Hi Amity,
Thank you so much for agreeing to write a report regarding your experiences in the human realm for the Human Appreciation Society! This could easily be the most important account of the human realm in all of known history, and your work will be studied by future generations from now until far, far in the future. But no pressure, and make sure to enjoy yourself!
Your friend,
Augustus "Gus" Porter
No pressure, eh, Gus? You certainly have become the master of the mixed message. But I'll do my best to fulfill your exceedingly lofty expectations nonetheless. After all, am I not the highest ranked student in Hexside? (Wait, am I still the highest ranked student in Hexside? Things have been so hectic that I'm not sure anymore. Can you check for me?) [You are, don't worry!]
The first thing you need to know about the human realm is that when everyone says it has no magic, that's a half-truth. The humans have no magic as we think it is, but they have their own form of magic that they call science. They use the natural forces of their universe to accomplish great feats, feats that they now take for granted. For example, they use the ground up remains of animals that died before human history to power chariot-like automatons called cars, which they use to travel distances much farther and quicker than they can by walking. It's honestly truly astonishing how ingenious humans can be. They didn't need magic to be exceptional. I wonder what they would be like if they all could do magic like Luz can. I suspect that I would not like the answer.
Because the sad truth of the matter, Gus, is that far too many humans are corrupt, vile, and shortsighted. In the past, they have killed people just because they suspected them of being practitioners of magic, and that is merely the tip of the iceberg of the cruelty that humanity is capable of. Even more worryingly, they have mastered the art of war to a level that terrifies me. The most powerful weapons humanity has to offers are called nuclear bombs. They can level an entire city, and humans are too afraid to use them, lest they end all civilization with them.
Please don't get the wrong idea about them, though. Most of them are good people. It's unfair to judge a species for the worst of its members. In the end, I believe that people like Luz would prevail should the denizens of the Boiling Isles and Earth come to blows…but I cannot be certain. That is why I believe, very firmly, that we should be avoiding such a confrontation at any and all costs.
But I don't want to dwell on such things too long. For the most part, Gus, my journey on Earth was one of wonderment and happiness. It started off not so good, though. I was just minding my business at Luz's school, waiting for the school day to end, when some [REDACTED] [Amity, you can't use language like that in a serious anthropological account! Have some dignity!] started sexually harassing me. So I taught him some manners, by which I mean I beat him up. I could not believe how crude he was being. Even Boscha and I at our worsts wouldn't have been so crude about another person's body! Luz seemed to appreciate it, though, so all's well that ends well.
Luz ended up leaving school early, which she wants me to inform you is not a common practice of hers, but rather an uncontrollable impulse caused by the shock of seeing the prettiest and best girlfriend in the history of the universe at her own school. Oh, stop it, Luz, you're making me blush! She is not allowed to leave school early (and I certainly hope she does not make a habit of this), but since it was the last day before spring break, and her teachers were taking the opportunity to slack off, she decided that she'd rather be with me than stuck inside a boring classroom. Okay, I can kind of see the logic in that when she says it like that.
Luz spent the weekend finishing off her homework. I can't believe that she has teachers who assign homework on spring break. How monstrous can you be?
In the meantime, I went to the hotel that Eda had recommended from her prior stays in the human realm. She had taken the liberty of converting some snails from the treasury to human money (which is just paper – weird, right?), so I was able to pay for my room no problem.
That weekend, I spent most of my time wandering around Seattle. It is nothing like Bonesborough, Gus. They have buildings that stretch up high in the direction of the sky, called skyscrapers. The tallest such building in Seattle stretches over nine hundred feet high (see appendix A for a primer on human measurements). And get this: It isn't even closest to being the world's tallest building. In fact, the world's tallest building, which is in a country far away from Luz's, is almost three times as high. It boggles the mind.
Humans built whole cities, created marvels that we can scarcely comprehend, and they did it all without magic. In fact, I think the fact that they don't have magic makes them stronger. They've had to improvise, to think outside the box. We just cast a spell and call it a day. They have to work for their triumphs. They're just too stubborn to give up.
Late Saturday, I stumbled upon the library. Well, the main library. There are twenty-seven different libraries in this city, and fifty more libraries in its suburbs. It's like something out of my wildest fantasies! Anyway, the main library is just an extraordinary building. There are eleven floors, able to hold 1.5 million books. The design is…a bit questionable. It kind of looks like the architects had way too much apple blood when they were building the place. I mean, the floor containing the meeting rooms is just floor to ceiling bright red. I kid you not. But I don't care, because there were SO MANY BOOKS. I spent most of the rest of the weekend there, pausing only to eat. I even used magic to hide when they closed the place so I could spend the whole night reading.
I'm a nerd. Deal with it. Anyway, it's not like you wouldn't have done the same.
On Monday, I took a bus (which is like a car but big enough to hold dozens of people) to Luz's house. Luz lives in a town a ways outside the city called [REDACTED BY ORDER OF THE PRIME MINISTER'S OFFICE] [Sorry about that, Amity, but Eda thinks that maybe it's not a good idea to tell the whole Isles where Luz lives? Some of them kind of still want her dead.] There's not really much to talk about here, so I'm just going to skip past our meeting. And the kissing session. She has such beautiful lips, Gus. Many thousands of years ago, some humans believed in a goddess of beauty and love named Aphrodite, and I swear that Aphrodite herself must have sculpted those lips, because they are perfect. [AMITY, YOU'RE NOT SKIPPING! Right, there's, like, two whole pages worth of poetry about Luz's beauty, so I'm just going to redact it all and move straight to the next segment.]
"Did you get into any trouble for what I did?" I asked Luz when we'd both gotten on the bus back to Seattle. That [REDACTED] [I see your siblings' choice of vocabulary is rubbing off on you. Honestly, I don't actually know what that word means, and I'm kind of curious to find out, so I'm just going to look it up and WHOA! How do you even know that word?] totally had it coming, but the human world can sometimes be an unjust place, so I was worried that Luz had gotten into trouble.
Luz laughed nervously. "Not with the school. I was like, who's Amity?" In no way was she imitating an alleged incident where I uttered those words in a total gay panic and there is no way that you can prove that she was. "But with my mom? Yeah. We don't…well, we shouldn't just go beating people up when we don't like them."
"I was defending myself," I argued. Who knows what that [REDACTED] would have done if I hadn't taught him a lesson?
Luz nodded slowly. "It's okay. Honestly, he had it coming. But we've got to keep a low profile, okay? We can't get in trouble with the law. If the government finds out that, you're, you know…" She pointed at my ears, safely obscured behind my now long hair, to denote my general nonhumanness. "It'd be bad. Really bad. Like, they'll dissect you bad."
I crossed my arms and huddled in my chair, rocking back and forth slightly as I sometimes do when I'm nervous. Luz calls it "stimming" and she thinks it's adorable. "You really think that'll happen?"
Luz kissed me on the forehead gently. "It'll be fine. You'll blend in perfectly! Anyway, people are weird around here. Even if they saw your ears, they'll probably just think you were cosplaying."
"What is cosplaying?" I asked. Luz's eyes lit up. (Metaphorically, Gus. If I have to hear one more horribly inaccurate fact about human biology out of your mouth, I'll scream.) [That is a harsh yet fair attack.]
"Cosplaying is only the best thing in the entire universe," Luz said, which cleared absolutely nothing up. "Oh, man, you're going to love it. But let's not get ahead of ourselves. That's for later in the week! Oh, we're here!"
The itinerary for my first day in Seattle centered around Seattle Center. (Is there not some way to word that which doesn't sound incredibly dorky?) [No.] Built in 1962 (again, see appendix A for explanations on how humans measure time) for a world's fair, which is sort of like a carnival, but much bigger, Seattle Center contains some of Seattle's most noteworthy sights.
Foremost among those sites is the Space Needle. It's not Seattle's tallest building, but it is the most famous. Ask any human what they think of when they hear the word Seattle, and their answer would probably be the Space Needle. It looks kind of like the needle it's named after, if it was huge and also wearing a hat? I don't know. I'm not good at describing things.
"Ta-da!" Luz said, gesturing grandly at the Space Needle, as if she had built it herself just for me. "The Space Needle! The pride of Seattle!"
"What's it for?" I wondered.
Luz blinked. "Um…what do you mean?"
"I mean, what's its function?" I clarified. "Most of the large buildings in the city contain office space for businesses, but…it's not large enough, is it?"
"Uh, I guess we just built it because we thought it'd be cool," Luz answered after a while. She clearly hadn't ever considered the question before. "Humans do stuff like that a lot. We're weird that way. Life is weird; people are weirder – that's my motto!" A good motto, all things considered. "But you'll love it! It's got a restaurant and an observation deck – you can see so far from there!"
While I wanted desperately to see that view now, Luz informed me that we'd only be going there at the end of the day. She'd been working as a page at her local library to save up money to cover our time together. We were going to have dinner in that restaurant. I didn't have the heart to tell her that I could probably afford to pay for our meal myself.
Our first stop of the day was the Pacific Science Center, a museum that had also been built for the 1962 World's Fair. It's not much to look at from the outside, but, Gus, it is so amazing inside. You'd just explode from all the cool human marvels in it.
Okay, so, honestly, it was all kind of a blur of awesomeness, and Luz was really clingy (almost as if she was jealous of science), so that made it even blurrier. Still, I'm going to try to give you the top four, and this is in no particular order:
The planetariumTo the best of my knowledge, humanity has never left Earth, but that hasn't stopped them from constantly envisioning what it would be like to be able to travel amongst the stars. Space fascinates them. It's the final frontier, as Luz put it. That's why they created planetariums. It's like a theater, but they use a projector (think of it as a sort of illusion science) to make the ceiling look as if you're looking at the night sky. The museum has employees who give educational presentations regarding space, and we attended one.
The presentation that we went to centered around the solar system. Including Earth, there are eight planets in the solar system. (Apparently, there was also a ninth planet called Pluto, but scientists no longer consider it a planet. Luz is really steamed about this for some reason, and I decided it was probably better not to ask.) These planets are Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus. None of them are inhabitable by humans. They can't breathe on them.
"Amity, do you think we could use magic to be able to go to Mars? And, like, breathe there?" Luz asked me after the show was done. "I mean, wouldn't that be so cool?! I mean, I'm not saying we need to go right now, but…"
"I don't see how that would work," I answered honestly. "But, Luz, I bet if you put your mind to it, you could probably figure out a way to pull it off." I meant it too. "Let's save that for when we're adults at the very least, though." Camila would skin me alive, almost certainly literally, if I let her daughter suffocate on another planet.
Luz's enthusiasmLuz is cute all the time – that's a fact as scientific as the existence of gravity – but she's even cuter when she's geeking out about things. And Luz loves science. According to her, she's been trying to figure out how the Boiling Isles' existence connects to the Everett interpretation of quantum physics. I will be perfectly honest with you, Gus: I do not know what that means. All of Luz's attempts to explain it just made me even more confused. But she was so psyched about it, I couldn't bring myself to care very much. Anyway, she just adored explaining the various scientific principles behind exhibits. I didn't understand most of it, but it made her happy, so that was all I cared about.
The butterfly houseHonestly, there's not much to talk about here. It's just a large, stiflingly humid room filled with butterflies, which are big insects with brightly colored wings. I'm honestly not sure what's scientific about them either. But they're so pretty. I want one as a pet now. I actually think that's possible; I need to look into that.
The dinosaur exhibitMany millions of years ago, very long before humans existed on Earth, the dominant species were dinosaurs, gigantic reptiles with very sharp teeth. There's a whole room full of statues of them, except they move, and occasionally roar. It was very scary, but Luz held my hand the whole time, and I totally didn't blush at all. Not once. My face wasn't as red as a tomato. I was a model of perfection and poise.
So, yeah, totally worth it.
And that's the Pacific Science Center! Maybe I could have described it better, but I'm not a tour guide. I'm doing this for free, so you should be grateful. [I am, Amity, I promise!]
That took up most of our morning. Luz and I went to grab something to eat from Seattle Center's food court. A food court is like the cafeteria at Hexside, only instead of just one place to get food from, there are several. We had hamburgers. To make a hamburger, you take grilled, flattened ground meat and put it between two slices of bread. One can have things like vegetables or cheese or other kinds of meat between those slices as well.
It. Was. Delicious.
Okay, I'm going to level with you here: Food on Earth is just so much tastier than on the Boiling Isles. Sorry, but it's true. It's like my mouth is exploding from the flavor.
"I'm not overwhelming you, am I?" Luz asked nervously. "Mami kind of thought that I was trying to do too much during our time together. But you only get one chance to make a first impression, right?" She laughed. She has such an amazing laugh. "I just want you to love Seattle as much as I do. Earth can…suck sometimes. I wanted you to see that there's great stuff here, not just people being jerks."
I grabbed her hand and looked at her just above the eyes. Luz has beautiful eyes, but she's not comfortable with eye contact. "Luz, you know me. I'm not shy about asserting myself. If I've got problems, I'll tell you. Let's keep going, full speed ahead."
Luz flapped her arms, which she does sometimes when it's excited. This is not a so-called normal human trait, and, indeed, a lot of humans think she's weird for doing it. But if Luz had conformed with everything people want from her, she'd never have come to the Boiling Isles in the first place. And I think it's amazing.
Our second stop of the day was the Experience Music Project. (Side note: The current name of the museum is the Museum of Pop Culture; it recently got changed. But Luz hates that name, and I actually think I may get in trouble with her for even mentioning it if she finds out, so please don't tell her.)
The EMP, for short, is housed in a stunningly ugly building. I mean, seriously, think of the ugliest building you can think of, and it's far worse. It almost looks like the lair of some eldritch horror. Apparently, it's supposed to look kind of like a guitar, but I can't see it.
Inside, thankfully, there are no eldritch horrors, and it's much more sedate. Well, relatively so, anyway. The museum is split up into two sections, one covering musicians in the Seattle area and generally and the other section largely covering films in the horror, science fiction, and fantasy genres.
(Science fiction stories generally take place in the future and involve advanced and sometimes theoretical technology such as robots (abominations, more or less) or spaceships. Fantasy stories, on the other hand, involve worlds much like ours, with magic and nonhuman species. Remember how I told you about the Good Witch Azura series? [Yeah, I don't think it'd be possible for me to forget the many times you've done that.] Well, that's fantasy.)
The EMP is almost a shrine to the glory of music. Humans may not have bard magic, but they don't need it. Any feeling that you can think of can be invoked in a song. While I certainly had no idea who any of the musicians mentioned in the exhibits were, I knew that they were near and dear to Luz's heart. What else do I need to know? Still, there's only so much interest I can have in musical styles that I have no context for.
The second part of the museum, containing artifacts from pop culture, was much more interesting to me. Imagination is the most essential part of humanity. From the very beginning of humanity, humans asked themselves "what if?" Stories made them who they were. But more than that, they strive to be more. The urge to become more is a primal one. Luz has it; it was that urge that made her learn magic in the first place. Stories told her that she could wield magic. Logic told her that she could not. She listened to the stories, not the logic, and she was right.
"So what's this?" I asked, pointing to a cylindrical device that kind of looked like the hilt of a sword, but without a blade.
"Oh, that's a lightsaber!" Luz explained. She got that dreamy expression on her face that I love so much. "You press the button on the hilt and a sword of pure light pops up." She blinked. "It's not real, though. It's just a prop, from Star Wars. We don't have that technology. But someday we will, and I'll own a lightsaber!"
"What are these Star Wars you mentioned?" I asked.
Luz gasped. "You haven't seen Star Wars?! What am I saying? Of course you haven't seen Star Wars. Duh, Luz. Man, where's my head today? We totally got to change that. Another time, though. We definitely don't have enough time to watch the Saga this week."
I was happy to listen to Luz talk about the various movies whose props were displayed and just let the words she spoke wash over me. Most of the stuff I saw didn't really have any significance towards me. But then I saw an exhibit on a series of books called The Lord of the Rings, and I did a total double take. I was used to seeing the portrayal of strange species that only existed in the imagination of humankind, but this was different.
The species portrayed in the drawing looked like me.
Not exactly like me, of course. It was the drawing of a woman who looked much more regal and ethereal than I could ever be. But she had ears that were pointed like mine. "Who's that?" I asked Luz.
"That's Galadriel," she said. "Oh! Yeah, she does look like you, with the ears. Huh. I wonder if Tolkien ever made his way to the Boiling Isles." Maybe he did? A lot of our history before Belos' ascension was wiped out. Despite the immense differences between humanity's culture and ours, there are enough similarities to suggest contact with humans before Luz. [Interesting idea. I'll get back to you on that.]
"Of course," Luz went on, "you're prettier than she is." I giggled. My face was so red that you could easily compare it to a red, red rose. (That's a human idiom, by the way.) A worried look came upon her face. "Um, so, I can't believe that I never asked us before, but how long do you live for? Because in Tolkien, elves lived for hundreds of years and…"
She trailed off, but I knew what she was getting at. She didn't want to get old while I stayed young and beautiful, and she didn't want me to watch her die. It's a good thing she had nothing to worry about there. "We have the same lifespan as you do," I told her. "A little shorter, actually, on average, but I think that's just because medical care is more advanced in your world."
She breathed a sigh of relief. "I'd still love you no matter how short your lifespan was, mi valiente defensora," I assured her. This time, it was Luz who blushed embarrassingly. Turnabout is fair play, after all. Luz loves it when I talk in Spanish.
Our last stop at the EMP was the Sound Lab. The Sound Lab is a place where you can use musical instruments to perform your own songs. Luz was particularly excited about it, and I soon found out why.
"Okay, so I had an idea, and you can totally say no if you're not into it, it's okay!" One thing I love about Luz is that she always respects my boundaries. That was definitely not a fixture of my life until I met her. "So I know that you're a great singer, and I kind of want us to sing something together! And record it and show it to Mami. And maybe my friends?"
I tilted my head. "I don't know all that many human songs, Luz," I admitted. "I could sing that one I sang during Hanukkah."
"Oh, I have one already picked out," she said. "I got the lyrics printed out and everything. But you can't do any bardic magic. I mean, it's probably fine, but better to be safe than sorry. And…I kind of just want it to be just us?"
I kissed her, leaving her with that slightly delirious look that she usually had whenever I did that. How did I ever deserve having such a wonderful girlfriend. "Let's do it."
So Luz and I went into one of the booths and Luz got out a sheet of paper containing the lyrics to the song she had chosen. I immediately saw why she had picked it. "Too on the nose?" she asked, sounding worried.
"It's perfect," I assured her.
She wiped away a tear from the corner of her eyes, and we started recording. "Do you believe in magic," she sang, "in a young girl's heart, how the music can free her whenever it starts? And it's magic if the music is groovy and makes you feel happy like an old time movie? I'll tell you about the magic that'll free your soul, but it's like trying to tell a stranger about rock and roll!"
I figured that I had the thrust of the song's rhythm, so I decided to charge forward and sing. "If you believe in magic, don't bother to choose if it's jug band music or rhythm and blues! Just go and listen! It'll start with a smile that won't wipe off your face no matter how hard you try!"
Luz was so happy to hear me sing. She was flapping her arms so much that if she had wings, she'd have crashed through the ceiling. "Your feet start tapping and you can't seem to find how you got there so just blow your mind!"
"Both of us now!" Luz shouted.
"If you believe in magic, come along with me!" we sang. "We'll dance until magic, just you and me and maybe if the music is right, I'll meet you tomorrow so late at night! We'll go a-dancing, baby, and then you'll see how the magic's in the music and the music's in me!"
It was one of the happiest experiences in my life. The only downside was that it was too quick. A part of me wanted to do more singing, but a much bigger part of me was very tired and hungry. It was time to move on. Luz sent the recording to her email account. (See appendix B for a primer on human technology, especially with regards to computers.) I was fine with her friends seeing it. It didn't come anywhere close to blowing my cover.
It was getting late, and the air was getting colder, but that just provided an excuse for Luz to lean on me to share our warmth as we walked to the Space Needle, so I was definitely not complaining. We went in an elevator (a large box that is able to go up and down large distances in a shaft) up to the restaurant at the top of the Needle. Recently reopened, the SkyCity restaurant rotates so that you can see out of its windows in every direction. It also has a clear glass floor so you can see the ground below us. It is a very good thing that I am not scared of heights, I'll tell you that much.
Dinner was…you know what, we're just going to leave dinner to ourselves. This is being recorded for posterity, and sometimes a girl needs some privacy. It was our first dinner in the human realm, and it was sort of our first date in the human realm too. (Wait, was this whole day one big date? Crap, I don't know!)
After dinner, Luz took me onto the observation deck, and I just stared at the majestic mountains in the distance. They were hauntingly beautiful. Luz informs me that they're called the Cascade Mountains.
"So…did you have a fun time?" Luz's voice was casual, but I could tell that there was anxiety laced into it too. She had thought about this moment for ages, and gone over everything that could go possibly go wrong in her head.
In answer, I gave her a passionate kiss. "Of course I did, mi corazón," I told her. "You're amazing at this sort of thing. So what's on the agenda for tomorrow?"
She winked at me. "Wouldn't you like to know?" Well, of course I wanted to know. That's why I asked. Seeing the confused look on my face, she clarified, "It's a surprise, sweetie. You'll like it, I promise." I had no doubt.
The human realm is an amazing place, Gus. But not half as amazing as its most impressive occupant. The two of us stood there for a long while, just looking at the Seattle skyline and the mountains and all the other wonderful parts of the region.
It was a perfect moment.