
"Amity!"
Looking up, Amity saw Luz running to meet her, her outfit changed, a bag in hand, and with that excited grin on her face normally reserved for learning magic. As soon as she was next to Amity, she skidded to a halt.
"Hey." She greeted Amity with a grin. "Sorry I'm a little late. Eda wanted to make sure I had this in case it got cold out." She held up the bag in her hand so that Amity could peer inside. Inside, she saw what looked like a blanket, a thermal flask, and two mugs.
"It's alright." Amity smiled, and held out her hand for Luz to take. "Come on. I think I know a good stargazing spot."
Taking Amity's hand, Luz followed as the witch led her to the spot she had in mind. As they walked, she activated a Light Glyph in order to illuminate the way. The path that they took quickly became familiar, and it was impossible for Luz to hide her growing smile.
It didn't take them long to arrive at Amity's proposed location — It was the cliff that was the site of their Grom tree. And there, the tree remained, still taller and brighter than any other tree around it.
When Amity looked back to see Luz's smile, she knew she'd made the right choice in bringing her here. Neither of them even said anything about it. The expressions they gave one another said everything that needed to be said.
It wasn't just for the emotional importance that the site now held for both of them that had made Amity bring Luz here, but also its genuinely perfect location for stargazing. It was away from the lights of the city, overlooked an ocean, meaning there would be no man-made structures to get in the way or interfere, and, by good fortune, was in the right direction to be able to observe all sorts of astronomical landmarks. It was just good fortune that this site was perfect for tonight, at least, if everything that Amity had read on the scroll was true.
Though even if it weren't, somehow, Amity had a feeling that Luz wouldn't complain either way.
Setting up the telescope itself was a fairly easy procedure, the only hiccup in doing so was the way Luz yelped slightly when she realised that at the end of the telescope was an actual eye as opposed to any sort of lenses like on Earth — but then again, this was the Boiling Isles. At this point, it shouldn't have even been a surprise. Since Amity had actually read the instruction manual, she took charge in setting it up, while Luz helped her whenever she needed it, passing her whatever parts she needed, or helping to balance the telescope so it didn't fall over while her girlfriend worked on it.
"Okay…" Amity muttered to herself, looking down the lens, and adjusting some of the settings. Referring back to the manual, she twiddled some more settings, until the object she was aimed on — a purple star — came into proper focus, with no blur or mirror image getting in the way. "Okay… I think we're all set up. Do you wanna have a look?"
"Yesyesyesyes yes!" Luz all but bounced up and down, like she was literally about to burst with excitement, and Amity couldn't help but giggle at how adorable she was.
Stepping aside, Amity gestured for Luz to take a look, and the human did so eagerly. It took her a few seconds to properly register what she was looking at, and when she did, she pulled away from the telescope, and attempted to spot the same purple star in the Boiling Isles' sky.
"That's the Eastern Jewel." Amity told her, stepping next to her, and pointing towards it in the sky. "If you follow that star, you'll be heading true east."
"Like the North Star on Earth. Only east. " Luz said to herself, her smile somehow getting wider and wider. "Oh, this is the coolest thing! How do we find planets with this thing?"
"Hold on." Amity said, flipping through the stargazing scroll. "Let's see…"
The scroll was full of a bunch of terms and over-complicated calculations that she didn't have the necessary training, education, or familiarity to understand at a glance, so it took her a while to make sense of everything. Still, she broke it down, and tried to translate it as simply as she could.
"Right..." She finally muttered, glancing back up at the sky, and then the telescope. "According to this we need to…" She reached to twist the lens at the end of the telescope, so it would zoom out slightly. "D'you see a lot of other stars now?"
"Yep."
"Okay, now, tilt the telescope down until you see three green stars forming a triangle, and then slowly move it left until you see a red dot."
"Alright, but we're talking about those green stars later." Luz followed the instructions exactly. "Okay, I see the red dot, now what?"
"Now just zoom in."
Luz did so, and in doing so, she found herself laying eyes on a planet.
Almost certainly thanks to the magic that was embedded in the telescope, the planet appeared to Luz with a degree of clarity far beyond any hand-held telescope on Earth. In front of her eyes, she saw a world which looked to have dense, lush jungles and forests, all crammed into a single, enormous continent. Around all the green and golden flora though, was what looked like a vast ocean, if the shimmering and the waves were any indication. It wasn't made of water — even assuming that it was a liquid, the ocean was a dark red colour, the same as the clouds that were above the trees. And around it all, was a set of rings that orbited right around the equator of the world, letting off their own tiny sparkles of light as they passed in front of the planet.
For a moment, Luz was literally breathless.
"You okay?" Amity asked after a few moments had passed.
"Look!" Luz said, pulling herself away from the telescope, and gesturing for Amity to look through it. "It's a planet!"
When she saw it, the sight was just as grand and beautiful for Amity as it had been for Luz, though Amity had known what to expect— she had been the one to direct Luz towards it, after all.
"That's Hecceuturn." Amity informed her. "It's the third planet from our sun."
"Wait, third?"
"Y…Yes? Why?"
"Earth's the third planet from its sun." Luz blinked. She then tapped the ground beneath her with her foot. "Wait, what position are we from the sun?"
"Fourth."
"Hah! This is like the Mars of the Demon Realm!"
"The what now?"
"A planet from the human world." Luz explained, looking down the telescope to observe the world once more. Her grin appeared across her face all over again. "This is… seriously one of the coolest things I've ever seen…!"
It made Amity smile. "There are more planets we should be able to see from here, if you want to look for them."
"Oh my gosh yes."
For the next few hours, without taking a single break, the pair of them scoured the night sky, trying to find the locations that the stargazers scroll highlighted, and make sense of its instructions. An hour alone was spent trying to find the sixth planet, Chawei, and the seventh planet, Tradus, took up half an hour to find. They weren't able to find the eighth, Yilmastea, though Luz vowed to find it before the sun rose.
Of course, not every nearby world could be seen from the cliff that night. That simply wasn't how planets worked. Some couldn't be spotted, and those worlds, Amity showed Luz on her scroll. And when they ran out of worlds, they switched to moons, and other wonders, like the Titan's Eye constellation, or the Hands of the Emperor Nebula.
And through it all, Luz had the energy and excitement that Amity could only remember her otherwise seeing when the human was learning about magic. It made just watching her go about trying to locate these worlds and these phenomena fascinating, and exhilarating in its own right. If she hadn't said a word about her interest in astronomy, it would have been self-evident just by watching her. It made not watching her difficult.
After all, that was one of the biggest reasons that Amity had begun to fall for Luz to begin with.
Eventually, Amity tore herself away from the telescope and her girlfriend, to get some food from the picnic she had prepared. When she grabbed something, she sat and leaned back against the Grom tree, and just watched as Luz swept the telescope across the skies, not able to keep her enthusiastic giggles to herself.
More than anyone that Amity had ever met in her life, Luz was unapologetically authentic in everything she did and believed. In everything that she was.
About magic. About becoming a witch. About Azura. About… Everything. And more than anything else, Amity admired that about Luz.
Loved that about her.
"Ooooooooookaaaaaay then."
Blinking out of her train of thought, Amity looked towards Luz, to see her standing upright, and taking a step back away from the telescope. She blankly stared at the object for a moment, before slowly walking backwards until her back hit the trunk of the tree, where upon contact, she slid down until she was sitting next to Amity, eyes wide open, like she'd just witnessed the face of horror incarnate.
"Luz? "Amity asked, worried. "What's wrong?"
"I just saw a planet eat a moon."
"…Excuse me?"
"I mean I just saw a planet open it's…. I guess mouth? And just like, nom one of its moons."
"…Oh." Amity let out a small sigh of relief. For a moment, she was worried something unusual had just happened. "So, you found Yilmastea then?"
"I er, guess so." Luz blinked. "Wait, why do you say that like that's a totally normal thing to see? Is that normal here?"
"…Don't you have anything like that back in the Human Realm?"
"Not that I'm aware of, no." Quickly, Luz shook her head violently as she leaned back, and looked back up at the night sky. "Well that's… an existential nightmare I'll live with for the rest of my life."
"Are you okay-"
No sooner had Amity asked the question had Luz reached into her own bag, and pulled out the blanket that had looked a lot smaller when folded up, and wrapped both herself, and Amity in it. In doing so, Luz shifted herself so she was closer to Amity, so she could rest her head against Amity's shoulder.
"Better now, thanks."
"O-Oh." Amity blushed. "H-Happy to help."
A pause.
"Are… Are you done with the telescope?"
"Nah. I just need a minute to… process the cosmic horror of seeing a planet eat a moon ." Luz said, somehow finding a way to scoot even closer to Amity. Another pause followed, during which, the pair of them looked back up into the starry sky. "A lotta humans imagine living on other planets, y'know."
"They do?"
"Yeah. There's a ton of movies and books about it. Meeting aliens on other planets, humans going to those worlds, that kinda thing"
"Do you think about that a lot?"
"I… kinda already live it, if you think about it." Luz shrugged. "This place is kind of like an alien planet if you think about it. Er, to me, at least. If that makes sense?"
"The human world sounds… alien to me, too." Amity nodded. "I understand what you mean."
"Yeah…" Luz nestled deeper against Amity's shoulder. "I dunno, if humans could travel to other worlds, I probably would have wanted to. Maybe because… Maybe there would be another world out there that's kind of like the Isles. Stuff on Earth was always… Difficult. I never really fit in."
Amity looked down at Luz, eyebrow raised, curious where exactly she was going with this.
"I'm glad humans can't do that yet though." Luz carried on. "'Cause if we could, then I might have gone to another planet. And then I wouldn't have found the Isles. I wouldn't have found somewhere where I do fit in. And then…"
Her hand reached over, and held onto Amity's hand.
"…Then I wouldn't have met you."
Once again, Amity's heart fluttered in that way only Luz could make it.
Fighting back whatever awkwardness might have still been there, Amity let go of Luz's hand, and slid her arm around her shoulder so she could hug her girlfriend. And somehow, against all logic, Luz found a way to snuggle even closer to Amity.
At some point, despite evidently not planning on it, Luz fell asleep. The sensible part of Amity wanted to wake her up, collect everything, and make sure that she got back to the Owl House okay.
The part of her that won was the part that wanted to just lay there with her, and worry about all of that tomorrow. It was possible that Luz would be a bit upset that she didn't get to stargaze more.
'Lucky, then,' Amity thought with a smile, before letting her own eyes close, 'that there's plenty of other nights to watch the stars.'
I was finally given permission to publish this online, so here it is! My piece for the Lumity Luminescence zine!
This was the first zine of project like this I've EVER been part of, and I am insanely happy with the end result because it ended up being an absolutely beautiful zine! I got to combine my love of astronomy with the Owl House and Lumity, and ended up with something nice and sweet - One shots not being a particular speciality of mine, but I'm very happy to have done it for this, and more than happy to have taken part!
If you missed it, for a limited time, you can still get hold of some of the leftovers from the zine by following the link - up to August 13th, 2022. If you have the money, I do suggest it (though I might be slightly biased, admittedly). There's keychains, prints, covers, and the physical zine, where you can get this story physically, as well as two other cute stories! - Check out TheLumityZine on Twitter for more details
If you enjoyed this then you might enjoy some other stuff I've worked on:
Guitar Strings and Flower Petals - A Skarlow long form fic focused on Willow and Skara's developing relationship
A Valeween Night To Remember - A story focusing on a Halloween invasion of "Cheribum" which force people to share their honest emotions with one another
I also have a Twitter if you feel like following me there for some God-Forsaken reason - QuirkQuartz
Thank you for reading - And I hope you enjoyed!
