"Edaaa, stop cheating," whined Luz. Eda had caught all four children effortlessly during both of her turns as serpent and managed to evade capture all five of her turns as prey, even during the round when Luz tried to hunt her down exclusively.
"How would I cheat? I don't even have my magic anymore."
"Come on, I know a master cheater like yourself could figure something out without any spells"
Eda secretly felt proud when she heard that; maybe she wasn't useless without her magic. Luz sure seemed to think she was capable, anyways. Nonetheless, she had an argument to win. "Listen, I told you I wouldn't go easy on you. It's not my fault you all have short little limbs. See, I may look old but decades on the run have kept me strong and quick."
"Oh yeah?" challenged Luz. She tried to run full force at her mentor, forgetting how badly the water resistance would slow her down. Her slowed attempts at sprinting would certainly not make for a decent tackle. Time for a plan B. She clambered up Eda's side, trying to knock her over. "These tiny limbs are gonna take you down!" Her efforts did little. Eda still stood tall. She grabbed the human by under her arms and threw her an impressive few meters into the water.
"Nice try, kid."
Willow, Gus, and Amity watched wordlessly. They were thoroughly used to those two's shenanigans by now.
Eda watched as Luz paddled back to her. Uh-oh, the kid had an excited sparkle in her eyes. "Yeet me again!" yelled Luz.
Eda inferred what the strange human slang meant. "Oh no, I am not gonna toss you around on command. Do I look like some kind of pygmy unicorn at a petting zoo?"
Luz climbed onto her shoulders. "Maybe!"
"You are gonna get it, twerp," laughed Eda, before diving under the water, dragging Luz with her. When she resurfaced, Luz was barely clinging to her neck, spitting out saltwater and laughing. Having Luz on her back reminded Eda of something. "Hey, do you guys have tengu fights in the human realm?"
"I don't think so, what are they?"
"There's two sets of partners. One gets on the other's shoulders. The two on top fight until someone gets knocked into the water. Last team standing wins."
"We have those but we just call 'em chicken fights."
"That's weird. Boiling Isles chickens are known for being cowardly, and human wildlife is usually much more tame… and didn't you say you guys regularly ate chickens? Doesn't sound like a very fighty bird."
"You'd be surprised…" Luz shuddered, remembering an unfortunate trip to the county fair, followed by an unfortunate trip to the emergency room. "Anyways, I've only gotten to participate in a couple of chicken fights over the years because Tía Elena would yell at my cousins for roughhousing when we did it, and I couldn't do it back home because you need three friends…" Luz sounded dejected at that last part, reminded of her lonely years in the human realm.
Eda turned her head unnaturally far backward to look at her apprentice, who was still hanging onto her back. "Well, you're in luck because you have more than three friends right here! I might have to sit this game out, or maybe see if I can drag Lily into this. If my advantage as the only adult was helpful last game, I'd destroy you in this one." She shook Luz off her back and ruffled the girl's soggy hair before heading back to shore.
Amity glanced around. As much as she'd like to, she knew she would certainly perish if she had to sit on Luz's shoulders, or vice-versa. She could ask Willow to be her partner, but Willow would probably find some excuse as to why Amity should be with Luz instead, the absolute traitor. Her eyes landed on Gus. Perfect. The young illusionist was as oblivious to Amity's massive crush as Luz herself was. Also, he was standing the closest to her, giving her a perfect excuse as to why she would pick him over the other two. She put a hand on his shoulder. "Me and Augustus versus you and Willow!"
Gus was briefly surprised by Amity's choice, since he was less close to her than the other two were. He didn't question it too much. He looked to Luz and Willow. "You're going down!"
Luz wrapped a confident arm around Willow. "Oh, it is on!"
Amity found a second benefit to having Gus as her partner. Amity was her team's carrier, while Luz rode on Willow's shoulders. She wouldn't even be standing face to face with her crush. And Luz and Gus had a solid rivalry going, so it was unlikely they'd want to swap partners at any point. Perhaps she wouldn't combust from the sheer force of her own lesbianism today. Nice.
Lilith was jolted out of her reading by her sister's voice. "I challenge you to a tengu fight! Me and my apprentice against you and yours!"
Lilith gave Eda an unamused look. "I'll pass. Besides, Amity isn't even my apprentice anymore."
"You're just afraid we'd beat you!"
"No, I've just outgrown such childish games."
"You know, Luz said humans call em 'chicken fights'. But looks like you're the real chicken here."
"Am not!"
Eda flapped her arms like wings. "Cluck, cluck, cluck. My name's Lilith and I'm too chicken for a chicken fight because I know I'll lose," she singsonged.
"I would not lose!"
"Oh yeah? Get in the water and prove it."
"Fine!" Lilith stood up. She removed her sarong and wrapped her book in the cloth before setting it down on her towel. She looked to the sea with a mischievous glint in her eye. If Edalyn was going to pull her down into such childish competitions, she might as well embrace it. She started sprinting before Eda had time to move. "Last one into the water is a smelly, rotten chicken egg!"
Lilith just barely beat Eda to the water. "That's only because you cheated!"
"Wow, Eda, you're one to complain about cheating."
"We'll see who the true winner is when me and Luz destroy you in a tengu fight."
When they reached the children, Luz had just knocked Gus into the water. "The score's four-three, with us back in the lead," said Willow.
Eda gave Luz a thumbs-up. "Nice job, kid." She gave Willow a second thumbs-up. "Nice job, other kid."
"It's not much of a win," said Luz. "They were in the lead for a while there and it's really been neck-and-neck."
"Well, seven rounds is a good stopping point- and I'm not just saying that because you're winning. Whaddya say to a different arrangement; me and you against my sister and Amity?"
Gus drew a small spell circle, creating glowing letters that read "GO TEAM AMITY!"
Luz looked at Gus and clutched her chest in a jokingly affronted gesture. "Augustus Porter, how could you?"
"I'm sorry, Luz, but me and Amity now have a bond forged in the heat of war."
Amity felt a twinge of joy at that. She knew he was mostly joking, but Amity was glad to hear that Gus genuinely thought of her as a friend by now. That was quickly overshadowed when she thought about Eda's challenge. The idea of fighting Luz whilst on a team with Lilith made her uncomfortable. She decided to slip away from everyone before she risked becoming visibly upset.
Luz slung an arm around Willow's shoulders. "Well, at least I have my dearest and most loyal friend right here, isn't that right, Willow?"
Willow laughed, returning the gesture. "Yep!" Then, she paused, noticing the head of green hair swimming back to shore. "Hey Amity, where are you going?" She spoke loudly so that Amity could hear her.
"I think I'm gonna sit this one out," came the reply. "I need a break."
Willow caught on to Amity's uncomfortable tone, but erroneously assumed her friend was just being awkward about her crush again. Willow didn't understand the point of romance, but at least watching Amity's awkward stammering was pretty funny. "Hey, Luz, maybe you should go check on her and make sure she's okay."
Luz nodded. "You four stay here and have fun, I'm gonna go check on Amity."
Amity was sitting curled up in a ball and facing away from the ocean when Luz got to her. She was startled by the sound of the human plunking herself down next to her and asking "Hey, Amity, are you okay?"
Amity gave a noncommittal shrug.
"You seem more than just physically tired. Did we accidentally hurt you somehow? Or did you get overwhelmed? I know sometimes I get too overloaded by too many noises or sights or things going on at once and need to sit down away from everything for a while. If that's the case with you, I can leave you alone now. I just wanna make sure you're okay."
Luz had given Amity a perfect excuse. She could agree, just lie and say that it was just sensory overload, and be left alone to brood in silence. All of her common sense said to do that, but something stopped her, drove her to be honest. "No, it's more than that. Can we… get a little further away from everyone? I don't want anyone to overhear."
Luz agreed. "Yeah, might be good to go sit in the shade and have some water too, make sure you don't get too hot." She stood up and held out a hand, helping Amity to her feet. She expected the Blight to pull her hand away once she was standing, but Amity held Luz's hand the entire walk back to the shady spot where the blanket was spread out.
Luz sat down on the blanket first. Amity sat next to her instead of face-to-face. She would need to calm down some before she was ready for direct eye contact. She stayed silent, unable to think of the right way to explain herself.
Luz dug a bottle of water out of her bag and passed it to Amity. "Take all the time you need," she said. "Just sit back and have some water until you're ready to talk about it."
Amity did as Luz suggested, sitting in silence for a few moments, absentmindedly watching King chase some see-gulls further and further away.
"I'm sorry, it's a stupid thing for me to be this upset about."
Luz gingerly set a hand on Amity's shoulder, giving her friend a chance to pull away if she wasn't okay with being touched. "Amity, it's okay, I promise. Even if it's something that would otherwise seem insignificant to me, it isn't silly. It hurt your feelings, and your feelings matter, so this matters to me."
"Okay." Amity had trouble believing that, but she decided to trust Luz. She took a deep breath. "It's just, the idea of me and Lilith fighting against you and Eda, even as a game, reminded me so much of the covention."
"Oh, Amity, I'm so sorry about that."
"It wasn't your fault. I know I blamed you for that day when we first met, but really, you weren't the one who forced me to cheat. If anything, that was Lilith's fault. She's the one who consciously chose to embarrass me in front of the whole coven- in front of my future." She sighed. "Then again, I don't know if I even want that anymore, if it's filled with people like Lilith. But either way, it hurt me so badly at the time."
Luz struggled to hold back the comment that all emperor's coven members worked for a corrupt system and that Belos himself was far worse than Lilith. They could talk about that later.
Amity continued, "and it's not just that. When I got home, my parents found out and they were furious. It was one of the worst nights I've had in a long time." Amity felt like she was about to cry at that memory but held it in. "I've been realizing that part wasn't fully Lilith's fault. I just… wasn't ready to blame my parents. I assumed it was just a part of life: gryphons breathe spiders, horses eat fingers, and parents hurt children. If someone shoves you into a pixie nest and the pixies eat your skin, you blame the idiot who chose to push you instead of the pixies who are just following their instincts, you know? So that's why I blamed you and then Lilith for what they did to me."
"Oh, Amity…" Luz moved her arm to wrap it around Amity's back. Two instincts warred within Amity's mind. The first one told her that she'd already opened up too much and needed to pull away into safe isolation. The second told her to lean into the affection, to get everything off her chest. She went with the second one, no matter how much it terrified her. She leaned into Luz's touch and continued speaking.
"I assumed all parents were like mine because it's not like I had any other frame of reference. I saw Willow's dads but I figured either they were a fluke, or that they were really good at hiding what went on behind closed doors- probably the second one. I mean, Boscha's mom is overbearing and her dad is cold and terrifying. Skara's parents spoil her but ignore her and don't actually care about her and just use her as a pawn to one-up each other in their weird feud." She paused a second. "Don't tell them I let that slip."
"My lips are sealed." Luz used her free arm to make a zipping motion over her mouth.
"Recently, though, I realized parents like that aren't universal. I've seen how your families are, Willow and her dads, Gus and his dad, you and Eda, the way you talk about your mother. They make mistakes and hurt you by accident sometimes, but they genuinely love you and care about you and would never hurt you on purpose. Even if you messed up or disappointed them. Even if you were as bad as me."
"Amity, can you look at me?" Amity turned to face Luz. Luz moved her hands to sit on both of Amity's shoulders. "Amity, there is nothing wrong with you. I'm sorry they ever made you think that there was." Amity's eyes were wet with tears that she failed to blink away and she was trembling. Luz resisted the urge to pull the witchling into a hug right then and there; she didn't want to risk scaring her friend while she was in such a vulnerable state, though. Instead, she asked first. "Can I hug you?"
Amity practically flung herself into Luz's embrace, legs halfway on her lap, arms tight around her back, and face buried against her neck. Under any other circumstances, Amity would've melted into a pile of blushing goo, but she was too far into her meltdown to think about that kind of thing. Luz held her tightly, rocking back and forth and providing gentle reassurances. "It's okay. You're okay. You can let it out. You're safe. It's okay, I promise. I don't mind." Amity let herself cry. Once her floodgates collapsed, she soon found herself wracked with uncontrollable sobs.
"There you go. You're doing great. I've got you. Just try and breathe. Follow along with my breath if you need to," Luz soothed. She ran one hand through Amity's hair, undoing her (now extremely unkempt) ponytail in the process. Her other hand rubbed gentle circles on the girl's back. She continued until Amity calmed down and pulled away.
What Amity had just done fully sunk in. She felt extremely self-conscious once the haze of her emotions started to clear. "Thank you for that, Luz. I'm sorry I dragged you into that when you were having such a good time before. I'm mostly calm now, you can go back to your friends."
Luz offered a soft smile. "Amity, you're my friend too. And sometimes being friends means being with you through the bad times. I'm happy just sitting here with you." She rifled through her backpack. Huh, she could've sworn she had packed some Hex Mix. Oh well, she still had a small bag full of cookies in the bottom, warm from sitting in the sun. "Here, take one of these and drink some water, having a small snack and some water always helps me recover from a crying session."
Amity silently hoped that Luz's experience with crying was just from her habit of getting emotional over good books or cute cat videos. She knew that Luz had deeper, more painful emotions hidden underneath all that, though. The thought saddened Amity; the kind-hearted human deserved better than that.
"...Amity? You still with us?"
"Oh, yeah, sorry, I was just lost in thought for a second there." She took the offered snack. "Thank you." Amity slowly enjoyed her cookie while Luz ate quickly.
Luz brushed her hands off on the blanket and remembered she still had Amity's ponytail holder around her wrist. "Can I fix your hair? Not that you don't look super pretty with it down." She mentally facepalmed. 'Wow, Noceda, way to sound like a useless bisexual.' "Just, y'know, since I messed it up and it's probably pretty warm on your neck like that.
"S-sure. There's a comb in the front pocket of my bag." While Luz grabbed the comb, Amity was screaming internally. Why did she agree to that? Luz knelt down behind Amity, running her fingers through the girl's hair. Amity imagined her inevitable obituary: 'RIP Amity Blight, age 14. Cause of death: too gay to function.' She was lucky, at least, that Luz couldn't see her face from back there.
"You have thick hair too, huh?" commented Luz.
"Uh… yeah."
"Mine's like that too. It's also kinda curly, though, so brushing it just makes it poof up." she made a poofing gesture before continuing detangling. "One day I got tired of my mamá trying to wrangle it into shape every morning and just- chopped it all off." She removed her hand from Amity's head for a brief second to mime a chopping gesture. "She was horrified when she saw me in front of the bathroom mirror, hair all hacked to bits. But she helped me even it out." Luz's voice sounded nostalgic. "I could manage it on my own since then, but some mornings she still liked to style it for me anyway."
After Amity had gotten over her initial heart attack, Luz running her fingers through her hair felt pretty nice. She laughed a bit. "Yeah, my hair was always difficult to control, too. Sometimes the servants couldn't manage it, and mother would get really annoyed and decide to 'take matters into her own hands' and yank a brush through it herself, but it wouldn't really fix much. You'd think she would've gotten practice with Emira's, but apparently mine was worse. I think that's the only reason she let me keep it in a bob and then later get an undercut. Well, that and it's easier to dye it green."
Luz switched to brushing through Amity's hair with the comb. "Weird question, but is green a natural hair colour for witches? In the human realm, strict parents like yours usually wouldn't let their kids dye their hair 'unnatural' colours, but a lot of witches have bright hair, and most of them never have any roots showing through."
"It's a bit uncommon, but yes. Em and Ed's hair is naturally green. Mother makes me dye mine to match them, she says she wants us to be colour coordinated ."
Luz was horrified. "You mean she makes you dye it? I just thought you wanted to look like Azura, or secretly looked up to your siblings, or just liked the way it looked."
"Well, that first one is why I went with such a light shade, but no. Almost all Blights have green hair, but I took after my father, who married into the family. She always hated it."
Luz let out an affronted gasp. "Amity, that's horrible! You shouldn't be forced to change yourself like that! Besides, your mom's stupid, your brown hair is beautiful and warm like fresh, homemade dulce de leche. Not that you don't also look good in green, especially with your whole mint chocolate chip deal, but you should get to choose."
Luz got distracted for a moment, noticing from her choice in comparisons that she definitely had food on the brain. She wondered if the Boiling Isles had ice cream, especially dairy free stuff. They probably called it something weird like 'knife scream'. She'd have to remember to ask Eda about that... She snapped herself back to the serious conversation she was having in the present.
"Thanks, Luz." Amity mentally thanked the titan that Luz was still behind her and couldn't see her blush; she didn't know how much longer Luz was gonna buy the overheating excuse. 'She called me beautiful! Twice!' Amity gave a shrug in response. "And yeah, I don't like it, but as much as I'd love to take some big heroic stand against her, that wouldn't work out very well in real life. The most I can do is secret acts of rebellion, like forgetting" she gave air-quotes "to touch up the roots."
"I wish there was a way for me to help."
"I don't think there's a way to make them stop, but what you're already doing, listening to me and giving me someplace to go, helps a lot."
Luz didn't know what to say to that. Instead, she finally tied back Amity's hair (she had been combing it for far longer than was necessary, but Amity didn't seem to notice or mind), and sat down, close to her friend's side. She linked an arm around Amity's and rested her head on her friend's shoulders, moving slowly so that Amity could pull away if she wanted to.
Amity didn't move away. Despite feeling a bit flustered, the gesture was mostly pleasant. She looked forward, towards the sea. She saw the four witches in the water, discussing something. Then, Gus climbed onto Lilith's shoulders and Willow got on Eda's. Gus readied some illusions and Willow readied some plants. Amity pointed them out to Luz. "Looks like they've agreed to drop the standard 'no magic' rule. This'll be interesting."
Luz glanced over. "Who do you think will win?"
"I'll say Gus out of loyalty, but between you and me, probably Willow."
"Yeah, I'd say Willow too, plants are better for combat."
Gus overwhelmed Willow with a barrage of illusions, then leaned forward to physically push Willow over. It almost worked, but Eda's stance was strong enough to keep her from falling in. Willow faked her opponents out by sending a tendril of seaweed toward Gus's head, then stopping it and using it to pull Lilith under the water by the torso. When Lilith resurfaced, she looked like an angry drowned rat. Gus gave Willow a high five and Eda looked to be doubled over in laughter.
Luz started laughing at that and Amity soon followed. They watched another round. This time, Gus was on Eda's shoulders and Willow was on Lilith's. Willow won again by using her plants to pull Gus off of Eda's shoulders, plunking him neatly into the water and leaving the owl lady untouched.
"Hey Luz," said Amity. "I think I'm ready to go out there again."
"Are you sure? Don't make yourself uncomfortable just because you feel like you have to."
"Yeah, I am. Just… let's play a different game, one that won't end up with me and Lilith against you and Eda."
Luz let go of Amity and procured a deflated beach ball from her bag. "Here, we could play something with this, and we can make sure the teams don't end up like that." Luz started blowing up the ball while Amity sat there awkwardly. She considered offering to help, but thought better of it. As juvenile as it felt, Amity knew her heart could not take an indirect kiss like that.
When she finished, Luz sprung up, beckoning for Amity to follow. She linked her right arm with Amity's and looped her left around the beach ball. She skipped toward the shore, excited to reconvene with Eda, Gus, and Willow.
