"-mity? Amity, are you okay? Can you hear me?"
The green-haired witch wasn't sure how much time had passed when Luz's soft, worried voice reached her through the loud, painful ringing in her ears.
Everything was still black around her, her eyelids felt too heavy to open them as the voice reached her through the darkness that surrounded her.
What exactly had just happened?
"I-" Amity groaned a bit and tried not to move too much. Her head was throbbing and her back hurt a bit—or maybe a lot—but she was also lying on top of something incredibly warm and comfortable that felt really nice. If the pain hadn't already made her not want to move, the fact that the ground beneath her felt so good would have been enough of a reason to just stay there all day. "I'm fine, just a bit dizzy," she mumbled. She still couldn't bring herself to open her eyes, but she also really didn't want Luz to worry about her. It was probably nothing anyway. "I landed on something surprisingly soft."
"Oh, did you now?"
The smug tone of Luz's voice and the fact that Amity finally realized how close the voice sounded to her made her come to a pretty embarrassing conclusion about what she was currently lying on, which immediately proved true when she finally managed to force her eyes open and the world around her became a bit less blurry.
She was on top of Luz.
'...of course.'
Amity's face turned scarlet, and for a moment, she silently hoped that whatever had just attacked them would kill her before she could die of her own embarrassment.
She was really doing extra well when it came to making herself look like a complete idiot in front of Luz today, wasn't she?
"Oh stars, I'm so sorry." Realizing where she was lying had made her wide awake again in a matter of seconds. "I- I didn't hurt you, did I?"
She tried to get up. Her face was so incredibly close to Luz's that their noses almost touched and Amity felt her cheeks grow redder and redder by the second. She could have leaned in and kissed her right then and there... but she didn't.
Now was not the time, and this wasn't exactly the ideal scenario for a romantic first kiss that she'd imagined, either.
Not that she'd imagined how she wanted their first kiss to go— more than a couple of times...
Luz shook her head.
"No, don't worry, I'm fine. But you did scare me quite a bit with the whole 'blacking out'-thing. You had me really worried for a second there. It looked like you took a pretty bad hit..."
The sweet look of concern in Luz's face almost made Amity forget she was trying to get up for a moment.
Dang it, how was this girl so perfect?
"I... Sorry about that."
Amity grinned at her crush sheepishly when she finally managed to sit up properly and moved off of Luz.
The green-haired witch then focused entirely too much on wiping a total of fours grass stalks off her clothes in order to not have to address what had just happened.
It took a moment for her to remember again why she'd fallen in the first place.
"Wait, what about the thing that just attacked us?"
She'd been so busy panicking about lying on top of Luz that she'd forgotten about that again right away after she'd remembered it the first time.
She looked around panicky, but couldn't make out any sign of immediate danger. That was good, at least.
...but she was still really confused.
"What exactly happened? I feel like I'm missing something here. How long was I out?"
Did she hit her head? That would explain the throbbing at least...
"Attacked isn't the right word I think," Luz replied, now also slowly sitting up. "I mean, it might have been an attack, but it was directed less at us and more at the door."
She gestured towards the wooden cabin.
Amity blinked, unsure how exactly she'd missed this before when she realized what her friend meant... there was now a gaping hole where the green door had been previously been. There were black burn marks all around the hole in the wooden wall.
"Oh."
"Yeah. This could have ended a lot worse if either of us had still been on top of the staircase." Luz sighed. "I was going to warn you, but it happened so fast that I didn't have the time to. I see some sort of fire, and boom! Next thing I know I'm lying in the grass and you're blacked out on top of me and not responding. I was... really scared for a second when you didn't reply." Luz swallowed audibly as her hand found Amity's. "If anything had happened to you because of that stupid hair clip, I'd never forgive myself."
For a moment, Amity just sat there, unmoving, because how exactly was she supposed to function properly while Luz was holding her hand?
It wasn't like they'd never held hands before, so how was she still panicking this much? Why was her heart beating so fast?
'Pull yourself together, you'll never be able to kiss her if you get this mushy over hand-holding.'
This was ridiculous.
She took a deep breath, and finally, she was able to formulate a proper sentence.
"Luz, I... it's okay, really. I'm fine."
There was nothing wrong with a little white lie, was there? She didn't want to make Luz upset, and while Amity had definitely felt better, she didn't feel that bad—this was nothing a healing spell and some pain killers could fix when she got... back home.
Amity froze in shock when she suddenly realized what what Luz had just said probably meant.
"The door's gone."
All color drained from Amity's face.
She stood up, her legs still a bit wobblier than she would have liked them to be, and half ran, half stumbled towards the cabin to take a look inside.
When she entered through where the door had previously been, nothing happened. She wasn't back home. She just stood inside a random rundown wooden cabin.
"Amity, what are you-" Luz stepped inside to see her friend sunken onto the floor, staring at some small green splinters in her hands that were now the only thing that remained of what had once been a magical portal. Luz kneeled down next to Amity and looked at her in slight confusion... and then it also dawned on Luz that they were in the actual cabin rather than back on the Boiling Isles. "...uh oh."
For a moment, the two of them just sat there in silence, taking in the weight of what had just happened and what it probably meant for them.
The door was gone. That meant their pathway to the Boiling Isles was gone. They couldn't go back.
Ever the optimist, Luz was desperately trying to find an explanation that would calm her and Amity down. Freaking out right now wouldn't help, especially since they didn't even know what had happened. Maybe it wasn't as bad as it looked?
"Maybe they just had to close the door for some reason and will open it again later? And even if that's not the case, I'm sure Eda and the others will be able to fix whatever problem they're having with it really soon."
Luz's smile didn't feel genuine, but she had to believe it was something like that. A temporary problem. Not forever.
If she didn't, she would have a mental breakdown, and this was neither the time nor the place for one.
She couldn't have... just found a place where she felt truly at home for the first time in her life and then have said place along with the wonderful friends she had there taken away from her forever only a few months after she'd first found it.
Amity gave her a skeptic look and sighed.
"Not to be a buzzkill, Luz, but usually when a door just gets closed, it involves fewer explosions." Amity reached for Luz's hand and ran her fingers over Luz's to calm herself down. It didn't work that well, but it did feel pretty nice. "Don't get me wrong, I... appreciate you trying to calm me down, I really do. But I'm afraid that probably won't work right now. Whatever happened that caused an explosion like that has to be pretty severe, and... our friends were on the other side of that door. My siblings, too. I just... what if... what if something happened to them? What if they're hurt?"
That was something else Luz hadn't wanted to think about.
"I... I'm sure they're okay. They can take care of themselves, right? Willow is crazy powerful, and Eda is the strongest witch on the Boiling Isles, after all. Whatever just happened, I'm sure they can handle it."
And she really did believe that. They'd gone through a lot of crazy stuff together. Enough to make Luz believe that their friends could handle whatever the Boiling Isles threw at them.
The confidence in her voice made Amity smile a bit.
"Yeah, okay, I guess you're right about that."
She squeezed Luz's hand again. Luz ruffled Amity's hair, and unlike with her siblings, Amity didn't mind. It was actually pretty relaxing when Luz did it.
"By the way, I was wrong. This is actually totally my hair clip."
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Luz grinned sheepishly as she put the small clip in her hair above her right eye. She was still 100% sure it wasn't actually her hair clip, but thinking about how Amity was now so far from home not only because of something as silly as a hair clip, but because of a hair clip that didn't even belong to Luz, made her feel really guilty, so of course she was going to wear it.
Also, the fact that Amity had followed her at all because of something like that was adorable and Luz wanted to treasure the memory of it forever.
"You're a dork, Luz." The green-haired witch chuckled a bit. 'But you're my dork,' she added in her head.
"Maybe so. But it looks like you're stuck with this dork for a little longer, huh? Too bad. I knew you just couldn't wait to get rid of me."
Luz winked at her.
Amity giggled.
"Oh no, the horror!"
That Amity was able to laugh at all in the current situation was honestly amazing, and it just made her love Luz even more.
...it had taken the green-haired witch until that moment to remember the explosion had screwed up her confession.
She sighed.
'This has to be some kind of record for the universe's worst timing.'
She was still going to tell Luz how she felt about her... but not right now.
Her heart wouldn't be in it when all she could think about was how their friends and her siblings were in danger and maybe injured, and how she couldn't get home anymore. She needed a bit of time to process everything before she could even think about saying anything romantic again.
"...you don't happen to have your scroll with you, do you?" Luz asked all of a sudden.
Amity thought for a moment.
"I... I think I do, actually. Hang on." She rummaged through her pockets until she pulled out the scroll. "Why?"
"I'm just thinking... if my phone worked in your realm, this might work in ours? I'm not sure, but it can't hurt to try, right?"
Luz gave her a small, encouraging smile.
"Hmmm..." Amity opened it, and while everything took ages to load – stars, the connection here was terrible –, Luz actually turned out to be right. It did work. "Nice work, Luz. I'm going to send everyone a message, maybe we can figure out what happened that way!"
Luz hadn't expected this to actually work... but that it did... maybe that meant something? Maybe there was magic in this world, after all, even if it wasn't a lot.
'This is really exciting!'
She should try casting a spell or two when they were somewhere they could be certain nobody was watching them.
Amity was meanwhile busy sending the same message to Gus, Willow and both of her siblings.
That this worked here would come in really handy.
'I'm with Luz. We're okay, but the door's gone, so now I can't come back. What happened?'
She didn't get an immediate reply from anyone.
"Whatever happened probably has them busy..."
Amity was still worried, and that they didn't immediately write back didn't make it any better, but there wasn't exactly anything she could do about it, and staring at the scroll all day wouldn't help... so she put it back into her pocket. It would inform her if—when—she got a reply from anyone. In the meantime, there was nothing they could do.
Suddenly, Luz's phone buzzed in her pocket—thankfully, except for a small crack at the top of the screen, it had survived the fall undamaged.
Luz unlocked it. It was a text from her mom.
She looked at the text, then at the time, and panicked.
'Can't wait to see you again!'
"Oh gosh I forgot I was supposed to be home in a couple of minutes!" The last twenty minutes had gone by in a blur, she'd lost track of time completely and had also just... of gotten that she was supposed to be going home at all for a moment. And despite the fact that they had deliberately sent her back a little earlier than necessary in case she'd be held up by anything, she was now slowly running out of time. "Mom's going to be so worried if I'm late, and she's going to start questioning where I was if I don't get home when the bus does!" She got up off the ground and offered Amity her hand to help her up as well. "Come on, we have to go!"
Amity stared at Luz's hand in confusion for a couple of seconds.
"We?"
"Well, yeah! I'm not just going to leave you here! We'll just- oh, I know! We'll tell her that you're a friend I met at camp, and ask her if you can stay for a sleepover! Someone will probably have replied until tomorrow, and then we'll see what we can do to get you back home."
Luz's never ending enthusiasm and optimism never failed to make Amity smile. There was something about Luz that said 'We can do this!' even in the most hopeless of situations, and that was just one of the things that Amity loved her so much for.
"I... I don't know. Isn't this kind is short notice?"
The green-haired witch rubbed the back of her neck. She was insanely nervous about meeting Luz's mom.
'What if she doesn't like me? What if she hates me? What if she forbids me from ever seeing Luz again, and then we have to hide our relationship from both of our parents and sneak around constantly and-'
Luz interrupted her friend's panic by putting a hand on her shoulder.
"I don't think she'll mind. I never have friends over. If anything, she's probably going to be super thrilled to meet you!" Luz smiled at Amity as she went to pick up her bag from the ground... Then she froze. "We have to do something about your ears."
How had she just completely forgotten about that?
The green-haired witch crossed her arms.
"What's wrong with my ears?"
"Nothing! I think you have very cute ears!" Amity blushed. Stars, everything Luz was saying today was making Amity's heart flutter – even more than usually. "But humans don't have pointy ears, so it's best if nobody sees them." Luz started rummaging through her bag until she pulled out a black beanie. "Here, that should work."
She handed it to Amity.
"Huh. Thanks."
Luz stared at Amity a little after she put the beanie on.
'Wow.'
She looked so good with it.
"...okay, you're keeping that one, you look way too cute in it for me to ever want it back."
Amity blushed even harder. She wasn't sure if she'd still be alive to return home the next day if Luz kept this up.
"I'm... thank you..."
"Just stating the truth."
Luz winked at her.
Okay, this was it. Amity was dying. She was officially dying.
"Now come on, we have to get going."
Amity cleared her throat.
"Yeah. Okay. Lead the way."
The only problem was that Luz couldn't really remember which way exactly they had to go. She roughly knew the direction her house was probably in, but she hadn't really paid much attention to which way she was going when she'd first followed Owlbert there.
That, and she was a bit distracted because of everything that had just happened—and she was also worried about Amity.
The green-haired witch had borrowed one of Luz's shirts since the explosion had burnt away part of the clothing on her back, and explaining that to Camila would have been difficult... and while Luz hadn't actually seen her back when she'd changed, she was pretty sure Amity was hurt.
She was doing a terrible job at hiding it, too—Luz caught her friend wincing every now and again as they walked.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
Amity crossed her arms and looked away.
"Fine. Really. Just really worried."
She still didn't want Luz to worry about her. They had more important things to worry about than Amity's minor injuries. And at least she was able to walk mostly steadily now, so it couldn't be that bad anyway.
Luz sighed.
"Alright, whatever you say."
Her tone made it pretty clear that she wasn't thrilled.
She looked around. They were finally out of the woods now, but Luz had missed the street she lived in by a few turns. At least she knew how to get home from here.
"Okay, now we have to go that way."
She pointed at the small coffee shop across the street. From there, it was just a left turn and a couple of minutes of walking to her house.
Amity nodded.
"Got it."
She immediately walked the way Luz had pointed—slightly confused by the small step and the sudden change of pavement, but since she didn't want to look stupid in front of Luz, she didn't comment on it.
"You know you don't have to lie to me, right?"
Luz sounded so hurt.
Amity's face fell.
Oh no. She hadn't meant to...
Luz wasn't even looking at her, instead looking left, then right, then left again... anywhere but at Amity. She wasn't even walking next to her anymore, but had instead stopped right before the small step.
That wasn't a good sign. Was she that mad at her?
Oh no...
"Luz, I'm-"
Luz was still standing at the side of the road, looking left and right to make sure there was no traffic before crossing. There was a car approaching, and it was already too close for them to cross before it reached them, but no traffic aside from that. They'd wait and cross the street after it passed by.
She lifted her head and had a small heart attack when she saw Amity standing in the middle of the road.
"Amity, watch out!"
It was mostly dumb luck combined with inhuman speed that Luz was able to pull Amity out of the way of the fast approaching car she'd just walked in front of before it hit her.
The person behind the wheel just honked and cursed angrily, not even stopping to check if they'd hurt anyone.
The two girls were both back on the sidewalk now, Amity still frozen in Luz's arms the same way she had been since Luz had pulled her off the street.
The human girl was shakily clinging to Amity—who was startled, but mostly just confused.
Luz touching Amity's back also hurt a little, but she was enjoying being hugged by her way too much to complain about that.
"What was that?"
That thing hadn't looked particularly dangerous—it had no teeth, its' eyes weren't glowing and it didn't even follow them when Luz had pulled Amity away from it—but whatever it was had really scared Luz. Was it some kind of monster? Should they have fought it?
"You can't just walk onto the street like that without making sure there's no traffic! What were you thinking?! "
Luz was freaking out, her heart beating rapidly out of her chest as she tried and failed to calm her breathing.
'Amity almost got hit by a car. Oh god. Oh god. Oh god.'
Amity rubbed the back of her neck and smiled sheepishly.
"...yeah, I have no idea what either of these things are." What made the situation even more confusing to Amity was that there were multiple similar monsters standing around them that she now noticed, but neither of them was moving, and Luz wasn't freaking out about them. Why was that? What was going on here?
Luz still refused to let go of her, so Amity just went with it put her arms around Luz as well, hoping to calm her down a little.
She really wanted to ask about the monster, but it felt kind of insensitive to do with how shaken Luz was.
"I... I'm sorry I scared you."
Luz just hugged her tighter and started sobbing.
"You didn't- I'm- Amity, you could have gotten really hurt. God, you could've died. I... of course you don't know what cars or streets are, I'm... We've barely been here for half an hour and you already almost... I'm so sorry. I'm horrible at looking out for you."
'This was my fault. If anything had happened to Amity...'
The thought of not seeing her for a couple of months had been enough to make her feel like she couldn't breathe. Losing Amity forever was completely unthinkable.
"Hey... hey, no, it's okay, I should have... I've never been here before. I should have known I need to be more careful and paid more attention to what you were doing." Luz crying was very high up on the list of things Amity couldn't take. Seeing her crush so upset really, really hurt, and knowing that it was her fault that Luz was crying made it infinitely worse. "It wasn't your fault, Luz."
"Yes it was!" Luz protested immediately.
She couldn't stop shaking.
"No." Amity hugged her tightly. "I was the one that wasn't being careful. But I'm okay – all thanks to you. You have nothing to feel guilty about."
Amity rubbed her friend's back gently, and Luz buried her head in Amity's shoulder.
"I'm sorry, I just... I need a minute."
Amity felt awful. She was mostly okay with the almost dying part—especially since nothing had actually happened, and she hadn't really known what was going on when it happened anyway, (and honestly she still didn't)—but the fact that she'd made Luz cry?
That killed her.
"Shhhh. It's okay. It's okay. I'm right here."
The human girl didn't even reply. She just hugged her tighter.
A few minutes passed until Luz moved again. She let go of Amity reluctantly and stared off into space for a couple more seconds after that, still shuddering at the memory and trying to shake the thought of what could have happened if she'd reacted a couple seconds too slow.
Amity ruffled her hair.
"Are you feeling a bit better?"
The human girl shook her head.
"Not really... but we'll be late if we don't get going right now." Luz wiped her tears away and reached for Amity's hand. "Mind if I-"
"Not at all."
The green-haired girl intertwined her fingers with Luz's trembling ones, and slowly, the shaking subsided a little.
Luz was still freaked out, but holding hands with Amity felt nice, and it calmed her down a little. It reminded her that Amity was still there, that she was okay, that nothing had happened to her.
They walked the rest of the way like that in silence, and neither of them let go again until they reached their destination.
"Here we are. Home sweet home."
There was something that made Luz weirdly happy about seeing the small house with its blue roof and white fence. It had been her safe haven for years, and even though it didn't quite feel like 'home' anymore—she imagined nothing could ever feel as much like home to her as the Boiling Isles did, because there, she felt like she actually belonged, which she never had in the human realm—there was still comfort in the wonderful familiarity of it all.
She couldn't wait to get to her room and open her computer to see if any of her favorite fanfics had updated.
Speaking of her room—she'd get to show Amity her room!
Luz was weirdly excited about that.
She still hadn't really processed what had happened earlier—truth be told, she was pretty sure that moment with Amity and the car would probably be haunting her nightmares for a while—but... they'd made it back to Luz's home. Amity was safe now. And Luz would make sure that nothing in this realm would ever threaten to hurt her friend again.
'We can listen to my favorite songs together and maybe cuddle and watch a movie, and—oh, oh, maybe we could read a fanfic together and do voices? Eeeek, we're going to have so much fun together!'
Maybe that was selfish, but a part of her was a little happy about whatever was going on with the door because it meant she'd get to spend an extra day with Amity before they'd figure out how to get her home tomorrow.
It distracted Luz a bit from how much she missed the others—that, and she also just loved spending time with Amity.
There were a lot more things in the human world that Luz would have liked to show Amity – too many to fit in a single day—but they'd make the most of the time they had, and maybe Amity could come visit this place again for a couple of days during the next school vacations so they could do more stuff.
When Luz turned to Amity, her friend was still staring at the house.
"It's not quite Blight Manor, huh?"
Luz rubbed the back of her neck and smiled sheepishly. Sometimes she forgot how rich Amity's parents were, and how underwhelming something as small as this had to be to her in comparison to the huge building she lived in.
"Exactly." Amity beamed at Luz. "It looks really cozy. It's perfect."
Luz squeezed her hand and smiled.
"You really think so?"
"Yeah. It's lovely." The house was really charming, and that it didn't remind her of her own home in the slightest was the greatest thing in the world. A lot of times, Amity had felt locked up at home with the high, thick walls... and she'd built very similar walls to the ones of Blight Manor around her heart after her parents had forced her to end her friendship with Willow. And there, in the middle of the walls, Amity had been sitting for the last several years, and hadn't let anyone get close to her again – locked up in a literal castle as well as one of her own construction, like a princess waiting for a knight in shining armor to come rescue her. Luz was less shining armor and more otter suits and weirdly cute tutu-tuxedo-combinations... And she was also exactly what Amity had needed to tear down her own walls and finally allow someone get close to her again. Luz really was Amity's 'fearless champion' – in more ways than the human girl probably realized. "We should get one of these somewhere on the Boiling Isles when we're older."
It took Amity a moment to realize she'd just said 'we'—then she panicked, her face losing a bit of color.
Thankfully, however, Luz didn't seem to notice it—and even if she had, there was something else that required her full attention a few seconds later, making her forget everything else that might or might not have been through her head previously.
Her mom had stepped out of the house and spotted her.
"Mom!"
Luz wasn't even sure what got into her, but she started running towards her and threw herself around her mother's neck.
"Mija!" Camila caught her daughter, chuckled and then hugged her tightly.
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"Mom... I... I missed you so much."
Gosh, she hadn't even realized how much she'd been longing for a hug from her mom until now. For about a minute, they just stood there embracing each other, neither of them saying a word.
Luz sobbed a little.
"I missed you, too, cariño. How was your trip home? There's so much I want to ask you. You have to tell me everything."
Amity couldn't help but watch awkwardly from a distance how Luz and her mother hugged happily and then started talking to each other excitedly in a language the green-haired witch didn't understand.
She felt a weird pang of pain and guilt in her stomach as she watched the two of them. She couldn't remember the last time her own parents had looked at her like that...
Amity felt tears welling up in her eyes.
She couldn't help but feel like she was intruding on something incredibly precious and private – something that should have just been between Luz and her mom.
She didn't belong here. She shouldn't be disturbing them... and yet, here she was, staring at them like an idiot.
A/N: Art is a commission done by Rocktell on Instagram!