It was the early afternoon of a day in late Dismembter. The trees stretched as high as ever, covered in their regular crimson leaves. It was a pleasant sight after the last couple of months. The summers in the Boiling Isles were too hot for any kind of foliage, so the trees had adapted to gathering what energy they needed in the cooler months and committing to a hibernation of sorts from late Slaypril to early Dismembter.
The more temperate flowers had also started shedding their old teeth, in favour of newer, sharper ones. It was a pastime of many a demon and witch alike to go and collect as many flower teeth as possible, then build small forts out of them, due to their natural interlocking ability.
Luz, Gus and Willow walked through the long hallway to the exit of Hexside's main building, wider than most other passages in the school most likely due to the former principal's 'special accommodation request', whatever that could have been. They must have been massive to need this much space.
"I didn't know you guys had a sports day here!" Luz snapped her neck upwards at an unnatural speed and angle in order to properly inspect the bright and shiny sign that caught her attention. The gazes of Gus and Willow followed at a more sensible speed, above their heads were several colourful banners that must have been installed during the afternoon lessons.
This was not the first school event that Luz had witnessed since starting here, but it had been the first one that she recognised from the human realm. Other events such as 'Bring your curse to school day' and 'Know how you die day' from the Oracle track being 2 specific examples that she wished to forget. Show and Tell had been a close one, but when the first student demonstrated a Torment Nexus that sent 3 classmates to the healing track workshop her Azura book and prepared speech felt small in comparison.
"You guys have those back home?" Willow was the one to break Luz out of her trance, going on an internal tangent about the other special days she experienced. "What kind of sports do you even have back home? It must be limiting without any magical elements to put into play."
Back home Luz may have not had many friends, or any for that matter, but whenever sports day rolled around she would at least feel respected; if only for a short time. In her favourite event, she put all the other students to shame, literally leaps and bounds ahead of the competition.
"Well, most of them involve running a long distance, or a short distance, or throwing things, or running and jumping, or just jumping..." Luz attempted to make the sports sound exciting, but the longer she rambled the less she believed it herself.
"But the only sport worth watching..." a sly grin grew on her face as Willow and Gus could sense the impending theatrics, "Is the Long Jump!" Luz exclaimed, producing a handful of confetti out of one, or possibly multiple pockets.
"I may not have been popular back in my old school," Luz lamented briefly, "but when I was conscripted for the Long Jump one year it all changed. The old school record had been about 18 feet, which is nothing to laugh at of course," Luz interjected in her own speech to cover her bases, " but on my first attempt I almost cleared the pit. Seriously if there hadn't been spectators at the other end I would have cleared the pit, the school nurse was working overtime that day." The fond memory brought a nostalgic tear to her eye.
This time it was Gus to break Luz out of her sentimental stupor. "And how far did you jump then?" An interjection that brought the girl out of her memories and back to reality.
"Huh?"
"You said the old record was about 18 feet, and you broke it, that means you jumped further than 18 feet. How far was it?" Gus looked like the next words out of Luz's mouth would send him down a road of deep and profound thought, and if the others knew anything about him it was most likely going to be centred around how this jump distance was affected by the aerodynamics of the human dorsal fin.
"19.5 to be exact." Luz was proud of this fact. It was the one and only accomplishment back home that she could parade around without being ostracised by her peers, and she took full advantage of this fact. "I jumped roughly that same distance both of the years I did it, so after the second time no one could say it was a fluke anymore."
By now Willow was looking more perplexed than intrigued. Her brow furrowed and eyes squinted, almost like she was trying to imagine just what it looked like for Luz to jump over 19 entire feet in distance. It boggled the mind and defied most of what she knew. As impressive as the claim her friend made, it felt like the information presented before her also came paired with a horrible smell in a malicious 2-for-1 deal.
"Luz, are you sure that you jumped over 19 feet?" Willow strained the distance in her question, making sure that it was emphasised enough that there could not possibly be any confusion.
"Uh, yeah? Course I did. That's nowhere even near a professional level though, some humans can jump up to 25 feet, and I think the record sits somewhere around 29." Having her achievement questioned by one of her closest friends hurt a little, but this feeling was quickly swept aside when she noticed that Gus was on the brink of exploding, or imploding, possibly both.
"You have to show us!" The words flew out of his mouth so fast that they could have been misconstrued as a single syllable. "This is far beyond even my wildest expectations of the human body! We have to go and test this right now!" Before a democratic vote could be held, the arm of each girl that would have been raised in objection was grabbed by Gus and pulled towards the field behind Hexside at breakneck speed.
Behind the large imposing main building of the school was an equally large and imposing sports arena. Everything from Grudgby to Keyhole, a game that Luz still wished to learn about, and in the centre a wide open space reserved for the running and throwing sports.
Gus let go of Willow and picked Luz up over his head, the adrenaline from the possibility of learning something new giving him a greater strength than he had ever felt, before planting the dazed girl at a white line drawn on the ground, marking the start to the run-up for the Long Jump.
"Okay then, I might be a little rusty," Luz stammered as she prepared her excuses in advance, kicking up dirt at the line to test the grip she would get. "and feeling like a FedEx package doesn't help" she added under her breath, preparing constructive feedback for her next impromptu taxi service.
Starting where she was placed, and taking in a long, slow breath; she ran. Picking up speed as she approached the take-off line as she had done so many times before. Her foot touched down mere inches from the cut-off point before launching into the air. For someone so out of practice Luz was doing remarkably well.
Before she knew it her feet hit the soft dirt of the pit, falling down into slightly more than a crumpled pile of indiscernible teenage parts. Springing up with more elasticity than one person should wield, Luz turned to her friends and offered an overly dramatic bow.
"Ta-da!"
But her friends were silent, Willow shuffling her feet and avoiding eye contact, while Gus looked like you could have told him his home had burnt down and it would have improved his mood. He hadn't looked this upset and dejected since Luz confirmed in a Human Appreciation Society meeting that humans couldn't spit acid.
"Was that like a warm-up or something?" Gus questioned, trying to salvage any of his preconceptions about what he was here to witness.
Luz hadn't done poorly, at least not by her own standards, clearing roughly 16-17 feet in distance. Not a professional jump by any means, but respectable for someone with no warm-up just doing this for fun.
"What do you mean? That was way further than I thought I would get." Luz was very confused by this point, Gus had been so excited to see the jump, and now it was as if someone had rained on his illusionary parade.
"But I thought you said you could jump 19 feet?" His voice quivered a little, as did his lip. "That was nothing! When you built it up as much as you did, I was expecting a life-changing event! You barely jumped a fraction of a foot!"
This caught Luz off guard. She had jumped close to 17 feet, what was Gus talking about? Had he simply closed his eyes and blocked his ears and forgotten everything by accident?
As the stalemate of confusion raged on between the two, Willow was finally able to piece together exactly what the problem was. Smacking a palm against her head as an overdramatic sign of realisation, she began to laugh at how simple it was, and how they hadn't had this conversation sooner.
"What's so funny?" Asked Gus, "We came here to see a feat of incredible human ability, and now my dreams are shattered, just like the record that Luz claims she broke in the human realm." Turning away dramatically a single tear rolled down his face.
That tear was not the only thing rolling, as if Willow's eyes rolled any harder or any further they may just break. "Luz," she addressed directly, with the authority of a school teacher preparing a demonstration, "would you please measure out on the ground how long a single foot is."
"Uh, sure, but I'm not sure what this will accomplish." As instructed, Luz drew 2 parallel lines on the ground, roughly 1 foot apart.
"Now Gus, would you also please draw out exactly 1 foot on the ground." The tone in Willow's voice shifted now to that of a snarky television detective that had just solved the extremely convoluted murder that no one else could have ever possibly worked out.
"But I don't want to go all the way into town." Gus pouted, "And if I went the other way I'd fall straight into the boiling sea."
At this moment it all fell into place, Gus had expected something different because, in the Boiling Isles, it appeared that a foot was something different. It was a much greater distance here than in the human realm.
"Gus, where I come from a foot is a measurement of a sandwich or a shelf." The comparisons intended to contextualise what a foot could be used to measure, although Luz knew that after a footlong sandwich, she really didn't have any examples left in the chamber. A shelf was something she would have to remove from this analogy later.
All that got through to Gus however was the absolutely insane concept of a footlong sandwich. An amalgamation of bread and filling that stretched all the way from his home to Hexside. Such a thing could be created with magic, but most other witches would be too concerned about whether they should, rather than simply if they could.
He was brought out of this delicious hypothetical by the prospect of learning more about the human realm. "Here we use feet to measure distances like from here to central Bonesborough, or the length of each arm, or even the size of the Titan itself, it's one of our largest scales of measurement.
"Ooooooooohhhhhh..." The realisation finally sinking in for Luz after getting the other half of the puzzle. "Yeah okay, that was a complete mix-up. I never thought that something as common as measurements would be so wildly different here. So what? Is your measurement the size of the Titan's visible foot or something?"
"Precisely," Gus responded with a finger in the air, clearly smug about how perfect the system was that even a human from another realm could grasp the concept instantly. "and who's foot is the standardised measurement in your world? Or do all humans have exactly the same-sized feet!" This final statement caused Gus to open his mouth wide, and press one hand into each side of his face, clearly struck down by his genius.
"Uhhh," Not really having an answer prepared, Luz decided to embellish a little bit. "Marcus Foot! Famed inventor of measurements and scales..." The bravado and performance that Luz put on interested Gus more than any boring story of mutual agreement to standardisation, "Mr Foot travelled the world, giving standardised measurements to all the people that he met, the foot being one of them."
Although this was decidedly not true, by this point Luz felt, and Willow would most likely agree, that telling Gus this story wasn't true would be akin to telling a small child that Father Christmas wasn't real, all the strife and fallout that would cause simply wasn't worth it.
Enamoured by Luz's story, Gus couldn't move a muscle. Listening intently to the countless voyages and adventures of famed Captain Foot, whose life accomplishments ranged from adaptations of folk takes to chapters from Cosmic Frontiers and the early Azura books.
Willow, having been silent through most of this shared spiritual journey, made her presence known once again. "Gus, when you were dragging us round here did you truly believe that Luz could jump 19 feet?"
This question caught both of them off guard and tore them from the exciting life of Sir Major Captain Foot. "Kind of yeah," Gus replied sheepishly. "There's so much that we don't know about humans, it could have been possible I guess."
"How far exactly is 19 feet?" Luz asked, turning her attention to Willow, dreading to hear how athletic Gus thought she could have been.
"From about here to the head of the Titan."
"The head of the Titan?!"
"The head of the Titan." Willow replied calmly, with a hint of humour in her words as she imagined a world where this would be possible. To see Luz do a small jaunty run up on the dirt track, before launching herself into the sky and travelling almost the entire length of the Isles. It would have been a sight worthy of the energy Gus exhibited earlier.
"Guuuuuuus." Luz addressed the younger boy like a parent whose child had misbehaved. A hand on each hip leaning towards the much smaller witch completed the image. "Remember when you were asking me questions about the human realm, and you asked how tall people normally get, and I told you my mother is just over 5 feet tall?"
"Maybe." Gus couldn't have spoken any quieter, it was magic that his words were heard at all.
"For all this time did you really think that my mother was almost the same size as Bonesborough?" This notion now ran through her head. Anytime that Luz mentioned Mami to Gus, the mental image he created was unique, to say the least. If it were true Luz would have been small enough to fit inside her mother's palm and lived a comfortable life, in a space with a larger floor plan than the Owl House itself.
"Okay, maybe this could have been sorted sooner if I consulted my human textbooks more often." Gus relented, conceding his fault in the matter. "My logic was consistent though! If your mother was over 5 feet tall there's no telling if you could have jumped that far, I mean, you would at the least still have a lot of growing to do."
This reminded Luz of the time Eda was ranting about how strange everyone was in the human realm, and how they were unimpressed with her flying prowess. "I can cover 10 feet in only an hour, 15 with good reason." had been her go-to phrase. That 'good reason' probably involved the consequences of Eda using her favourite coupon while shopping, she called it the '5 finger discount'. The faster you fly the cheaper your stuff, but even to Luz at the time 15 feet an hour felt like Eda was just messing with her, but now she saw that it was a legitimate achievement.
"Hey, Luz?" Gus once again brought her back to the realm of everyone else. "In human measures... how tall am I?"
Of course he wanted to know, getting a human nickname had just been the start, of course he wanted a human height too. Luz knew that this was going to continue as he learned more and more until he had separated himself completely from the culture of the Isles, but for now, she was happy to indulge him.
"Probably about..." Looking Gus up and down, Luz thought hard about how he would measure up, shorter than herself, Gus probably clocked in at around 5 feet and 2 inches. "A little over 5 foot I would say." She didn't want to confuse him with the concept of inches right now, the redefinition of a foot was enough for one day.
"5! 5 whole feet! I'm a giant!" Gus began pacing back and forth as if he had suddenly grown to the size of a building, crushing trees and boulders beneath his feet. It was reminiscent of King's tyrannical antics but with slightly less bloodlust.
While Luz watched Gus with amusement, Willow began to mentally prepare herself to hear about nothing but 5-foot Gus and Marcus Foot for the coming weeks.
With this crossing of wires behind them, Willow also wondered about what other niche or even obvious miscommunications were going on constantly between the three of them. There had to be hundreds of small nuanced differences between the realms, but each of these would be solved in time, with the bridges crossed as they reached them.