Chapter Text
Lucía felt like a busker, sitting against the stone wall with a guitar in her lap, mindlessly strumming at the cords as she tried to perfectly tune each individual one. It didn’t matter if it was impossible. It was just something to help thoughtlessly pass the day behind the stand of “Human Collectibles” as Eda had haphazardly slapped on a board.
If they were back in the human world, you’d probably have to pay people to take the items that were assembled before them. Yeah, it was a scam: selling a toothbrush as a weapon of a forgotten human king or a broken clock that would count down the seconds to your death - which was honestly quite macabre at the time - but it was a profitable scam. Or, at least, it was.
Peddling phony items had been weighing on Lucía’s mind for a while and just recently had she started advertising everything for what they really were: a toothbrush for dental hygiene, a clock that was right twice a day, just normal human things people had never seen before.
It didn’t land to say the least. Now they were underselling and with the monthly "tax" looming on the horizon, she just wanted to jump back through the portal and run home to her mother.
Giggling snapped Lucía out of her mind’s death spiral and back to the reality of Bonesborough’s streets. Luz sat atop a stool as she wrestled with King in her lap, trying to tickle him as he struggled to squirm out of her grasp, groaning his usual fruitless commands for fealty and pleas of mercy.
Lucía smiled. At least some things pass the time better than others, she thought to herself.
She brushed her calloused fingers across the guitar again. This time the A cord was a bit too tight. As she reached to loosen it, Luz shouted, dropping off the stool and throwing King off her lap with a yelp, “HEY! GET BACK HERE, JERK!”
Lucía jumped to her feet, resting the guitar against the wall and grabbing her crimson bat, taking in the view before her. A short, cloaked form was running away from the stand and down the street, throwing glances behind them before disappearing into the rush hour of demonic traffic of the nearby thoroughfare.
Luz groused “they swiped something from off the table, I didn-“ Lucía was already sprinting after the thief, calling back to Luz, “watch the stall! I’ll be back soon,” before plunging into the sea of demons and witches herself.
Squeezing around cyclopes, beholders, and demons of all shapes, Lucía saw a small blur of black slip into a nearby alleyway. She leapt out of the mass of traffic and broke off again as her smudged and stained Converse slapped the small puddles of alleyway runoff.
The figure began to slow down as they threw another glance behind them. Their glowing red eyes widened in fear as they tried to pick up their pace, nearly tripping on an upturned portion of cobblestone. Catching themselves on a pallet resting against the wall, the figure pulled it to the ground, obstructing the path before Lucía as they continued down the alleyway in a much more desperate sprint.
She vaulted over the pallet with more ease than even she expected, causing the cloak to try again with a garbage can that she treated with even less of a struggle. Realizing their pursuer was still unabated, the figure stopped behind a massive bone fragment leaning against the wall. They began trying to pull it down, looking as though they’d nearly lift themselves off the ground before it began to tilt and crash downwards.
She cursed to herself quietly, realizing what she’d have to do to catch up to the thief. The bone shattered as it slammed into the opposing wall at a low angle to the ground. A bit too high to vault over again, Lucía dove headfirst beneath it and into a mouthful of alley water. The taste alone caused her to gag almost immediately.
Her hand grasped the figure's foot and triumph rippled throughout Lucía as she pulled with all her might, sending them plummeting down to join her on the sodden ground. She began the arduous task of getting up, using her bat to help along the way. Glancing down, she watched the individual writhe slightly in the puddle, realizing she must have knocked the wind out of them.
Once on her feet, she tried wiping the street water off her lips with her soaked sleeve, gaining no respite from the rancid crap. A burst of frustration caused her to slam the bat into the bone; this was NOT how her day was supposed to go. Unwittingly, she activated a glyph that had been pasted on like a preschooler’s art project. The barrel erupted in a ravenous gout of fire which certainly caught Lucía off guard before a distant light bulb clicked on in her head.
She leveled the bat towards the shoplifter who, miraculously, became much more cognizant with an ignited weapon immediately in their face. They panickily tried to crawl away before their back hit the wall. Realizing they had nowhere to go, they desperately raised their hands in a fearful display of resignation.
Lucía’s voice was a low growl, mimicking the subdued crackle of her bat, “whatever you took, I want it back.” There was a moment of hesitation from the individual, their anxious red eyes were the only thing visible beneath the cowl and they spoke more words than Lucía needed to hear. “NOW!” she spat, inching the burning weapon closer.
They removed something from the folds of their cloak, something white and heavy. It plunged into the pool of mire with a begrudgingly satisfying splash. She nudged it with the tip of her shoe, rolling it over. Was that a busted clothing iron?
She lowered her haphazard torch slightly, illuminating the dim face beneath the cowl as they instinctively recoiled. Their features were round and soft with a dull pink scar cutting across their chin. Their eyes echoed the color of her own bat, silently pleading, obviously on the course to tears. Suddenly, she realized why they were so much shorter than her.
“Mierda… you’re just a kid!” It was a ferocious gut punch that sent her recoiling back. She wavered for a moment, unmoving as she processed what she was doing. Dropping her weapon into the shallow puddle to extinguish the flames, she lowered herself, squatting down just above the water in front of the kid who looked like they were silently wishing to phase into the wall behind them.
She tried to make her voice as soft as she could, nearly a whisper, “Ok, look. I’m sorry I chased you, but you’re lucky you only took from us. Everything on that table is trash, but if you stole from someone else, they could’ve hurt you real bad.”
The kid’s eyes darted to the submerged bat and back to her. She pushed it a bit further away before reaching into her pocket. They put up their quaking hands again, wordlessly begging to not be hurt. Lucía put up her own in hopes of assuaging their fears.
She gripped the few snails in her pocket and placed them on the ground in front of her before continuing, “alright. I’m not gonna hurt you. Here’s some money so you don’t have to try and sell that piece of junk,” she backed off a bit further down the alley to let the kid out the way they came, raising her hands once more to show she wasn’t planning on doing anything before they left.
Frantically, they bolted from the wall and shot beneath the monstrous bone before running into the bustling street in a full sprint. Lucía looked down at the untouched coins sitting in the alley as the receding footsteps stamped through the puddles dotting the path. It wasn’t more than ten snails.
Lucía felt numb as she scooped up the change and picked up her bat, shaking it off as she ducked beneath the shattered bone. There was no point in bringing back that clothing iron now. It was beyond repair when they picked it up and there was no point in trying to sell it waterlogged.
She felt like she couldn’t breathe. What the hell was she doing? Chasing a kid through the streets and threatening them over a broken piece of literal garbage? What the hell would her own mother think of her if she were here? What would she have done if they didn’t give it up?
The taste of bitter cobblestone pushed these thoughts out of her mind. If the kid wasn’t going to use these snails, she might as well. Deciding to take the long way back to the stand, Lucía turned left, heading further down the crowded street.
Still uncomfortably soaked in Bonesborough’s runoff, Lucía navigated through a couple of thoroughfares before coming upon Morrigan’s, a small pub that would have most closely resembled a dive bar back in the human realm. She pulled the door open, ringing the small bell above but receiving no attention upon her arrival.
The room before her was utterly packed with bodies of patrons and employees alike. Rock-adjacent music blasted from the horrific jukebox like a chorus of a dozen shrieking wretches. It seemed like every voice fought for the title of “loudest dick in the room” amidst the laughter of the bar and shouts of victory and cries of defeat near the lagoon tables. It was a complete debacle that Lucía was in absolutely no mood for right now.
Taking a deep breath and steeling herself, she cut a straight path to the corner of the bar with a minifridge stocked full of variously colored glass bottles. Removing one labeled “Fearberry,” she flagged down the cephalopod bartender who’d just finished pouring out a drink for another patron.
As he slid down to her, she wordlessly placed the bottle and a five-snail coin on the counter. Grasping the glass in a tentacle and the coin in another, he wrenched the cap off using the edge of the bar before returning it and Lucía’s change of two snails.
His voice seemed to boom despite the din of the establishment, obviously accustomed to this bedlam, “man, did’ja crawl through the street to get here? You look miserable.” Lucía snatched the opened bottle and pocketed the change, storming out of the boisterous pub without a word and onto the relatively peaceful clamor of rush hour.
She was beyond happy to finally rid the awful taste of the chalky street from her mouth in favor of the bubbly sweetness of “Mr. Jitter’s Fearberry Soda!” When she first found this drink, she had scoffed at the corny label plastered around the unsettling shadowy figure that passed as their logo. However, after a sip, she realized it was reminiscent of a particular guava soda from her childhood. It’s been her stalwart drink ever since.
By the time Lucía made it back to the street corner she’d started on, she knocked back the rest of the pink, bubbly liquid and tossed the empty bottle into a pile of garbage nearby. But as she approached the now barren stand, a mixture of fear and curiosity was lit aflame within her stomach.
Jogging up to her little sister, who seemed gleefully unaware of the near-empty stand, Lucía struggled to find the right words, “Luz! What the he-… what happened! What the f-”
Before she had a chance to finish that mistake of a sentence, Luz seemed to burst with her all too familiar cheerfulness, “Hey! Don’t worry, nothing got stolen… I think,” the contrast in glee and thoughtfulness would have sent Lucía reeling had it been anyone other than her.
“But in any case, I sold the whole inventory! Look!” Luz presented a bulbous sack of coins, seemingly ready to erupt at any moment if it were held the wrong way. Peering around the awry pouch, Lucía could tell from her little sister’s smile that she was fishing for some sort of compliment.
Just before she could utter any sort of commendation, very much against the twisting feeling inside her stomach, Luz seemed to pop like the threatening pouch from an exciting realization, “oh! I also traded that ratty baseball cap for a sweet hat! Hang on.”
She ducked out of sight beneath the covered table, quickly emerging with a frighteningly white hat, wide-brimmed and conical like a classic witch's, adorning her head. Luz bubbled once more, “Just like Azura!”
Lucía’s cheeks burned as she pulled the brim over Luz’s eyes. “Hey!” she bleated, setting the hat back in place, “don’t be mad just because mine is cooler than yours.” The burning in Lucia’s face intensified into irritation as she hissed, “and what exactly is wrong with my beanie, twerp?”
“Other than it being soaked, nothing I guess. Geez. I was just joking anyways,” Luz handed her sister the pouch of coins as she began to close up shop, shaking King awake who groaned, lazily brushing her hand away.
Luz threw a more earnest glance her sister's way, "What happened, though? You look like when I supersoakered you after school." The subdued giggle she let out did not help her sister's current state.
Lucía idly tried to wring out the dampness in her beanie, “I don't want to talk about it. Besides, you still haven't told me how you sold everything off so quickly? I wasn’t gone for more than fifteen minutes, right?”
As she gathered up some candy wrappers beneath the table, Luz simply stated, “yeah, but It was 4 o’clock and the bankers were on their way home.”
Lucía recalled the group, fifteen or so basilisks that worked at the bank just around the corner. They did slither by their stall often enough for her to remember, but she couldn’t think of a single time they had bought anything. “And they just… bought… everything?”
“Yeah!" popped Luz, "I mean, it sort of turned into an auction I guess. They kept arguing with each other and a fight almost broke out at one point, but it worked out!”
Lucía watched her fold the tablecloth. What the hell did she do differently? She couldn’t fathom how her fourteen-year-old sister convinced a pit of snakes to buy an entire stall’s worth of human junk and the more she thought about it, the more of a headache she got.
As she packed up her guitar and some other trinkets that were left behind from the apparent rush, King slid off his makeshift throne of a ripped-up bath towel and crumpled paper with a yawn, moving to help Luz clean up. He added on, “It was funny, too. One of them bought a shovel for two hundred snails.”
Lucía couldn’t hear King’s laughter as she froze, hand tightly gripping her guitar case. She’d finally connected the dots. Hesitantly, she began, “Luz?”
“Yeah?”
“Did you… like, lie about what was here?”
Luz thought to herself for a moment. Long enough to give Lucía the answer she’d feared.
“I mean, it was more… an omission of truth, ya know?”
King piped up once again, “No, she just lied. She said a bucket was a battle helmet only a human could see through,” he snickered towards the end as he zipped up his little blue backpack.
Without missing a beat, Luz shot back, “HEY! Lucíana and I played with buckets on our heads all the time when we were kids! That wasn’t a complete lie.”
Their squabbling faded into the background as Lucía braced herself against the wall she’d been sitting at less than twenty minutes ago. She didn’t know why this was such a shock to her, or why she cared so much about it. The past month had been hard on them and they obviously weren’t selling nearly as well as when Eda was running the business.
Still, the wave of uneasiness washed over her like a chilling waterfall before she tried to steel herself once again, making up her mind. They probably had more than enough money for the next week and "tax" day so they could take a break from hawking. It would give Luz time to focus on her first days at Hexside and Lucía could get a chance to try and figure out how to explain ethics and that lying to customers is, well, bad.
Breaking up their argument, Lucía heaved her guitar case and turned around, “Well, we can head home early then. I’m sure Hooty is busy eating a bug colony or something. And since you guys did so well,” she tossed the coin pouch in her hand, “we’ll stop and get you both some crystal jelly.”
She couldn’t help but smile at the small celebration as Luz and King cheered. Lucía rolled her eyes, “Alright come on, I still gotta buy some tickets too, let’s go.”
Luz's enthusiasm plummeted as she grimaced slightly, rubbing the back of her head, “uh… about that, Lucíana…” she looked towards King for help who didn’t seem to notice, already marching down the street, humming blithely. “Willow sort of said she’d help me get ready for school the day of the concert… and that she’s too busy for any other day this week…”
Lucía’s stomach dropped as she got tangled in the web of what to say, “oh. Uh... alright.” She waited too long before continuing, “you’re sure?” The mental image of spending the day with her sister watching her favorite artist perform had been at the forefront of her mind for weeks. She never considered it wouldn’t come to fruition.
It was obvious this wasn’t easy for Luz either as she mustered up what she could with a pained expression, “Yeah, I wanted to talk to her about classes and tracks and everything,” she paused and looked like she was internally debating something before continuing, “I also haven’t seen her in a while.”
Guilt started to worm its way up Lucía’s throat, trying to choke the air out of her. She realized Luz really had given up a lot of time recently, trying to help her out with the stand and clearly taking away any opportunity to have fun with friends. “Yeah, of course. Not a problem” Lucía finally managed, instinctively trying to laugh for a breath of levity. Instead, it sounded like an apprehensive stifle.
Luz’s face betrayed a look of concern, “are you sure it’s alright? You said you were looking forward to it for a while.”
Lucía looked off down the street, trying her best to not give away any sort of melancholy, “yeah, manita, it’s all good. I didn’t want to make you feel like you were being dragged along anyway.” She summoned up a smile and rubbed her nose a bit as she turned to her little sister, “now come on, I don’t want to have to give Hooty a Heimlich again.”
Picking up a couple of bags, the two sisters made their way down the street, catching up to King who was already well on his way.
Well, at least Luz won’t see me fangirling. I’d never hear the end of that.