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Had Luz been a few seconds later she would have completely missed Eda about to throw a familiar object into the waiting maw of the Owl House's fireplace.
" ¡Uy uy uy! What are you doing?!" She yelped, dashing to snatch the nearly doomed object from midair. "You can't throw this out just like that!"
"I mean, I was literally in the middle of doing just that, sooo…." Eda deadpanned with a shrug.
"But why would you want to throw this away?" Luz asked, taking a closer look at what she held; the guitar had obviously seen better days before Owlbert had gotten his claws on it, but it still had all six strings and the neck was firmly attached to the body.
"Why would I want to keep it? It's just a funky shaped lute with too few strings and a giant hole in the middle? Those things have been out of style since before I was your age."
"So a couple of centuries ago, then? Ha!" King laughed before a hexed pillow knocked him clean off where he'd been perched on the arm of the couch.
"It's not a lute, Eda, it's a guitar! Are you seriously telling me you guys don't have guitars here?!"
"Sure we do!" Eda grinned. "And you're holding it. Now, if you're not gonna feed the house with it, would you mind scooching aside? Inventory's getting full, and Mama needs room for more goodies." With a twirl of her finger, she moved Luz off to one side of the fireplace and resumed dividing her haul into keep and feed piles.
After coming to a stop, Luz eyed the instrument in her hands before returning to Eda.
"Soooo, since you were gonna just toss this anyway; could I keep it?"
"Sure kid, no skin off my ears," the witch answered distractedly.
"Yes!" Luz fist-pumped before running out of the house with her prize. She kept going until she wound up on a small hill with a smattering of trees that offered a gorgeous view of Bonesborough.
Plopping down at the base of the largest tree (after checking it wasn't sentient) Luz happily began the task of tuning each string.
The body had scratches all over, the varnish was completely gone in some places, and the fingerboard had some very obvious wear to it, but the frets remained and the keys stayed where she turned them, so Luz was content to keep plucking away until finally it was tuned to her satisfaction.
Content with her work, she nestled back against the tree, and began to play.
Amity stared down her target before casting her spell again. She felt her magic focus at the center of the circle, drawing the air inwards and freezing it solid before it swiftly launched forward and shattered against a boulder a good fifteen yards away from where she stood.
“Hmph,” the green haired witch pouted. She’d seen Lilith throw an icicle with such ferocity that it had pierced through a brick wall. Amity could barely scratch a boulder.
“Maybe if I try to make my ice denser…” she mumbled, taking aim again. She’d been at this most of the morning with no intention of stopping any time soon. This part of the isles was perfect for practicing physical spells; hardly anyone came this way and there was a plethora of boulders and tree stumps to use as targets.
The youngest Blight was focusing her magic once again, when she heard... something wafting along on the breeze. Allowing the spell to harmlessly release, Amity stood straight and strained her ears to see if she could pick out the strange sound again over the wind.
“I was sure I heard– there!” The young witch thought as she picked up the sounds again through the trees.
Without really waiting for a decision from her head, her feet began moving, treading towards whatever was making noises that flicked passed her ears like the flap of a bird's wing.
She's mere steps away from stepping back out of the woods when it occurs to Amity that perhaps whatever is calling to her is trying to entice her to her doom. Pausing to mull over the probability of such a thing, the young witch manages to stop at just the right point that she could see movement between the tree trunks before her. Leaning over for a better look, she spies an arm holding what looks like the top end of a staff on the far side of a large tree.
Cautiously moving to one side, the arm reveals itself to be attached to-
"Luz?" She called out in surprise.
Luz ceased what she was doing and looked her way, shock quickly giving way to glee on her face.
"Amity!" She replied happily, "What are you doing out here?"
Quickly hiding her surprise, Amity answered, "Practicing a few spells. What in the isles is that thing you’re holding?”
Laying across the human’s lap was a wooden-like object that looked like someone had taken a lute and squeezed it around the middle so that it now had more of an hourglass shape than the traditional egg one.
“This-” Luz exclaimed, holding the thing aloft, “-is a guitar! It’s a musical instrument from the Human Realm. Owlbert brought it over and Eda was just going to feed the house with it! Can you believe it?! It still plays just fine, and she was going to trash it. ¿Chiflado, sí? ”
Amity only understood part of that ramble– How in the isles do you feed a house? –but didn’t let her confusion show.
“So that’s what was making those sounds just now?” she remarked instead.
“ Opa , heard that, did’ya?” Luz blushed and for some reason that struck Amity as odd but she couldn’t place why. “Yeah, that was probably me. Eda let me keep it, so I ran out here to tune it and when I finally did I just started playing around.”
“Tuning it?” Amity had seen instruments before, even heard them played live, but she’d never indulged in actually learning to play one more complicated than the toy flute she’d had as a child.
“Yeah, the strings were all loose and-” the green haired girl’s confusion must have shown on her face, because Luz trailed off her explanation before brightening again. “-Ah! You guys might have a different word for it! Here, sit down, I’ll show you!” She patted the ground to her right.
Amity contemplated declining and returning to her practice… but she was due for a break; and she’d be lying if she said she wasn’t curious about the item that was simultaneously strange and familiar.
Luz being part of the equation was not a factor. Nope. Not at all.
So with all the decorum she could muster, Amity took a seat next to Luz, sitting at a slight angle so she could better see both of the human’s hands as she held the ‘guitar’.
And so Luz began explaining what tuning was and how one did it with a guitar, complete with a demonstration. She loosened a string and showed Amity how she would tighten it with its attached peg at the end of the ‘head’ of the guitar, repeatedly plucking the string until it made the ‘right sound’.
Personally, Amity couldn’t detect much of a difference towards the end between what Luz did and did not consider the right sound. She pondered whether humans had a finer sense of hearing than witches– laughable, given how much smaller their ears were –or if it was simply a result of Luz having a lot of practice with it.
As she wondered this, she focused less on what Luz– who had transitioned into what sounded like a cautionary tale of the dangers of tightening the pegs too much –was saying, and more on her appearance as she sat before her. The human held the guitar like she’d been doing it all her life, for sure, but something about it- about her - seemed a bit different today and Amity could not put her finger on what it was.
Was she more confident than usual? No, the human seemed to have a never ending well of confidence when it came to, well, anything . On anyone else, Amity knew it would have come off as cockiness, but something about Luz’s optimism managed to keep her from going that last step into arrogance.
“So no, it’s not that,” Amity thought. “If anything she seems less confident than–!” It struck her then that that was the difference! Staring at Luz, it became clear to the young Blight that while the human was obviously still excitedly going on about the instrument, her enthusiasm– while still ridiculously high –wasn’t as high as it usually was.
“Embarrassment! That’s what that look was earlier when she blushed!” She concluded. “But, why? She’s literally danced in front of a class smeared in abomination gunk without a single care before? That would have been too much for most to even consider, never mind actually do! So why would this– something she seems to be good at, no less –make her embarrassed?”
“-but it takes a lot of turning to even get to the point that the string would possibly break! Unless, you know, it’s a bad string, or has started to get really worn, or your pick is really sharp… but, I’m rambling, again,” Luz blushed, scratching the back of her head. “Anyway, that’s how you tune a guitar, and once you do, then you can do this!” Before Amity could even blink, Luz had her hands back in position and was flicking the strings over the body with her right hand while her left pressed and released the strings on the neck purposefully.
The music that flowed out wasn’t like anything Amity had heard before, the trees blocking and distorting the sound that had drawn her here far more than she had realized. Notes seemed to dance out of the instrument as easily as water trickled down a stream. Amity could do no more than stare transfixed as Luz played an unfamiliar melody like she was born with a guitar in her hand, smiling softly all the while.
It was...enchanting.
So much so that the Blight girl almost didn’t notice when the human finally stopped playing and started looking at Amity expectantly, almost bashfully.
“Sooooo…. What’d ya think?”
Amity’s mind went on a loop of, “Incredible, wonderful, amazing, you’re amazing-” for several seconds before she pulled herself together enough to ask, “Was that the same song you were playing earlier?”
“No, no, that… that was a different song,” Luz blushed, her eyes drifting away in another unusual display of self-consciousness. “That one goes like this.” Resetting her left hand, she began to play what Amity had heard before. It was a slightly slower song than what she had just been playing, but was somehow imbued with more… feeling, Amity guessed? To her shock and further wonder, after playing more of the song, Luz once again did something that surprised her.
She began to sing; softly, but firmly, keeping perfect time with the pace her fingers set.
“So goodnight you moonlight ladies,
Rockabye sweet baby James,
Deep greens and blues are the colors I choose,
Won't you let me go down in my dreams,
And rockabye sweet baby James”
As the last notes drifted away softly with the gentle breeze, Amity was overwhelmed by...something she didn’t really want to fully acknowledge as of yet, but was willing to allow for the time being. But eventually her eyes caught up with her ears and she realized that while Luz was smiling she also looked...sad?
“Luz… you okay?” Amity watched as the human’s smile became improbably softer.
“That… that was my dad’s favorite song,” Luz admitted, gently rubbing the guitar with her thumb.
“Your dad?” It occurred to the young witch at that moment that up until now she had never considered Luz having parents. Obviously Amity knew she must have them in some capacity or another, but she’d never given them a thought beyond the abstract. Who were Luz’s parents? Were they on the isles with her? Did they know where she was or even what she was doing?
Were they even still alive?
“He’s the one who taught me how to play,” Luz explained, oblivious to Amity’s sudden inner turmoil. “We used to play for hours at a time while Mami was at work. He could play any song just by hearing it once!” Her smile brightened for just a moment before dimming again with a sigh. “I miss him. He’s been gone for a while… then again, so have I…”
Amity was torn. On the one hand she desperately wanted to know what had happened to her dad, to the rest of her family, heck how did Luz even get to the isles in the first place?! Question after question stacked inside her mind but…
Luz looked so unhappy. As if the thought of her family was weighing her down. Amity couldn’t stand to be the cause of more sadness. Couldn’t stand to see her- the human, look so dejected.
She bit her tongue.
“So,” Amity asked, thinking quickly. “Know anything else?” She cringed. “Really? That’s the best you could come up with?”
Luz brought her eyes up to Amity’s for the first time in a while, and smiled in such a way that it seemed as though she knew exactly what the young Blight was trying to do.
“Sure; what kind of a song are you looking for?”
“Something that makes you smile,” Amity replied without thinking, immediately slapping her hands over her mouth in embarrassment.
Luz was polite enough not to comment, though she did look even more red than before for some reason. And so she began to play another song; a very silly number that had never failed to make her parents laugh when she used to play it.
When she finished that one, Amity asked for another, one that sounded "like a thunderstorm", Luz happily obliging. Back and forth they went, the green haired girl coming up with more and more abstract feelings just to see if the human actually had a song to match. Luz nailed each and every request and before the pair knew it, it was well into the afternoon. They probably would have kept going had their stomach’s emptiness not made themselves known.
“Whoa- is it that late already?” Amity gasped, hearing the distant tolling of Bonesborough’s clock tower.
“Aw man, I played right through lunch!” Luz moaned, smacking her forehead. “Not to mention I took up the rest of your spell practice! Sorry, Amity.”
“No-no, it’s fine, Luz! I-I had a good time,” Amity blushed, looking away.
“Really?” Luz beamed.
“Sure. You’re really good.”
Luz blushed and wiggled where she sat before leaping up, her usual exuberance seemingly restored.
They were about to part when Luz called out to Amity’s back.
“Hey uh, Amity? Since, you know, I took up most of your day, would you, I don’t know… like to join us for dinner at the Owl House? Eda’s making spector-ghetti with bits of not-dog in it! ...I have no idea what it actually is, or if i can even eat it; but her cooking hasn’t killed me yet, sooo… wanna come?”
Seconds passed as Amity mulled it over before turning back with a small smile.
“Yeah... I think I’d like that.”