Chapter: Time to Go Home
Luz gazed thrilled with a bit of intrigued out across Bones Burrow from her perch up on the Owl House's stone balcony.
When teenagers finally find a way out the cave, the trio went to the city to makes sure a gytrash's geode gets into the right hands. And then Jett talked girls into buying something tasty to celebrate the victory.
So, after a short visit to really intriguing patisserie the teens came back to the Owl House.
They spent the last three hours talking and eating sweets.
"... and that's why we banished giraffes."
Jett finished his story before snatched another cookie off the bag and munched it noisily. His twenty-seventh cookies of the hour.
"I never would have guessed giraffes could have done something like that." Luz said, still processing this new information.
"I know." Katrina nodded, "The spots made them look very innocent."
Luz takes her last sip of drink before felt she needed the loo, "Time for my bathroom break. Four cups of Rainbow Juice are finally caught up."
"Down the hall to the left." Jett told her.
Luz quickly walk in the indicated direction. She was halfway to bathroom, when all of a sudden, shrill sound blared around the corridor. It took her a few moments to realise that the sound was SMS ringtones coming from her phone.
She got a text from her mom.
[Mijya , where are you? You were supposed to go home a hour ago.]
Luz wanted to tell the truth. But how can she explain everything that's happened without sounding like a lunatic? So, she decided to tell the half-truth.
{I'm sorry, Mami. I helped Jett and Katrina.}
[Who's Jett and Katrina?]
{People whom I met in the Burrow. They were trying to find their lose dog.}
[That's nice of you to help.]
{It's been a real adventure.} Luz wrote it just before fully understand what she done.
[?]
{A dog run off into the woods, where it found old cave. And...}
[Luz. Please tell me you not to followed dog into the cave.]
{...}
[Luz.]
{I do, but we have flashlights and all!}
[It could have been bear or wolf cave!]
{Well, we've only met one bat.}
[I'm glad that the worst didn't happen to you. So, did you find this dog?]
{Yes, but it wasn't easy. And after he back to home, we all go out to celebrate this. I just lose track of time. Sorry.}
[It's fine, mijya. Just come home soon.]
{Okay mami. Love ya.}
[Love you too.]
"Why the long face?" Jett asked when Luz back to the balcony.
"Um, guys... I have a problem." Luz more muttered than said.
"The toilet won't stop flushing?"
"No. My mom wrote me." Luz replied "I have to go home. When we will be have the portal?"
Jett and Katrina looks taken back by the question. Finally Jett said to her, "My mom could send you to your world, but she'll be back in a couple of hours."
"I can't wait that long."
He drummed his fingers on the balcony. "I have an idea. I'll be back in a jiffy."
Katrina looked unconvinced and opened her mouth to protest but Jett grabbed his staff and flew off before she had the chance.
"So what you do want to do while we're waiting?" Luz asked, "Play some checkers?"
The red head looked to her with confusion, "I'm sorry, what's checkers?"
"It's a game, very popular thanks to Kansas."
"...What's Kansas?"
25 minutes had passed by. Luz and Katrina were sitting in the living room, playing Willdstones.
A game similar to the game of marbles. The only difference between the two games was that Willdstones was played using special magic glass balls that yelled at the player when they lost a point. Or tried bittes players' fingers.
The atmosphere was calm. Then, Jett burst through the door.
After today crazy adventure Luz didn't even jumped in her place and they looked over at the newcomer.
"I did it." He cheered.
"You get portal?" Luz asked.
"Even better. The nowhere key."
Jett said, holding a weird key in his left hand. The bow of key shows a compass with a celtic cross in the center instead of a "G", surrounded by a laurel wreath made of miniature doors.
"How?" Katrina asked, looking at key.
"I found this." He replied, with only slight smugness.
"Where exactly?" She asked with a raised brow.
"Oh, what, you want know all the places where I walk on?" Jett smirked, "That's a little prying, don't you think?"
"Jett Iniko Clawthorne where you got it from?!"
He hold his hands up in mock surrender, "Master Dion's office."
Katrina looked to him, aghast and looking more than a little indignant.
"Come on, Red, don't give me that look." Jett smirk, "I'm my mom's son."
"You-"
"I'll put it back when we're done." He declared with a wave, "Nobody noticed. Besides it isn't first time I was in his office."
His cousin sighed, resting her head on her hand, "I'm going to be bailing you out of jail one day, aren't I?
"None will ever catch me. You know that." He turned to Luz, "Ready to get home, Sunbeam?"
"But how this key could help me get back to my world?" Luz asked, sounding suspiciously intrigued, and Katrina started explaining.
"When this key is inserted into any door with a keyhole, the door becomes a portal to any other door. Regardless of the shape of the lock, the key will magically fit in it."
"Wow."
"The only downside is, the magic of the key applies to just a building door and the user does use that's door at least once in life." Jett added.
"A bigger reduction of choices. But still very usefull." Luz said, "How it works?"
"Put the key in the lock and imagine the door you want to opened. Then turn it very fast." the orange hair teen threw her a key, "Go ahead, try it."
Luz came up to locker. The keyhole waiting. She stuck the key in and twisted it. The door suddenly began to revolve rapidly, the opened to a scene that Luz recognized. It was street on which she lived on.
Luz stuck her hand out over the edge of the door frame, and her fingers collided with a stretchy field, much like the cling film wrapped over the door. She only need a push a bit more, and it will surely crack.
However she did not do this.
"It's totally safe, trust me."
Jett walked through that door as proof of his words. He pick a gnome from the neighbor's yard, and came back to the Owl House.
"See. Safer than crossing the street."
"Luz, is there something wrong?" Katrina asked, when the younger girl still stood like a statue.
"I doesn't exactly want to go back." Luz confessed.
"Then stay. You have proven yourself tough enough to survive here much longer. We'll find you some nice place." Jett enthused as hooks his arm around Luz's shoulders, "Then we'll go on few good adventure, get wild and make some bad choices!"
That was a very tempting offer.
The Boiling Isles are an extraordinary place, if you are looking for magic and dangerous. This world clearly not the PG fantasy world Luz always dreamed about. Yet, today she have the adventure of a lifetime. She meet two great people who liked her for what she is. And she discovered that she can use magic!
"Today was probably one of the best days ever despite staring death in the face. And I would love to stay," Luz said, looking at her phone.
A knowing glint enters Jett's eyes. "I can hear the "but" that's coming."
"I have to go back."
"You don't have to stay here forever. Give the Boiling Isles a week or three and you'll feel like a completely different person."
"I'm leaving tomorrow on summer camp." She replied.
"Luz, correct me if I'm wrong,... but you don't sound very chipper about this."
The Latina seemed to hesitate, then countered, "This summer camp isn't ideal place for me to spend the summer."
"Then why are you going to this camp?"
"That's actually a long story."
"Summarize it for us." Jett said as he and Katrina sat down on the couch.
Luz plopped beetwen them, "Well, it all started with..."
"So, if I'm understanding you correctly, and I fear that I do, your mom's sending you to camp that's showing off red flags with a slogan like 'Think Inside The Box'?" Jett glanced at the pamphlet for 'Reality Check Summer Camp'.
"Yes."
"And all because you decided to make cool book report of Good Witch Azura?"
"Plus the last three times I was sent to the principal's office."
"Sausages as fake guts was creative ways to spice up the school play." Jett argued.
"None of these things were wrong. You're just being you." added Katrina, giving the younger girl's hand comforting grip.
"My mom think that's my problem."
The red head frowned, "Elaborate."
"Well, I'm not like most guys my age." Luz paused for a moment. "I don't fit in with everyone. I'm a weirdo and I don't have a single friend at home because they all think I'm some type of freak and a screw-up and-"
"All the more reason for you to just stay with us." Jett cut in, "You are freak. We are freak. And, us wierdos have to stick together."
"If I don't go back home, my mom'd have thought that I ran away from home." Luz said in protest.
"And sometimes, kids ran away from home to back after few days." the male teen just said, "Half the people I know have do it. Even Katrina tried running away from home once when she was six, but ended up back home because of her awful sense of direction. So, I'm guessing that doesn't really count."
Luz giggled softly before turned serious and said, "I can't do this to my mami. I love her very much, and she loves me, and she's just doing what she thinks is right."
"We understand your decision." Katrina said and place her right hand on Luz's shoulder. Jett opened his mouth slightly and then closed it again. "You are good daughter, Luz. And person." Katrina added.
"Thank you."
The human teen came up to door and turned the magic key. She stared at the portal for a moment and turned back to her newest friends.
"Well, I guess this is goodbye."
Jett and Katrina looked at each other with mute talk and nodded in agreement.
Two spell circle were drawn in air. Creating a dozen colorful strings, dancing and interweaving in the air. Until finally they ended up as a row of neat, perfect regularly sized, knots forming alternating colors. Jett tie it off, to form a bracelet that levitates to slip around Luz's right wrist.
The human girl looked at the zig-zagging striping pattern friendship bracelet. It was beautiful, emanated a soft warm magic energy and a heavenly fragrant scent of flowers.
"We don't know how human called it, but we call this friendship bracelets." Katrina said. "If you need to leave, you must have something to remember the adventure by."
"Are we friends now? Luz asked, almost unable to look awey from the colorful strings.
"After that day? We are definitely friends!" Jett said, gesturing aimlessly as he talked, a big smile glued to his face. Katrina just smiled and nodded.
Luz give them a big smile, and declared she would wear bracelet for the rest of the life, a sentiment two witchlings found cheesy but strangely satisfying.
"Soooo, does this means you'll come visit me in my world?" She asked with a small hopeful smile.
"Does a griffin have a breathes spiders?" Jett asked.
Hearing this, Luz was happy and her face lit up. "I knew it!"
Jett smiled, "Till next time, Luz." he said, lifting his fist up, Luz pressed her fist against Jett's, forming a fist bump.
"Don't let this camp kill your individuality." Katrina said, giving younger girl a short hug. "And remember. You can't tell anybody about The Boiling Isles 'cause it's a secret."
"Don't you worry. The Magic Realm secret's safe with me. See you later, guys!"
And then Luz was back in the human world, and the portal leading to the other door disappeared as it always did when its job was done. Leaving normal closet door.
"What?" Katrina asked as closed the door.
Jett smirked. "You broke the rules."
Katrina seemed sincerely stung at the words, which Jett found odd, considering they were true. "I don't know what you're talking about."
His smirk deepened. "You knew I didn't do it. I don't like this rule. Kraken Ink is your job."
Katrina had the poker face, pulling the key out the lock.
In history of Boiling Isles was many disasters witches had to deal with in regards to their world being uncovered by some humans and then the distribution of Kraken ink, something that made them forget any encounter of the magical sort.
It's a well-known rule: You have to slip human a dose of Kraken Ink, if they discover magic.
But she just can't do this to Luz. This girl deserved to know.
"Luz used light spell to weaken Gytrash. So theoretically she is not normal human... technically she is a witch." she answered defensively, then added as an afterthought, "And all kind of witches has the right to know about this realm."
"Hooray for Loopholes." Jett said, grinning.
Neither said much for a while until Katrina's voice broke their silence;
"I don't like that look."
"What look?" Jett raised an eyebrow in confusion but the smirk was still present. "I was just thinking."
"I already worried." Katrina crossed her arms, her staff floating next to her.
"Today is the deadline for our answer for the Order of the Keepers..."
Katrina frowned, "You're thinking about what I think you're thinking about."
"Yes," Jett grabbed his staff in left hand, looking confident as he stated, "And you must admit that is a good solution."
"Maybe." Katrina replied, "But you know they probably won't agree to this."
Jett smirked and threw an arm over Katrina's shoulder. "Luckily, cuz, we have my great puppy dog face and your powers of persuasion."
She pondered the proposal, before finally looking to him with a slight smirk of her own. "Let's try."
Notes:And with that chapter 5 end. See you on next chapter!
Ps. If you want take a good look at Jett or Katrina's Physical Appearance. Found me on AO3, (my name is also Fluchwerferin on that website) and clicked my OC Info Cards - the Owl House-OCs. There are art of Jett, Katrina and their palismans. Also a few information about them.
