Author's note: I already posted this story on ao3 but decided to put it here too. This story contains very mild crude/edgy humour, but nothing worse than what's in the show itself. Future chapters will contain very mild angst and non-graphic mentions of abusive parents. Reviews/critiques are greatly appreciated; this is the first fanfic I've written in 7-8 years.

"Hey kiddo, could ya come over here and see what's wrong with my glyphs?" sighed Eda, defeated. She'd been trying for what felt like ages to perfect the light spell, but for some reason she couldn't produce a light larger than her fist, no matter how large the glyph she drew was.

"Sure, lemme get a good look at them," replied Luz, scooting closer to Eda on the couch. She nestled herself under Eda's arm, certainly much closer than was necessary to see her mentor-turned-student's work. Eda chose not to comment on this fact, well-aware that the kid had needed extra affection after nearly dying then losing contact with her mother.

Luz scrutinized the glyphs, comparing them against her own, but couldn't find any faults; they were near-identical. Experimentally, she tapped one. It bloomed into a massive orb of light, nearly blinding both of the living room's inhabitants in the seconds before Luz could dispel it. "Good news!" she shouted, whilst still rubbing her eyes in discomfort. "Your glyphs are perfect!"

"Then what's my problem?"

"Hmmm. Can you try activating one of them while I watch?"

Eda obliged, focusing intensely and tapping the largest glyph in the pile. It sputtered, before forming into a light barely larger than a golf ball. She winced and clutched her chest in mild pain. "I have no clue how you can do this all day, kid. This glyph stuff is exhausting."

"Huh? It's not tiring for me at all."

"You don't need to show off."

"No, I'm not exaggerating, I mean it literally doesn't tire me out at all. Sometimes it's even kinda energizing. I have a guess about what's happening, but can you tell me how it feels when you try to cast a larger spell like this, just so I can be sure?"

"Oh, you know, inadequate, helpless, that kind of thing. I don't see what that has to do with-"

Luz surprised the older woman by pulling her into a forceful hug. "Oh, Eda, don't worry, I'm sure you'll get it eventually. In the meantime, I still think you're super cool with or without magic!" Eda felt another pang in her chest, this time coming from her heart rather than her bile sack. Feelings. Eugh. Her little girl was too sweet for the world.

"Not quite what I was asking though," continued Luz. "I meant physically, how does magic feel? Like, for me, it's this energy that flows into my body from all around and builds up til it flows through my hand and gets released into the glyph."

Eda thought for a moment. "It's like there's fuel in the glyph itself, and I need to give it a little spark from inside myself to ignite it. Giving it that spark feels exhausting, like I'm squeezing the last little bit of energy out of my bile sack, the same way it used to feel when I would cast one last spell before the owl beast took over"

"Yep! That's it! You're still trying to use your own magic, when you need to be redirecting the magic of the Isles! Think like a transistor, not a battery!"

"You kinda lost me on that last part cuz I have no clue what either of those things are, but I get the gist. Use magic from outside me, not from inside me." Yet again, she tapped a light glyph. It formed more smoothly than last time, creating an orb the size of a cantaloupe. Eda was still tired by this action but less so than with any of her previous attempts. "Well, it's progress but I'm still beat. I'm gonna call it a night. Started drawing external power but I definitely poured out a bit of my own there, too. How'd you get so good at this so fast?"

"I think it's because it's the only way I've ever known. You've been doing magic the normal way for… some amount of years? I actually have no clue how old you are. Either way, it's gonna take some time to break that habit."

"Keep guessing baby, a lady never reveals her true age," responded Eda with an exaggerated wink.

"She's forty-four," interrupted Lilith, who had just walked into the room holding up a large pot of stew and using her leg to push aside King, who was attempting to climb her skirt to get to the food. "Anyway, I have dinner right here, despite somebody's best efforts." She directed a glare towards the small demon, who showed no remorse.

"I was the head chef! I deserved samples!" he griped.

"Head chef? You did nothing but interrupt me, continually suggest I needed 'more fire', and try to stick your head in the pot and eat bits of undercooked meat!"

"As I said, I gave you perfect instructions which you chose to ignore. Also, I did send Hooty on that wild goose chase for you."

Hooty could still be heard outside, fruitlessly trying to chase down the wild goose that King had pointed out and told him to catch. It was the only creature capable of matching Hooty's natural chaos. Someone might need to help the house demon untie some of the knots that has formed in his horrifying ropelike body over the course of the chase. That someone would probably end up being Lilith.

She groaned. "Fine, I admit distracting that infernal bird tube was somewhat helpful. You still need to wait your turn like the rest of us."

After everyone had filled their bowls, Luz and Eda returned to their spots on the couch. Luz tucked herself up against Eda's side despite no longer having an excuse to be so close. King clambered up the couch and flung himself halfway into Luz's lap, somehow managing to not spill any of his meal in the process. With everyone so clustered together, there was more than enough room for Lilith to sit beside them. Despite this, she pulled a kitchen chair up to the coffee table and sat alone, as usual.

Reflexively, Luz prevented Eda and King from digging into their meals. Her eyes were trained on Lilith, waiting for her to take the first bite- perhaps due to a subconscious fear that the former emperor's coven leader would try to poison everyone.

After that, dinner went smoothly. Lively conversation flowed freely between Eda, Luz, and King. Often, propriety was eschewed and they spoke with mouths full of food. Sometimes Lilith would awkwardly attempt to add to the conversation, but she could never keep the same rhythm as the house's other inhabitants.

"Hey," began Luz, through a mouthful of stew, "can Willow, Gus, and Amity come over this Saturday?"

Eda winced, looking up at the living room ceiling. She had just managed to scrub the abomination goop off the ceiling from last week's incident. Or, rather, she had just finished forcing Lilith to clean it. Same thing, in her opinion. "Can't you go cause a ruckus at one of their houses instead?"

"Nope! Gus's dad has work, Willow's dads are gonna be fumigating her house for spider-rats, and we can't go to Amity's house because her parents technically still don't know she's been hanging out with us."

Amity had only been able to visit the owl house by getting Skara to cover for her. Initially, she had expected to have to cajole the bard into doing this favour by pointing out all the times she covered for her. (Skara's parents, while not quite as strict as Amity's, had been apprehensive about Skara's relationship with her boyfriend, Batrick. They didn't outright forbid her from seeing him but would often passive-aggressively complain about her cavorting with a lower-class witch, especially one with such demonic features, every time she mentioned him. She found it easier to just lie about her whereabouts.) However, Skara surprised her. The minute Amity voiced her request, Skara squealed in excitement, saying she was happy to aid Amity in her "forbidden love story". Amity tried sputtering that she was NOT in love with Luz and that they were just friends. To this, Skara responded with an unimpressed look and a "yeah, sure, whatever you say. Now quit wasting time talking to me and go visit that human you totally don't turn into a blushing mess around."

Eda sighed, looking down at her apprentice, who was now giving her her best puppy-dog eyes. "Alright, hon, they can come over. Just please try not to get into trouble like you did the last couple times… Or, actually, do get into plenty of trouble, but not the kind of trouble I'd have to deal with." She knew she was going to regret agreeing to this, but she simply couldn't bring herself to say no to the girl: especially not after she'd sacrificed her way home to save her life.

"Don't I get a say in this?" complained Lilith.

"Nope!" replied Eda, King, and Luz in unison.

"Come on, I'm sure there's somewhere outside the house where they could go and make their messes."

"That," began Eda, "might not actually be that bad of an idea. Guess you do have a brain rattling around in that thick skull of yours, Lily." She mentally rifled through a list of possible places to go before the answer popped out to her. "Luz, how would you like to visit The Left Hand?"

"I have no idea what that is but I'm intrigued!"

Lilith took the opportunity to explain for her sister. "The Left Hand is a place Edalyn and I visited often as children. It's a beautiful beach with some of the calmest waters in the Boiling Isles. It's usually empty because it's difficult to reach by cart, but we have our staves. It'll be calm, quiet, and we won't have to worry about facing the law if the emperor suddenly decides to lift our public pardon."

Luz had barely heard the second half of Lilith's explanation, too overwhelmed with excitement at the prospect of going to the beach with her friends. She flapped her hands and let out a little squeal. 'Yes! Real life beach episode!"

"I'll take that as a yes, then?" asked Eda.

"Yes! Thank you both!" Luz set down her meal and pulled out her scroll to message her friends the good news. (The scroll had been a gift from Amity. It was one of her older ones, which she kept at the bottom of a drawer after she replaced it with a better model. It had some small rips along its corners but functioned just fine. Luckily, unlike human cell phones, you didn't need to pay for cell service.) She finished her meal in a hurry, waiting for their responses. Luckily, all her friends were allowed to go (except Amity, of course, but her parents bought her alibi, so that was close enough).

Later, Eda turned to Luz. "So, you ready for a potions lesson? We need to make some sun potions; us Clawthornes burn easy."

Sun potions were relatively simple, a good opportunity to walk Luz through the basics of potion-making. Luckily, potions required little to no innate magical ability, allowing Eda to take back her role as mentor for the night. Still, she needed Lilith to help out by using her limited magical ability to control the flame while she and Luz worked; lighting a flame manually wouldn't provide nearly enough heat regulation.

"Hey, Lily, do you remember when I first learned to make this potion?"

"Of course, I think you were around twelve at the time. It took you five whole attempts to get the stirring technique right."

Luz was silent, splitting her attention between grinding up the proper ingredients and listening to the sisters' conversation.

"I think it might've been six, actually. It was a homework assignment. After I messed up the first time I went to you for tutoring. Then I still messed up the next two."

Lilith laughed softly. "The third attempt barely counted, Edalyn, you were half asleep by then."

"Yeah, I'd been up half the night before reading comics. I was trying so hard to get all my homework done that day, though, cuz our mom looked ready to snap if I skipped more work."

"Yeah, and as much as I hated encouraging you to skip more work, I had to pick you up and force you to go to bed early before you got that assignment done. I was afraid you'd fall asleep at the cauldron and set the ends of your hair on fire."

Eda turned towards Luz conspiratively and said in a stage whisper "and then, she helped me cheat. After I went to sleep, she made the potion for me and slipped it into my backpack. Still made me learn how to do it correctly the next day, though."

Lilith looked to her feet. "I was so much wiser back then."

"Huh?"

"I respected authority back then, but I knew it was never more important than taking care of my sister. I don't know where along the lines I forgot that. Edalyn, I'm so, so sorry I ever forgot. I'm sorry I've been such a horrible sister."

Eda gave her a strange look- a mixture of sympathy and rage. "Listen, Lily. I want to forgive you, I really do. You took on half of the curse and apologized to me for being a bad sister. That doesn't fix everything, but I think with enough time, I could forgive you for cursing me and for spending decades hunting me down. But there's something else you've done, something far worse. And you haven't even so much as said sorry about that yet."

"Could you at least tell me what it is?"

Eda glanced down at Luz then back at her sister. "The fact that you haven't even realized what you've done shows me you don't really care. Anyone with the tiniest shred of heart or brain could realize immediately that what you did was beyond evil."

Lilith visibly shrunk back in shame.

Luz continued her work despite the tangible tension in the air. Part of her wanted to change the subject and brush away the cloud of stress that had filled the kitchen. The rest of her pointedly decided to remain silent, leaving Lilith to stew in Eda's scorn. It was only fair, she figured, to let the witch that had nearly murdered her deal with the emotional repercussions of her actions.

Nobody quite knew how to handle the situation from there, so they finished the sun potion in a tense, awkward silence before bottling up both the potion and their emotions and heading their separate ways for the night.