Kriegstag 4, Sixth Lunar Disappearance, 50 CE | The Owl House
King slowly crept down the stairs from his bedroom and down to the main floor. He had just awoken from a nap to find the house eerily quiet except for the sound of footsteps coming from the floor below. There were no obnoxious commercials blaring on the CB, no telltale bubbling sounds of Eda working on her latest potion order, no chatter of Luz talking with her friends about what happened at school. There was nothing. Just footsteps.
Finding the kitchen empty, King turned to enter the living room, only to see Eda pacing back and forth, wringing her hands and muttering to herself. And then he saw Luz, face down on the couch, seemingly unconscious.
"Eda?" King opened with, breaking the silence.
The sudden noise seemed to jolt Eda out of whatever trance she was in. "King? Mother of Titan, you nearly scared the bile out of me."
"What's going on?" King asked, to which Eda let out a long sigh.
The Owl Lady did her best to explain the situation at hand. "The long and short of it is that Luz's brain is really, really, messed up right now. The Blight kid was messing around with some memory photos taken from Luz, and she quote 'burned them up accidentally, mostly' unquote. Right now, baby Blight, as well as Glasses and Goops, are rooting around in Luz's mind trying to fix everything. Us, though? We'll just have to play the waiting game until one of those kids rings a bell I gave them."
King nervously twiddled his claws, his tail curling around his leg. "Is - Is Luz going to be okay?"
Eda knelt down and wrapped King in a hug. "Luz will be just fine, King. She's a fighter, and a tough one at that, so I doubt a little memory burning will keep her down for too long."
Late June (maybe? Early July?), 2021 | The Mindscape of Luz Noceda
As the trio of Willow, Gus, and Amity gathered their bearings, they found themselves in a black void, seemingly floating in a giant blob of… nothing. Then, ground rushed up to meet them, and the three collapsed onto soft grass. Grass that was green, Amity noticed, not the normal red that she was used to. The young Blight was the first to get to her feet, while Willow helped Gus up.
Around them was what looked to be a forest of some kind. There were trees of a species that Amity couldn't place, but there was something even more intriguing about the trees: every tree had a painting or photograph inset into the trunk.
Willow ran a hand down the trunk of a nearby tree. "So, this is the inside of Luz's mind? It's much more floral than I expected. I like it."
Amity nodded in agreement. "I think all these pictures are Luz's memories. None of them have been burned yet, thankfully."
Gus, meanwhile, was apparently transfixed by one painting in particular. "No way! Is that what a human house actually looks like on the inside?" The boy rushed over to a tree that held a memory of Luz and her mother, Camila. The painting showed a snapshot of the two cooking together. Behind them, Luz's magic rectangle (What was it called? A phoon? Phun? Amity still wasn't sure, but it was something like that.) was plugged into a speaker system. As the illusionist ran towards the memory, he tripped on a root that was sticking out of the ground, sending him tumbling into the memory headfirst.
"Gus!" Willow called out in alarm, hurrying over to her friend, Amity following quickly behind. Just as Willow was about to dive into the painting after her fallen friend, Gus stuck his head out.
"You guys need to see this!" He said excitedly, motioning for the two to follow him into the memory.
Willow hopped over the edge of the painting and into the memory nearly immediately, crossing the divide with a reply of "Adventure, here I come!"
Amity paused before she followed her friends into the memory. She'd already done so much damage to Luz's mind. What if she managed to damage the ones that hadn't been ravaged by the fires yet? Before she could think about that any longer, Willow called out to her. "Amity! Are you coming or not?"
"Coming," Amity replied, before cautiously stepping into the memory.
All at once, her entire surroundings shifted. Grass was replaced with wood panel flooring, trees were replaced with the four walls of the Noceda family kitchen room, and the quiet of the forest was overtaken by the energetic music coming from the speaker system. The music was what caught Amity most off guard, as it was like nothing she'd ever heard before. The vocalist seemed to be singing in that language that Luz would occasionally bring out whenever she got particularly frustrated, though the singer was considerably less angry than when Luz used it. The backing instrumental was also intriguing, as if someone had taken a gui-scar and replaced the screams with less ear-grating noises.
Memory Luz and Memory Camila showed no inclination that they noticed the three intruders, as they kept cooking as if nothing was out of the ordinary and that there weren't three witches now occupying their kitchen.
Gus waved a hand in Memory Luz's face. "Hello, Isles to Luz. Anybody home?"
This drew no reaction from the younger version of the basilisk.
Gus then grew a little bolder, and booped Memory Luz on the nose.
Again, no reaction.
Shrugging, Gus shared his thoughts on what was going on. "So, we can touch things, but they don't react to us. Heh, weird."
To test out Gus' hypothesis, Willow grabbed a mixing bowl filled with dough and tried to move it around, but the bowl held fast, not moving no matter how hard the plant witch pulled or pushed. Amity similarly tried to pick up a baking tray to no avail.
"It's like everything has been glued down," Willow commented as she gave a yank on the door of the refrigerator, only for it to remain stuck.
The group then went silent, simply observing as the memory played younger version of Luz (Gus guesstimated that she was about 8 or 9 at the time) craned her neck over the kitchen counter as her mother was busy chopping a strange yellow fruit into slices.
"What are these called again, Mami? " Memory Luz asked, snatching one from the cutting board and examining it closer.
"These are plantains," her mother responded, "and we are going to use them to make maduros. We had them when Abuela visited a few weeks ago, remember?"
"Oh yeah!" Luz said, her eyes sparking in recognition. "Can I help, Mami ?"
Camila smiled. "Sure you can, lucecita. Wash your hands first, though. We don't want anyone getting sick do we?"
"Nope," Luz replied as she ran over to the sink to scrub up.
Suddenly, the memory seemed to get reset, with Luz now back at her mother's side and the plantain now unchopped.
Willow looked to her friends. "Did either of you guys do that?"
"No, I think the memory just did that on its own," Gus said, before adding, "somehow."
"I think we should probably move on," Amity suggested. "This memory isn't damaged it looks like, so we should focus on the ones that are instead."
"Yeah, I agree," Willow concurred. "Let's get moving."
Exiting the memory, the trio were back in the forest section of Luz's brain.
"While I would love to look into all of these memories, we've got a mission to do," Willow said to the others.
"Really, not even one more for fun?" Gus pleaded, giving his best puppy dog eyes like Luz had taught him.
They didn't work, though, as Willow replied with a simple., "No." She then added, "Now come on, we don't want to waste time."
And so, the group began their search, looking for any damaged memories. Hopefully they would be obvious to spot.
As it turns out, they were obvious to spot.
"Hey, guys? Come check this out," Willow called out to the other two. Before the plant witch was a memory tree, but this one was damaged. All forms of color had seemed to have vanished, leaving it a drab mix of blacks, grays, and whites instead of the color-filled trees surrounding it. The painting was also damaged, with nearly the entire painting having been burnt to ash.
"Is it safe?" Amity questioned.
Taking initiative, Willow stuck her arm through the painting, and then withdrew it without a scratch. She then shrugged. "Probably?"
"We'll never know if we never try though, right?" Amity replied, coming up to stand next to Willow.
"Yeah! Let's see what's on the other side of the weird, creepy, burn out tree!" Gus cheered from behind the two.
Inhaling and exhaling sharply, Willow said, "Alright, let's do this!" before diving into the memory without a second thought.
Coming out on the other side, this new memory took place in a human hospital. Three people occupied this memory: Luz, her mom, and her dad. Luz's father was resting in a bed, while Luz and Camila stood next to the bed on the side nearest the window.
Similar to the tree in the forest, everything in this memory seemed to have lost all of its color, only existing in various shades of black and white and gray. The trio searched for what could need to be fixed in the memory. All the medical equipment seemed to be in its proper place, so that wasn't it. Gus picked up a remote and pressed a few buttons to no avail. Willow tried opening and closing the curtains to let light into the room. Then, Amity spotted something peeking out from under the bed. It was some kind of gift, wrapped in cheery packaging with smiling suns and flowers on it. Reaching down, Amity picked up the gift. The weight of the gift, along with its proportions, felt oddly familiar.
Looking around, Amity noticed that Manny's hands were positioned in such a way that it looked like he was holding the gift in his hands. Slotting the package into his hands, color flooded back into the memory.
August 22, 2015 | Gravesfield Research Hospital | Gravesfield, CT
Luz wasn't stupid, despite what those mean kids at school would say. She was just distracted and couldn't make her brain focus on doing school stuff, and this was the cause of those distractions. As Papi laid in his hospital bed, he tried to make things not so bad by telling jokes and saying that everything was going to be okay, but Luz knew better. She might not have understood all the big fancy adult words that Mami and Dr. Martinez were using whenever they had those long talks, but she got the idea of what was going on.
For some reason that the smart doctor people couldn't figure out, Papi's body was slowly eating itself alive. That idea terrified Luz. Even worse, nothing the doctors were trying could make it stop. They had tried all sorts of treatments with long, complicated names that Luz couldn't remember. Some of them had seemed to help a little, like that one that made Papi go bald. Other treatments that the doctor people tried seemed to not do anything. Eventually, though, Papi had said that he didn't want to try any more treatments. He told Luz that he was going to "tough it out."
Now, though, Papi was stuck in the hospital, and the doctors had stuck him with all sorts of needles and tubes that made Luz's skin crawl at the sight.
"I saw this book at the old bookstore you always visit, and I thought you'd like it," Papi said as he held out the gift. His voice, normally a little too loud and energetic, was raspy and quiet.
Luz took the book from her father's outstretched hand and slowly unwrapped the packaging. The wrapping paper had tons of smiling suns and rainbows on it, drawing a small smile from the young girl.
The Good Witch Azura , the cover read, written by somebody called Mildred Featherwhyle. The cover art depicted a woman decked out in stereotypical witch attire. Robe, pointed hat, magic staff, the works. It wasn't a drab brown or black, though, but a white and purple color combo with specks of gold thrown in. The witch was flanked on both sides by an elderly woman with pale, wrinkly skin and a red robe on one side, and a dog-like creature with black fur on the other.
"I know you're more into fantasy and magic than sci-fi and space travel," Papi explained with a small smile as he repositioned himself in the hospital bed, propping himself up on his elbows. "I hope you like it."
Luz hugged the book close to her chest. Leaning over, she wrapped her free arm around Papi's neck. "I can't wait to read it with you when you get out of the hospital."
Papi slowly withdrew from the hug. "About that. Mi lucecita, I don't think I'll be leaving the hospital any time soon."
Luz frowned, the book in her hands all but forgotten. "What do you mean?"
Mami came to the rescue with the answer. "Luz, bebe . I know that you know that your father is sick, but Dr. Martinez and the others, they're saying… they're saying that –"
Manny finished for her. "My body isn't strong enough to keep fighting against whatever it is that's wrong."
Luz blinked, her mind refusing to process what she was hearing. "But, but you're my dad! You're invincible!"
Manny lightly chuckled. "I wish I was lucecita , I really wish I was. Hey, I want you to believe in me though. Remember that silly quote you love? What is it? 'If I believe in dinosaurs, then somewhere out there, dinosaurs believe in me'..."
"And if they believe in me, then I can believe in me," Luz said, completing the quote. She wasn't quite sure where exactly she had first heard it, but it had stuck with her. (Maybe it had been from one of those old baseball players Papi rooted for? Now wasn't the time for thinking about that, though.)
Fully sitting up, Manny motioned for Luz to come closer. When she was in range, he wrapped his arms around her in a hug. "Luz, mija , I want you to know that whatever you do, wherever you go, I want you to remember this: you are brave. You are strong. You are good. You matter. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise, alright? Can you promise me that?"
Breaking away from the hug, Luz slowly nodded, tears threatening to start streaming down her face at a moment's notice.
"I promise, dad."
Late June (maybe? Early July?), 2021 | The Mindscape of Luz Noceda
Willow stood motionless, doing her best to take in what she just saw. Looking at the other's she saw that Gus was nearly on the verge of tears. She knew that he had lost his mother at a young age, so this was probably bringing up some unpleasant memories. Amity, meanwhile, was simply frozen, having barely moved or said anything after leaving the memory.
Taking a shaky breath, Willow tried to compose herself. She was the brave one, after all. "I think we should get going. We've still got more memories to fix."
Gus sniffled and dabbed at his eyes with his undershirt. "Yeah, let's keep moving."
Amity still didn't respond, simply following after the two as they walked on.
Exiting the memory and traveling further into the forest, Willow scanned her surroundings, searching for the next memory for the group to repair. What she didn't expect to see was… something to be looking right back at her from the other side of the clearing. Noticing Willow and the others, the thing rushed over to the group. As it got closer, Willow could make out that it was Luz. Or, at least something that was trying to look like Luz. This was none other than the Inner Luz.
Oddly, Inner Luz seemed to be having an identity crisis. It was like she couldn't decide what form she wanted to be in. Her appearance was continually shifting, arms going from human to basilisk, legs merging into a tail and then separating, face twisting and morphing at a moment's notice.
Inner Luz didn't seem to notice the predicament, she was in though, as she approached the group. "Oh my gosh, I finally found you guys! I've been looking all over for you. What memory did you guys just… come… from." Her tone dropped as she noticed the dour look on everyone's face.
"The hospital one," Willow replied succinctly.
"Oh." Inner Luz forced a smile. "That is not a fun one to start off with, no siree."
"Are you… okay?" Amity slowly asked, finally speaking up.
"I'm fine. What would make you think I'm not fine?" Inner Luz replied quickly.
"Well, the real Luz has been acting weird lately," Willow answered, "so it seemed like the next logical step, ya know?"
The Inner Luz just blinked.
"How are you not falling over?" Gus asked suddenly.
The out of the blue question seemed to jar the Inner Luz out of whatever funk she was in. Her eyes flitted from person to person as she tried to come up with an explanation "I… uh… mind magic? I don't know. But, before we go any further, first thing's first: formal introductions!"
After clearing her throat, the Inner Luz composed herself by straightening her posture and then began a miniature speech. "Welcome to the mindscape of Luz Noceda. My name is Inner Luz, and I'll be helping you out on your little mission today. As you can probably guess, a few of the memories here have been… damaged, and as such will need some repairs. So, you guys are going to pitch in and help me fix this place up, right?"
"That sounds about right," Gus replied.
"Awesome!" Inner Luz replied. "Just a quick FYI, though: no touching memories that have a big lock and chain over them. I'm going to be dealing with those ones myself."
"Okay?" Willow said, though it was more of a question than a definitive statement.
"Sweet. Any other questions before I send you guys on your way to repairing these here memories?" Inner Luz asked as one final question, to which three heads shook no.
"How about we split up?" Gus suggested. "If we work in pairs instead of all together, we'll be able to cover twice as much ground."
"Good thinking, Gus," Amity commented. "How about… I work with Willow and you work with Inner Luz? Does that sound good to you all?"
"Fine by me," Willow replied.
"I'm cool with that," Gus said.
Inner Luz seemed to hesitate a second before responding. "Sure."
"Well, if we're going to be splitting up, how about Amity and I take the Demon Realm memories, while you two take the Human Realm ones?" Willow suggested to the group.
"If that means more exploring human culture, then count me in," Gus said.
"Amity?" Willow looked to the emerald haired witch. "Are you okay with that?"
"Yeah, that sounds like a good idea," she replied.
"If everything's decided, then I say we start now. We don't know how long Luz has before something really bad happens," Inner Luz said.
Splitting from the other two, Willow and Amity now were solely focused on being the repairwitches for Luz's Demon Realm memories only. Looking around, Amity spotted the first damaged memory for them to fix.
"Over there," she said, pointing in the direction of the monochrome tree.
Jogging over to it, with Willow close behind, Amity looked at the damaged painting. It depicted Luz and King huddled together somewhere, but the rest of the painting had been damaged beyond recognition.
Stepping into the memory, Willow and Amity found themselves in the Owl House, though it looked like a gorenado had just run through the place. The living room couch had been torn to shreds and then flipped over for good measure, and the feathers that had been stuffed into the cushions were now strewn about on the floor.
"Do you have any idea what we have to fix here?" Amity asked hopefully.
Willow shook her head. "Nope, no idea. It sure doesn't help that so much stuff is just broken."
"Yeah. Well, we might as well start looking. Something is bound to stand out," Amity replied.
Willow nodded. "Yup, let's get this fixed."
Looking around, Willow tried her best to find what was out of the ordinary for this memory. The particular snapshot of time this memory started with seemed to be during a conversation between Luz and King as they huddled around the remnants of the couch. Letting out a deep exhale, Willow studied the scene before her intently. Everything that was broken looked like it was broken realistically. Neither Luz nor King had "dropped" anything. For the life of her, Willow couldn't spot what was wrong here.
And then she noticed what was wrong here. It was so obvious that she had completely glossed over it: Luz was wearing King's collar. Laughing at how obvious it was, Willow motioned Amity over and pointed out the fix. Unclasping the collar, the plant witch placed it around King's neck and reconnected the red straps.
Color rushed in, signifying a successful memory repair, but the overall palette remained drab and cold. Outside, thunder roared and lightning flashed. The two watched as Memory Luz traced out the light glyph and then tapped it, the paper crumpling into a ball of light. When Memory Luz then celebrated her first spell, the two couldn't help but smile at seeing their friend so happy.
Once the memory started looping, Willow and Amity took it as their sign to head over to the next memory that needed repairing. After hopping out of the Storm memory, they passed numerous memories that were still intact. One that stood out to the two was a memory of Luz, in her basilisk form, slithering between two logs in the middle of some forest. Another that caught their attention was that of Luz, Eda, and King watching a show on the CB. Mr. Legume , Amity was pretty sure the show was based on the single frame she could see. (Of course, Mother would never have allowed Amity to watch such "unfettered rubbish" on the family CB, so she'd resorted to watching clips of it that people would post on Penstagram.)
Arriving at the next damaged memory, the duo stood before a painting of Willow, Luz, and Gus crowded around a plant glyph that was mid-sprout. Climbing into the memory, Willow offered her hand out to Amity to help her in. The young Blight accepted, hoisting herself inside.
Willow looked at the memory version of herself. It was odd, to say the least. Seeing her, but also not her, frozen in time gave her a weird feeling she couldn't quite describe. As she searched for what needed to be fixed, something else stuck out to her. The memory was wrong. Not in the fixing way, but it wasn't accurate to what Willow had actually experienced. The memory version of her was holding some sort of red-petaled flower, and Willow knew for a fact that that plant didn't exist on the Isles.
A look of confusion evident on her face, Willow carefully removed the red flower from her mirror copies' hand. The unknown flower had seven petals by her count, and the stem of the plant was covered in small thorns that pricked at her fingers as she rotated it.
"Whatcha got there?" Amity asked, motioning towards the mysterious flower.
"Something that shouldn't exist. Not here on the Isles, anyway," Willow replied.
"What? That doesn't make any sense," Amity commented.
Willow nodded in agreement. "That's what I'm thinking. The only way this thing could end up in Luz's memory is if Luz's actual memory of the event is wrong or distorted."
Amity's mind was racing with that revelation. If this memory of Luz's was incorrect, then what was to say that other memories weren't likewise altered. Doing her best to keep her cool, Amity simply replied with, "Huh, that's interesting."
""That still doesn't fix the memory, though," Willow stated. Searching for clues, the two looked for anything out of place in this memory.
Eventually, Willow spotted what was wrong with the memory, strange flower notwithstanding: one of the windows was open and not covered by those metal grates that Hooty had dropped down to protect Luz from the moonlight. Walking over, Willow yanked the grate down until it was flush with the bottom of the window frame.
Just as it had before, color returned to the memory, and it began playing out in front of Willow and Amity. Once the scene had run its course and looped back to the beginning, the two exited the memory. As the two touched back to the grass floor of the forest, Amity stopped Willow with a question.
"So, does Luz just… sprout a tail often? Or is that rare?" the abomination witch asked.
"I'm pretty sure that's the only time I've seen her do it by accident." Willow replied.
As the two searched for the next memory in need of fixing, they passed others that looked interesting, but all they could afford was a passing glance. Amity thought it was a shame, though, since she would have loved to see what happened in the memory of Luz holding a wooden bat. Or the memory of Luz and her parents dancing together in the living room of the Noceda house. Or the one where Luz and her father were doing… something with sausage links and a dress. They all looked so interesting! Nevertheless, the hunt for memories to fix took precedence.
As the two navigated through the maze of trees, they eventually found a memory that needed fixing. Unfortunately for Amity, this memory was one she herself was a part of, and that she could recall in perfect detail. She hoped Luz's recollection of the memory wasn't perfect, though. This memory was none other than the one detailing the trip to the Knee.
Standing next to the memory that had started it all, Amity felt a lump grow in her throat. She hoped that the replay would stop before the memory version of her turned into a blushing mess, but that was probably just wishful thinking on her part. There was probably no way she could convince Willow that this memory wasn't worth fixing, though, so it was time to set the record straight.
"This was the memory I was trying to get rid of," Amity said softly, ashamed of her actions and the absolute disaster they had led to.
"Look, Amity," Willow started, having noticed her friend's discomfort. "I don't care if this memory is embarrassing or makes you look stupid or anything like that, but whatever goes down in that memory, I won't judge. I promise."
"Really?" Amity replied hopefully, a look of disbelief on her face.
"Really," Willow emphasized. "Now, come one, let's fix one last memory."
With a shared look and a nod, the two dove into the painting.