Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You promise you’ll be cool?” Luz asked for what felt like the hundredth time and Eda rolled her eyes at her apprentice. 

“I’m always cool, Kid,” she assured, hooking a thumb to herself as she grinned wickedly. The fifteen-year-old’s face fell flat at that. From her place on the sofa, Lilith rolled her eyes at her sister as they received their fourth lecture on behaving. Rather, Eda received her fourth lecture, Lilith had only been required to hear the first one, which had mostly consisted of Luz begging her not to fight with Eda for the duration of her mother’s visit to the house. She promised she would try. 

Try being the keyword.

Her younger sister could just be so frustrating at times!

“Just… please, no crazy dangerous magic, or scams or…” she rushed to think of anything crazy that might happen while her mom was visiting. When they had finally gotten the portal back and she was able to return home she hadn’t been able to stay away. She had just missed everyone, her friends, girlfriend and all the residents of the Owl House so much she’d had to come clean to her mother, who had not been pleased, in a word. After using all the photos and video on her phone to convince her that it was all real and she hadn’t been kidnapped or was losing her mind, it had taken much more convincing and careful editing of her stories of her time in the Boiling Isles to convince her mother to let her return. It was all worth it, as now, she was a part-time resident of the Isles, weekends and vacation time spent running around with her friends getting into crazy magical shenanigans.

That she didn’t tell her mother about.

Her mother had agreed, on the condition that she finally come and see what the Boiling Isles was like that first weekend. She was also eager to meet all of Luz’s friends and the famous Eda that she talked about so much.

Luz was concerned, to say the least. She had been going through the house all morning, trying to make it appear as safe as she possibly could, which wasn’t much and she couldn’t do anything about Hooty but she hoped that everyone would be on their best behavior for the duration of the visit. 

A false hope she knew but she clung to it all the same. 

“Just…,” she trailed off, clenching and unclenching her hands as she groped for the right word.

“Try not to be yourself,” Lilith called helpfully and Eda glared at her over her shoulder. 

Luz made a face. She didn’t want to say that, she loved Eda but she knew her mom and she knew that the two would have very… conflicting personalities. 

To put it mildly. 

“Please, Eda! If my mom thinks this place is unsafe or….” She squeezed her hands together nervously.  

“Don’t worry, Kid. I’ll be on my best behavior. Ghoul scouts honor!” she held up two fingers to her forehead. Luz looked like she wanted to say something but just sighed and nodded. Eda carefully pretended not to hear her sister’s mumbled accusation of her never being a ghoul scout.  

“Yeah! Who wouldn’t love me? I’m adorable!” King shouted from the floor at their feet, chest puffed out and head high. Luz grinned down at him before reaching down to scoop him up. 

“Well, I’m counting on Amity to do the heavy lifting where charming is concerned. When I told Mami I had a girlfriend she almost fainted… you’ll do a great job too, King,” Luz assured and pressed a kiss to his head, making him giggle. She set him back on the ground before casting a quick glance at Lilith, who nodded. They had an agreement. 

She would do her absolute best to not fight with Eda or rise to any of her bait while Luz’s mother was here and in return, Luz would owe her a favor to be named later. 

Easily worth the cost in Luz’s opinion.

“Alright… I’m going to go get her. I’ll be back in like, ten minutes!” the teenager called before turning and sprinting out of the house. 

Once she was gone, King scurried into the kitchen, mumbling something about refreshments and Eda quickly turned to her sister and plopped herself down onto the couch beside her, jolting Lilith, who shot her a withering look before smoothing out her hair.

“So, what do you think this lady will be like?” she asked, unbothered by Lilith’s usual attitude. 

“I couldn’t even begin to guess. Luz has always spoken very highly of her and missed her very much before the portal was fixed,” she hummed, turning her gaze back to the book sitting open in her lap and casually turning a page. Eda rolled her eyes and snorted. 

“Well, yeah. It’s Luz we're talking about here, Lily. The kid never has a mean thing to say about anyone. This is her mom too.” 

“You’ve never had a shortage of ill-spirited things to say about our mother…,” Lilith mumbled as she flipped another page and her sister grunted.

“Our mother wasn’t like Luz’s…. I hope,” Eda grumbled the last part under her breath and that did make Lilith lookup. There were few things in all the demon realm the Clawthorne sisters could agree on but their mutual distaste for their mother was one of them.  

“Luz has been known to say the occasional ‘mean’ thing when provoked, I’m sure if her mother were anything like ours, she wouldn’t be saying anything nice about her and she never would have wanted to return to the human world so badly,” Lilith carefully reminded, which did seem to put her sister’s mind at ease. 

“Yeah… you’re right. Luz never has anything but nice stuff to say about her mom… other than that never understanding her stuff but really, whoever understood their teenager?” she snorted and Lilith nodded, the corner of her lips curling up. 

To that, she could wholeheartedly relate. Eda might have been the veritable black sheep of the family but Lilith hadn’t been spared their mother’s cold, calculated criticisms and ministrations, especially not after her sister had vanished into the Isles to be a wild witch. 

She was snapped out of her inner musings by a commotion outside the front door and Hooty talking up a storm to someone. 

Eda rolled her eyes and stood, quickly striding across the living room and swinging open the door, jerking him out of Camila Noceda’s face. 

“Hooty, leave ‘em alone!” she scolded the demon, who whined a little before slithering back into the door with a huff. 

“Mami, this is Eda!” Luz quickly introduced the bespectacled woman to her mentor. 

Camila had been told what to expect of course and she’d seen more than a few pictures and videos but it was still something else entirely to come face to face with the talking door and then the tall, gray-haired, and pointy-eared witch her daughter had been spending her summer with. 

“Nice to meetcha!” Eda grinned, the sun catching her one gold tooth as she held out a hand. 

“A pleasure,” Camila said after a brief moment of hesitation and gave the hand a shake. 

“Come on in!” Eda stood aside and Luz didn’t hesitate to dart inside, her mother following cautiously behind her, looking around at the eclectic house and the various, bizarre objects and knick-knacks that lined the walls. Her eyes were drawn immediately to the large wanted poster hanging over the couch and she stopped. Luz was quick to notice.

“Ahahaha, don’t mind that, it’s old, really old!” Luz waved her hands, looking at Eda desperately.

“Uh, yeah. Old…,” she said, unconvincingly and Camila’s eyes narrowed. 

“The charges against my sister were false and misplaced,” Lilith snapped her book closed and stood from the couch, drawing Camila’s gaze, causing both Eda and Luz to breathe a quick sigh of relief before Luz rushed over and held up a hand.

“Mom, this is Lilith Clawthorne. Eda’s older sister.”

“Nice to meet you.” Camila held out her hand and Lilith quickly took it, mouth halfway open to echo the sentiment when she felt a tingle run up her arm from their connected hands. She mentally shook it off and nodded.

“A pleasure to meet you. Luz speaks of you highly and often,” she said, for some reason, very aware of the tingling sensation in the fingers of her right hand wrapped around Camila Noceda’s. 

“Let me show you the house, Mom!” Luz grinned and grabbed her mother’s hand before pulling her into the kitchen where she could hear Luz introducing King.

Lilith looked down at her hand and flexed her fingers.

“What, did she get dirt on ya or something?” 

She looked up at Eda, who was looking at her curiously.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she scoffed and lowered her hand. Eda just hummed and followed the two humans into the kitchen.

Lilith frowned as she watched her sister disappear into the next room and glanced back down at her hand. 

How odd. 

~ ~

  Lilith nearly forgot all about Camila Noceda until Luz came barging into the house one gray and dreary Saturday evening with her mother and Amity in tow, making the witch look up from her place on the couch.

“Oh, hey Lilith!” Luz grinned as she trotted inside.

“Good evening, Luz, Amity. A pleasure to see you again, Ms. Noceda.” She nodded to her former apprentice and the older human, who smiled politely in return.

“Where’s Eda?” 

“She went to the market not long ago, she’ll be gone a while, something about a ‘hexes hold’ em tournament’…,” the older witch hummed, eyes turning back to the papers in her hand, pen in the other.   

“Oh… yeah, it’ll be a while…” Luz frowned, shoulders slumping. “She promised to make some kind of family recipe for us for dinner tonight,” Luz pouted. That snagged Lilith’s attention. Eda did little in the way of real cooking as their mother had, so she was more than a little curious about what she had promised to make for Amity, Luz, and her mother. 

“What did she promise you?” 

“Something called... Gristlehorn…?” Luz looked at her and a memory triggered in the back of the witch’s mind. Large, perfectly charred, and cooked meat that fell right off the bone and melted in her mouth. If she closed her eyes, she could smell it, even now. 

“Now, that’s something I haven’t heard in a long time…,” Lilith started, a wistful tone in her voice. 

“She said she got all the ingredients but I don’t even know what it is.” Luz frowned. 

“I’ve never heard of it either,” Amity looked at her curiously and Lilith couldn’t help but chuckle at the young witch.  

“No, I don’t imagine you would have. It’s a very old dish from the savage ages. Edalyn and I were born just after the start of the Emperor's reign, so it was something our parents made often from their own childhood that has fallen out of favor in the last twenty or so years,” she explained. “It's an animal, quite rare these days, in fact, I’m surprised Edalyn was able to find one…” 

“Oooh, now I really want to eat it.” Luz grinned and bounced excitedly. 

“Shouldn’t we wait for Eda?” Amity glanced at her practically vibrating girlfriend. Before she could answer, a loud explosion of thunder overhead rattled the house, and not a moment later the front door swung open, and Hooty stuck his head inside.

“Someone -ow, mind putting up the... Hoot, barrier?!” He squawked, squirming around. Lilith rushed to the open doorway, followed by the two teens.

“What is it, Mija?” Camila followed her daughter and glanced out at the rain.

“Well, instead of regular rain… here it’s, uh… boiling,” Luz explained and her mother’s eyes widened behind her glasses as she watched the steam that was beginning to rise from the ground and fill the air as boiling drops of water fell from the sky, light but building quickly.  

“Someone, please, hoot!” Hooty continued to wriggle painfully as boiling water fell.

“Yes, yes...” Lilith looked at the door. “Luz, you learned the glyph for the barrier, yes?” she turned to the human teen who nodded.

“Yeah but I don't have time to draw one big enough to go around the whole house.” She frowned and Lilith waved a hand. 

“You don’t need to, draw the largest one you can on paper and I will boost its power.”

“Do you have enough magic to do that?” Amity asked her, concerned. Lilith, unlike Eda, could still do magic but not even to half the extent she had been able to before. 

Lilith frowned and looked down at her hands for a long moment, heedless of the boiling rain still falling on the house. Once, casting such a spell would have been child's play, the magic would thrum under her skin so vivid and vibrant like a layer of muscle, strong and thick.

Now, she could barely feel it, a weakened, tepid pulse where once it had throbbed. 

A reminder, a consequence of her own actions. 

Her fingers curled into fists and she let them fall to her side. She didn’t have enough power to cast a lasting spell that would stand up to the rain for however many hours it took for the storm to pass. 

“No, I’ll need your assistance,” she said, looking at her former pupil whose face turned serious and she nodded before she turned her eyes back on Luz. “Quickly, Luz.”

Luz nodded and hurried up to her room to grab the poster paper she’d brought back from home for making large glyphs. 

“Hoot, ow! No rush!” Hooty continued to squawk and Lilith rolled her eyes. 

“We’re working on it, you infernal creature,” she grumbled. 

Luz hurried back fast enough and Amity cast a shield just large enough for the two of them to stand in. Lilith cast her own, pale blue spell circle flashing into existence.

“Quickly now,” she ushered them outside, leaving Camila standing in the doorway to watch as her daughter slapped down a large, orange glowing glyph paper on the ground just outside and the two witches quickly spun a pair of spell circles, augmenting the glyph's power and a pale orange, transparent shell of magic grew out of it and slowly covered the house. 

Hooty let out a sigh of relief as the rain stopped pelting him.

“Excellent work, both of you.” Lilith turned to the two teens who grinned at the praise before they returned to the house.

“No matter how many times I see you do that, it always surprises me…” Camila looked at her daughter, who grinned brightly back at her.

“Will Eda be okay?” Amity asked the eldest Clawthorne sister. 

“If she’s where I think she is, I’m sure she’ll be fine.” Lilith waved a hand. She had a very good idea of where her sister was and unlike the Owl House, most buildings in Bonesborough weren’t alive and didn’t need magical protection outside of what was already weaved into their brick walls. The local watering hole being one of them. 

“I guess I’m stuck here till the rain stops…,” Amity hummed, glancing out the still-open door at the rain and Luz wrapped an arm around her girlfriend's shoulders, tugging her in close, a grin splitting her lips.

“That’s not so bad.” She smiled knowingly and Amity’s cheeks pinked even as she smiled back. 

A loud throat clearing made them jump to look up at Camila, who was looking at them with a knowing and bemused look and Luz quickly whipped her arm off Amity’s shoulder and put a decent amount of distance between them, face flushed as her mother looked at her like that. Lilith carefully covered up her laugh behind her hand and a very, fake-sounding, cough. 

“Well, you were all promised dinner and you can’t leave now, so I suppose we’ll have it,” Lilith, thankfully, changed the subject and made Camila turn to the dark-haired witch.

“You can cook? You’ve never cooked before.” Luz asked and Lilith’s pale cheeks colored. 

“Cooking has never been my… area of expertise…,” she admitted after a moment. “ But this, I do know how to make.” She held up a finger and smiled, self-assured in that. 

“Ooh, can we help?” Luz bounced on her toes excitedly as both Amity and her mother eyed her with bemusement. 

“I suppose I could use some assistance in preparing ingredients…,” Before she could even finish the thought, Luz was rushing into the kitchen with a grin.

“I’m on it!” she said before Amity quickly rushed in after her. 

“You don’t even know what you’re supposed to be doing, Luz!” She called after her overly excited girlfriend, still riding the high of having successfully erected the barrier over the house.

“Amity is a good girl… and very good for Luz,” Camila’s voice broke the momentary quiet that had settled over them once the girls had disappeared into the kitchen, the sound of pots clinking and clanking together as Luz, no doubt, tore through the kitchen like a B-5 gorenado. 

“Yes… she is surprisingly good for Amity as well… in different ways…,” Lilith hummed and Camila made an agreeing sound before a much louder crash echoed through the house, making Lilith wince and Camila grimace.

“I’m fine!” Luz’s voice called, followed by Amity’s, confirming that she was, mostly, fine. Camila sighed.

“Mija…,” she mumbled under her breath.

“I believe that means I need to take over now…,” Lilith huffed and hurried into the kitchen before anything could be set ablaze… again.

~

“It’s been quite some time since I prepared this…,” Lilith trailed off as Luz and Amity handed over cutting boards piled high with scarrots and paintatoes for her to pour into the roasting pan around the large, de-feathered, six-legged beast in the pan. Luz couldn’t help but wonder if she’d seen it before on the Isles… but still alive and with all its skin and junk.

“It looks tasty already…” Luz practically drooled as she watched it go into the oven. 

“It’s raw…,” Amity reminded, rolling her eyes at the girl even as she smiled at her.  

“Still…!”

“It will be about an hour before it’s done.” Lilith turned to them once everything was set and the little owl timer that sat atop the oven was quietly ticking away.

“Oh, I need to show you what I brought you from home.” Luz turned to Amity, who immediately lit up at the idea of Luz getting her something but quickly tried to temper her enthusiasm, schooling her face, though not before both adults in the room had gotten a good look at the giddy delight that lit up her eyes.

“Okay,” she smiled and Luz’s eyes flickered up to her mother, who nodded, trying her hardest to smother her smile as Luz grabbed the young witch’s hand and all but dragged her out of the kitchen and thumped up the stairs.

Once the teens had vanished the kitchen was filled with a heavy silence, broken up only by the gentle ticking of the timer. Lilith glanced over at the older human as she tried to think of something to say. Luz had come over every weekend and long break from human school she could over the last three months but this was only the third time Camila had accompanied her and she’d never elected to go to the human world with Eda when Luz had offered to show them around her hometown. She had little interest in such things, so her ability to converse with Luz’s mother was far more…. lacking, then Eda’s. For once, she very much missed her sister’s loud and incessant ways. Things never had a chance to become quiet and awkward with Eda around.

“Would you… like some tea?” Lilith asked after a moment, making Camila turn to her and nod.

“That would be lovely, thank you.” She nodded and Lilith busied herself with setting up the kettle as the other woman settled at the table and listened to the faint sound of boiling rain pattering against the barrier outside and the occasional rumble of thunder.

Lilith poured the tea into two, mismatched and chipped saucers. Her sister’s idea of fine place ware. She gave Camila the far less chipped of the two. 

“Forgive the… worn-ness of the cups. Before Luz arrived, my sister didn’t exactly get much company,” Lilith said as she set the cups down on the table and sat herself across from Camila whose lips curled up as she nodded in understanding. 

“Luz seemed to imply the same thing and having got to know her a little myself, she can be…,” Camila trailed off at that but Lilith smirked behind her cup at the hesitation in her voice. She already knew what the other woman was hesitating to say. 

“Crude, aggravating, vexing?” Lilith offered and couldn’t help but grin further to herself at the way Camila’s lips twitched upward in clear amusement. 

“Eclectic…,” was the diplomatic answer that Camila offered instead, and Lilith bit back her snort by taking a long drink of the steaming, dark liquid in her cup but her grin was very much visible. 

“That’s one way of putting it,” Lilith agreed as her eyes roamed around the kitchen over the rim of her cup at the plethora of odds and ends sitting on the shelves or hanging from the walls. 

“Luz has told me that Eda makes a living selling human paraphernalia in the market, and I caught her digging through our garbage one day... but she hasn’t talked about you much. What do you do?” She asked curiously and Lilith frowned as she set her cup down, clinking softly against her saucer. 

“I was once the leader of the Emperor’s coven,” she answered and even as she said it, it left a bitter taste in her mouth. All the time she had wasted laboring under a lie. She knew she had no one to blame but herself though. She’d let youthful selfishness and pride guide her hand, ending in a curse that had been so much more than she had ever intended it to be. She’d done irreparable damage to her sister’s life and wasted so much of her own in the process. Literal decades washed down the drain and nothing could be done to get them back.

She took a deep breath as the overwhelming guilt washed over her in waves that threatened to drown her. She and Eda had had a long and tense talk that lasted till sun up after sending Luz to bed that first night after escaping petrification.

Forgiveness was not just given, it had to be earned and while taking half the curse and negating the transformation aspect of it had been a start, she would need to earn her sister's total forgiveness. Something Eda sometimes took far too much pleasure in by pulling the ‘cursed’ card at any slight inconvenience and as petty as she could sometimes be with it, she was totally in the right, so Lilith sucked it up and did as was asked of her. 

“Luz told me some about these ‘coven systems’ and the Isles and such but she goes off on such wild tangents sometimes I’m not sure what all is true and what is her adding dramatic flourishes…,” Camila sighed, exasperated but with very obvious affection for her daughter’s ways. 

“Well, if you have questions, I’d be happy to answer them to the best of my ability,” she offered and Camila made a contemplative face.

“Luz told me there's a healing coven, I was curious about them…,” she started, unsure and Lilith nodded.

“Ah, yes. Luz mentioned you were a healer yourself.” “A nurse,” Camila corrected and Lilith’s head titled ever so slightly with her confusion at the unfamiliar word.

“A type of healer, yes, I suppose you could call it that,” she agreed and Lilith nodded before going into detail about the healing coven and the various projects they had been working on. As the head of the Emperor’s coven, she’d been over the other coven heads and their various projects, keeping tabs on them for the Emperor, so she knew more than most who weren’t part of the coven. 

Occasionally Camila asked a question about the limits of magic’s ability to heal or various other magic questions that eventually had them leaping between subjects and easy conversation. Lilith was surprised by how easily the conversation flowed between them, 

She would be the first to admit that between the two Clawthorne sisters, it had always been Eda who had the natural talent to make friends and charm her way into people's good graces. She herself had always been more reserved and…. Well, a wallflower, when she wasn’t playing grudgby. Eda had been her only real friend through school but she had friends of her own she liked to spend time with and she didn’t like to get Lilith involved in her… less than school-sanctioned activities. Things hadn’t really gotten better as an adult and she had channeled all her energy into the coven and getting a cure for her sister. She had neglected any and all other kinds of relationships, romantic and platonic, burying herself in her work.

She could hardly remember the last time she had sat and talked with someone else close to her own age about anything that wasn’t coven work, well the paperwork or general running of the coven at any rate. It was strange but also very pleasant? 

Given everything she knew about humans, which wasn’t much admittedly, she had rather expected Luz’s mother to be somewhat like her. She’d been proven wrong at every turn so far. Camila Noceda was a calm, well-thought-out individual and Lilith found herself rather fascinated by her own tales of how humans performed healing as well as her questions about magic. 

Before she knew it, she was in the middle of explaining the basics of circle casting when the timer chimed, making them both jump and look.

“Ah, the food is ready…” Lilith stood and moved to the oven while Camila looked at her watch to see that an hour really had passed already in conversation with Lilith. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had a conversation with another adult for that long that wasn’t work-related. She did have many questions about the Boiling Isles though. Luz was happy to answer any she had but she occasionally hesitated on certain things and while she’d asked Eda as well, the wily, gray-haired witch was a sly trickster and Camila knew it. She answered everything with a smoothness that reeked of being carefully planned in advance. She could tell that the witch cared very much for her daughter and vice versa but she could tell that they weren’t always telling her the whole truth.

Speaking off… she realized that Luz and Amity had gone upstairs some time ago and yet to come back down. She frowned as her mother senses tingled and she stood from the table and slipped out of the kitchen silently. 

The next time Lilith turned around she was alone in the kitchen and frowned in mild disappointment that the other woman had left without a word, until she heard the loud screech from upstairs that made her jump, followed by Luz yelling in that human tongue that she didn't understand. 

There was a loud commotion on the stairs before Luz and Amity reappeared in the kitchen, both bright, red-faced, and slightly rumpled looking. Lilith cocked a brow till she caught sight of the speckling of bruises forming on Luz’s collar, peeking out from the neckline of her shirt when she moved and understood what all the screeching was about. She smirked slyly at the two and if possible they turned even redder. Amity’s ears drooped with embarrassment, especially as Luz’s mother came back into the kitchen behind them, giving the two a knowing look. 

“Please don’t mention this to Eda…,” Luz all but hissed at her. Lilith acquiesced with a simple nod, though she couldn’t completely wipe the knowing grin from her face, and motioned to the table where she’d set the large, cooked creature and while she still looked wholly embarrassed, she could hear the human teen’s stomach growl as the delectable smell wafted through the air to her. 

Dinner was delicious, if not a little awkward with neither Luz nor Amity making eye contact with either adult or each other if they didn’t have to. When the food was gone they quickly excused themselves but before the two teens could slink away, Camila called out without looking at either as they stopped in the doorway to the living room.  

“Puerta abierta, Luz," she said evenly and Lilith watched as the teen’s shoulders hugged her neck.

“Si, Mami…” was the low and embarrassed reply before the two teens hurried up the stairs and once they had vanished, Camila sighed tiredly.

“I never thought that was something I would have to worry about with Luz…,” Camila mumbled to herself and Lilith couldn’t help but chuckle under her breath, drawing Camila’s eyes to her.

“I never expected such behavior from Amity either… but I suppose all teenagers really are the same in some regards,” she hummed more to herself than to Camila as she picked up her cup, filled with fresh tea and took a drink but when she looked up the other woman was staring quietly into her cup at her reflection in the dark beverage. 

“It sounds horrible to say but I don’t think I’ve ever been so relieved as to catch my daughter making out with her girlfriend…” 

Lilith choked on the mouthful of tea, almost spewing it across the table but at the last moment managed to swallow it, not all of it going down the correct way and she hacked on the hot liquid that seared her lungs. Camila hurried around the table and gently slapped her back to try and help dislodge the liquid.    

“I’m fine, I’m fine…,” Lilith wheezed, trying to quickly collect her dignity. “I just… I didn’t expect that was all,” she admitted and Camila chuckled quietly to herself. 

“No, I suppose not…” she paused, frowning as she looked over her shoulder as if to be assured the two teens really had gone upstairs. “Luz never had any friends growing up. She was always a little too... “ she groped for the right word, “...different,” she finally settled on. “I always worried that she would always be alone, that her hobbies and interests would keep her from forming real relationships with real people. It’s why I sent her to summer camp… though, she never got there…,” she said, looking around at the very chaotically decorated kitchen for emphasis and Lilith hummed.

“I’d say Luz is very well assimilated to life here in the Isles. She's the only living glyph master in hundreds of years and were she not a human, no one would ever even look twice at her,” she said easily and a small smile pulled at Camila’s face at that.

“She does love it here and she’s never been so happy, all she talks about anymore is this place and all her friends…,” Camila hummed, wrapping her fingers around the cup, if for no other reason than something to do with her hands. “She comes home from school and seems miserable until she talks to her friends or Amity on that… crystal ball.” It was still strange for her to say such a thing. “She seems to like going to school here more than she ever did back home…”

“Despite my sister’s influence, she does very much enjoy attending Hexside. She and Amity both share a certain fervor for learning, though in different ways…” 

“Can I ask you something?” Camila asked suddenly and Lilith cocked a brow but nodded. 

“How dangerous is it really here?” she asked and Lilith froze at the question, catching Camila’s eye, and swallowed thickly. She chewed it over for a long minute, thinking, before deciding on the truth.

“From the way its been described to me, no more dangerous than the human world…,” she started and the look on Camila’s face said that she did not believe her at all. “Allow me to finish…” Her lips quirked upward and Camila looked ever so slightly embarrassed at not allowing her to finish. She nodded, motioning for her to go ahead.

“We have all manner of plants and animals that can and will eat you or poison you at any given opportunity, but from what Luz and Edalyn have said, the human world is not without its dangers as well. These.. .cars…,” she pronounced the foreign word much too harshly and it was all Camila could do not to chuckle. “They are a part of everyday life in the human world but can be very dangerous if not navigated correctly, yes?” she asked and the human nodded. “Things here in the Isles are much the same. Everything is simply a part of everyday life, one must just learn to watch their step and be aware of their surroundings,” she offered and looked at the other woman across from her, who slowly began to nod.

“I hadn’t thought of it that way,” she admitted. “Everything here is so different and new to me… while Luz seems perfectly at home…” 

“She has taken to it remarkably well…” Lilith nodded. “Though, from what I’ve been told she was a little shaken at first as well.” 

“Eda said you had only moved in recently after leaving the… coven?” she asked, unsure and Lilith fought to keep the grimace off her face and nodded.

“Yes, I decided it was… time for a change in trajectory.” There was no need to tell Camila about her cursing her own sister right now. It would come up at some point no doubt. It was when the silence followed that Lilith realized she could no longer hear the patter of rain on the barrier. She stood and looked out the window and could no longer see the tell-tale rise of steam coming off the barrier. 

“The rain has stopped, for the moment at least,” she hummed and heard the scraping sound of the chair on the kitchen floor as Camila stood.

“I should get going then…,” she said and Lilith nodded as they moved into the living room and Camila called up the stairs. “¡Mija, me voy!” she called, and then Luz was trampling down the stairs and throwing herself into her mother’s arms with a bright smile. 

“Adios, Mami, I’ll see you tomorrow night,” she mumbled from her place pressed against her mother’s chest. Camila smiled and pressed a kiss to her daughter's head.  

Lilith caught a flash of green from the corner of her eye as Amity peeked around the corner at the top of the stairs and Lilith smirked. No doubt the young witch was still embarrassed by earlier. Camila hugged her daughter tightly before looking up the stairs and catching Amity’s eye. Even from here, Lilith could see her pink cheeks, as could Camila. 

“Buenas Noches, Amity,” she called, knowing full well that Luz had been teaching the girl Spanish.

“B-Buenas noches, señora Noceda?” Her accent was choppy and thick, voice unsure but the way Luz lit up when she turned to her told them all that had been correct.

“That was great, Amity!” Luz squealed before she went clamoring back up the stairs to her girlfriend’s side and Camila smiled fondly as she moved out the door with Lilith, who created an opening in the barrier for her to get to the portal that had been placed, poorly, outside the house recently.

“It was a shame Eda couldn’t join us, especially since dinner was her idea,” Camila said as they stopped just outside the portal door. Lilith snorted to herself.

“I’m sure she will make it up to Luz, in her own way…,” she said, folding her arms behind her back and Camila nodded, turning her eyes on Lilith. 

“I’m sure she will. Luz always speaks highly of her, it was nice to get a chance to speak with you more though,” she said and Lilith blinked owlishly at her and felt a pleasant little plume of heat in her stomach at that. Odd.

“Oh… well, yes, it was nice to speak to you as well…” she nodded awkwardly and Camila smiled before turning and walking through the portal. 

“Have a nice evening, Lilith.” she held up a hand.

“A pleasant evening to you as well, Camila.”

Once the human had gone and the portal dimmed, Lilith hummed to herself. She could still feel the pleasant tingle of warmth that the other woman’s words had brought and smiled to herself. Maybe she wasn’t completely inept at engaging in casual social interactions after all.

Chapter Text

It was only about a month later when Lilith would have her next encounter of the human kind. 

“This is it... I’m dying…,” Eda’s nasally voice piped up from where she was lying curled up in her nest. “Luz gets my staff and Hooty gets King…,” she trailed off drowsily. 

“WHAT!?” King screeched from his place at Lilith’s feet next to the nest. 

“You’re not dying, Edalyn. You just have a mild case of dragon-hay fever,” she grumbled as the Owl Lady continued to moan and groan from her bed while Lilith rolled her eyes. 

“If ANYTHING, I should get HIM!” King was still screeching and stomping his foot.

“You want him?” Lilith cocked a brow at the little demon having a hissy fit at her feet.

“.....No but it’s the principle!” He shook a fist at her and she huffed before getting Eda squared away with some water and tucked under her blankets. She was still grumbling to herself when Hooty poked his head in the window.

“Hoot! Amity’s here!” He announced and Lilith frowned. 

“Luz isn’t here this weekend, what is Amity doing here?” She looked at the owl demon with narrowed eyes before he slithered back out the open window and from her bed, Eda threw an arm over her eyes and groaned.

“Crud, I was supposed to go with little Blight to the human world and do some kind of plumpkin thing with the kid…”

“Plumpkin?” Lilith repeated under her breath.

“Yeah, a plumpkin patch… I dunno,” she grumbled. “Some kind of date. Little Blight’s only been to the human world once or twice, she’s gotta have someone take her…”

“Well, you’re in no condition to go now…” The elder witch planted a hand on her hip as she looked down at her sister, curled into a ball just as a timid knock came from the door and after Lilith called for her to enter, Amity stuck her head in the door. 

“Are you ready to go, Eda?” she asked and the gray-maned witch managed to sit up enough to look at Amity as she wiped away the snot dripping from her nose with the back of her hand, making the other two witches cringe as she snorted. 

“I ain't gonna be able to take you today, Kid.” she croaked and Amity’s face fell but before she could say a word, Eda waved a hand lazily. “Don’t worry your tiny green head,” she grumbled. “Lily will take you,” she said and Lilith jumped, eyes snapping to her sister.

“Since when?!”

“Since you cursed me.” was the simple answer as she flopped back into her nest and pulled the blanket up over her head. “Besides, you wanna disappoint the love-birds?” her sister's muffled voice drifted out from beneath the blanket.

Lilith glanced over at her former apprentice’s face and the disappointment that she tried to conceal beneath. Despite what she knew it seemed, Amity had been her student for years and Lilith cared about the girl. She had never intended to get her involved in her and Eda’s little tiff at the covention but Eda just had a way of bringing out her worst side at times and she’d wanted to best her no matter what. She’d made her apologies to Amity and they were working on it, much like every other relationship in Lilith’s life but she could stand to do a little more.

“Very well, I will accompany you to the human world.” she nodded and Amity’s face lit up. 

“You’re going to have to change…,” Eda’s low, nasally voice echoed out from under her blankets and Lilith looked down at her usual dress. 

“What’s wrong with what I have on?” 

~ 

A cool breeze buffeted them as they stepped through the portal onto the porch of the old rundown shack in the woods that served as the portal's entry and exit point in the human realm. It sent the ends of Amity’s magenta scarf fluttering and cut sharply through the holes in the thick, mustard-colored, cable-knit cardigan Lilith had been forced into over a black turtleneck and matching, knee-length skirt over her usual black boots.

She was frowning to herself as they stepped out into the sunlight filtering through the thinning treetops and threw off the ugly sweater into the bushes with an annoyed huff, making Amity snicker behind her hand.

“You never saw that,” Lilith mumbled and Amity nodded dutifully, still grinning behind her hand as they walked down the worn path in the grass that led away from the shack. She spun a finger and her distinctly pointed ears glowed a pale blue before taking on the same rounded shape of their part-time resident human. 

Lilith glanced around at the trees all in varying states of color and shedding. Some still a vibrant emerald green while others were a mottled mix of bright yellows, oranges, and reds. She hummed to herself. She had never been to the human world proper outside the time Luz had drug her through the portal. Amity had been a couple of times and was leading them through the woods but it was still unadvised by Eda for her to yet make the trip on her own. A rare showing of adult responsibility from her sister for a change. Though she suspected it had more to do with Luz and Camila’s regard for the witchling’s safety. 

“How far is it?” Lilith asked, looking down at her former student, bundled up in a hideous, fuzzy black and magenta striped, button-up sweater and leggings. Amity was usually a very sharp and practical dresser and while it might have been practical, it was hardly sharp. She’d been staring at it before they had even left and she’d embarrassedly admitted that it was a gift from Luz as she put an illusion spell over her own ears.  

That made much more sense.

“Actually, we’re here.” Amity smiled as they stepped out of the treeline to a long gray stretch of street that Lilith looked at cautiously before a car went speeding by, making her jump back, arms raised defensively and Amity smiled up at the older witch.

“It’s okay, I did that too my first time here. Those are the ‘cars’ Luz has told us about.” Amity nodded as another one went whizzing by but this time the senior witch just watched it cautiously till it had vanished, then Amity was gently tugging her along toward a little house on the corner at the edge of the woods where they were standing. 

“Eda wasn't exaggerating when she said it was close by,” Lilith hummed as they walked up to the front door.

Amity knocked and Lilith knew the girl well enough to see the excited twitching in her ears and smiled to herself. The two of them were a sight to watch together. They both anchored and bounced off each other in the strangest ways. The door all but flung off its hinges as Luz ripped it open, grin threatening to split her face as she dove over the threshold and into Amity, who giggled giddily as Luz wrapped her up in her arms. 

“I missed you this week,” she could hear the human mumble and Amity mumbled back similar sentiments before Luz pulled back and looked up at Lilith, confused but not unhappy as her mother finally appeared in the doorway behind her.  “Hey, Lilith, where’s Eda?” she cocked her head.

“Edalyn has a nasty case of dragon-hay fever I’m afraid… she’ll be fine,” she quickly assured when Luz’s face turned worried. “She needs to rest though, so she sent me to escort Amity today.”

“Aw,” Luz slumped some but Amity slipping her hand into hers quickly helped lift her spirits. 

“Well, we’ll be glad to have you along with us today.” Camila smiled at her and Lilith couldn’t help but find herself smiling back. She’d rather enjoyed Camila’s company the last time she’d had to fill her sister’s absence. More than she’d enjoyed anyone else’s in a very long time.

“Yeah, and we can get a pumpkin for Eda to carve later!” Luz nodded eagerly.

“What is a… pumpkin?” Lilith tested the word in her mouth and Amity looked equally curious, prompting Luz to grin at them.

“We’ll show you!”

With that, Luz bustled them to the car sitting in front of the house. It took a little convincing to get the two witches inside the foreign contraption, Amity, looking nervous and unsure in the back with Luz while Lilith slid into the front passenger seat, looking around uncomfortably at the interior. She’d never seen anything like this before; it was strange.   

“Buckle up you two.” Camila glanced at the two teens in the rearview mirror. Amity blinked and watched as Luz pulled the seatbelt over herself, clicking it into place. She followed suit, though she struggled with it for a moment.

Lilith looked at the clip, confused as she tried to maneuver it into place as it was over Camila but was quickly growing frustrated and after a few moments she jolted when Camila reached over and took the metal clip.

“Here, let me help you,” she pulled the belt over and clipped it into place, brushing against Lilith as she did, causing a sudden jolt to shoot through the witch, who frowned to herself at the strange sensation that rippled across her skin from the place of contact.   

It was quickly shoved out of her mind as the car came to life and her fingers dug into the door and console as the car began to move and her stomach lurched. Her whole body was seized up as the car rolled out of the driveway and down the street.

“It’s okay, Cariño. Just relax, it’s perfectly safe…” She could hear Luz murmuring to Amity in the back seat as the younger witch had a similar reaction. Lilith took a deep breath through her nose, missing the way Camila glanced over her and frowned. 

“Are you alright, Lilith?” she asked quietly and Lilith tried to force herself to relax but her stiff, claw-like grip, remained. 

“Yes… I’m fine…,” she muttered stiffly. 

Conscious of the two, tense witches in the car, Camila drove slowly and down the smoothest sections of the street. Eventually, Amity relaxed, with Luz’s help and Lilith did at least release her death-grip on the door handle after a while. Her attention turned to the scenery of town whizzing by her window. The human world was so different than what she had expected, though she wasn’t sure exactly what she had expected, truth be told.

The architecture was so different from what she was used to and she could vaguely hear Luz pointing out things to Amity as they drove by and the young witch asking the occasional question that Lilith herself was wondering as well about the different buildings and structures they passed. Slowly the city gave way to sprawling fields that stretched across the horizon and  Lilith managed to relax, sinking back into the seat and half-listening to the girls' chat excitedly in the backseat.

She hummed to herself as she watched it all rush by. 

Camila reached over and tapped a button in front of them and music began to fill the car, making Lilith jerk as she turned to look at the device.

“What’s that?” She heard Amity ask from the back seat. 

“The radio, it plays music from different places through radio waves….” 

“What’s a radio wave?”

“Uh…” Luz scratched her chin thoughtfully, trying to figure out how to explain that to her girlfriend. 

“That might be a little complicated to explain in one afternoon, Luz.” Camila smiled as she glanced at the two in the mirror. 

“Ah, yeah…, I’ll get a book from the library and bring it to you next weekend,” Luz promised her and Amity nodded. Lilith made a mental note to look at that book as well.

When they finally pulled to a stop, Lilith was mesmerized by the large, seemingly endless field of some sort of large, orange… plants? 

She didn’t have time to look long before Luz was barreling out of the car with Amity in tow.

“I hope someday all that enthusiasm is tempered by patience…” Camila shook her head exasperated but fondly before unclipping her seatbelt.

Lilith reached down and struggled with the clip for a moment before finally yanking herself free with an annoyed grunt and looking up to find Camila looking at her.

Lilith liked to consider herself well adept at reading people and she could see the carefully hidden amusement in those dark brown eyes and her cheeks warmed as she cleared her throat and straightened herself out, as though she hadn’t just been struggling to free herself. Without a word and trying to retain as much dignity as possible, she opened her door and climbed out of the car. 

She walked around the side to join the older human as they followed the teenagers to the field. 

“This… is a pumpkin!” Luz announced proudly as she hefted a large, bright orange gourd in front of Amity and Lilith. 

“Oh! They're like grumpkin’s!” Amity’s face lit up with delight. 

“Yeah! ….I guess? I have no idea what a grumpkin is.” Luz blinked.

“It’s a species of edible plant, much like these in appearance, though…,” Lilith hummed as she glanced at the plant's surface. “This one appears to not be as sentient as the ones on the Isles.” She tapped a finger to her chin thoughtfully. 

“Sentient?” Camila repeated with a wary look and Amity nodded, turning to her girlfriend’s mother. 

“A grumpkin is a sentient fruit that grows in the warmer climates on the Boiling Isles. They look a lot like this but they also have a large pair of fangs for fending off anything that might try to eat them,” Amity happily explained, looking quite proud of herself, especially as Luz looked at her with unfiltered awe. 

“That sounds very… interesting,” Camila nodded and Amity beamed up at her. Only Lilith heard the muttered “...and dangerous.” That followed. 

“What do you do with them?” Luz asked.

“Well, you can eat them, they make all manner of tarts and baked goods from their flesh… They also carve faces in them to decorate for all hallow's eve. What do you do with them?” Amity asked, head cocked curiously.

“Same!” Luz grinned. “...Except we don’t have to fight them off first…,” she chuckled and Lilith scoffed.

“Where’s the sport in that?” Lilith huffed, planting a fist on her hip. “Half the fun in picking grumpkins was proving who had the strongest magic by defanging the biggest grumpkin,” The elder witch said, and the way Amity grinned said she agreed with this sentiment. 

“Well, let’s just pick some and I’ll show you how humans carve them!” Luz smiled and Amity nodded before the two moved off, eager to pick out their pumpkins. 

Lilith looked down at the gourds sitting around her feet and picked up a small one that fit between her palms. They were nearly identical to the ones with which she was familiar, save the lack of fangs poking out from beneath the gnarled, twisted vine on top. 

“Edalyn will be disappointed she missed this. We went grumpkin picking every year when we were children…,” she trailed off, lost in thoughts of a faraway patch of grumpkins and the sound of her younger sister’s delighted squealing as a grumpkin growled at her.

“You two were close as children?” Camila’s question broke her from her thoughts and she glanced over at the other woman, dual-colored eyes still foggy before she blinked and nodded. 

“Yes, when we were young, Edalyn and I were the best of friends… but after the curse…” She frowned. 

“Luz has mentioned Eda’s curse before and that it’s under control since you… shared it with her.” She looked at the steak of gray that threaded through the witch’s otherwise dark, raven-blue hair. 

“Something I should have done long ago since I put the curse on her.” Lilith frowned at the pumpkin in her hands. She looked up at the sharp intake of breath and saw Camila looking at her with wide eyes, her hand pressed over her mouth.

“You cursed your sister?” Her voice was filled with distinct surprise and shock. Something about the way Camila was looking at her made a pit of worry yawn open in Lilith’s stomach. There was something about that look on Camila’s face that made it the last thing Lilith wanted to be directed at her and she hurried to explain. 

“It was a terrible mistake I made in youthful stupidity and jealousy….” 

She spoke quietly to Camila as the girls ran about the patch, checking over the gourds as Lilith explained the curse's origin. She wasn’t sure what exactly Luz had told her mother but knowing that she and Eda were keen to keep the tales of their more dangerous antics on the ‘down-low’ as Luz called it, they probably hadn’t told her much. 

“He never intended to heal her, he only wanted you to catch her?” Camila asked and Lilith gave a curt nod. 

“That’s terrible…,” Camila’s voice sliced through Lilith and she couldn’t help but wince. She didn’t understand why she put so much stock in this woman’s opinion but the idea of having revealed to her what she had done to Eda set her on edge. “All that time that could have been spent looking for a cure, wasted on a lie…”

Lilith’s head whipped up at that. She caught Camila’s eye and saw none of the things she expected to. 

All she saw was a sad, pitying look and while that was hardly ideal, a certain weight lifted off her shoulders that it wasn’t disgust or anger. 

“You spent all that time believing he would cure her… all for nothing.” The woman frowned at her and Lilith nodded, fingers digging into the sides of the gourd, leaving crescent knicks in its orange skin. 

“Yes, but it seems only fitting in some ways that I wasted so much of my life trying to cure her when I inflicted the curse that stole just as much of hers…

“We all do foolishly, stupid things when we’re young…,” Camila trailed off, looking into the distance, across the field at something that Lilith couldn’t see.

“Perhaps, but I doubt most people make as large a mistake like the one I made in their youth…” 

“No, probably not,” Camila agreed quietly. “But you’re making up for it now and still looking for a way to lift the curse, right?” She asked and Lilith nodded. “Then it can still be made up for and not all mistakes are without their upsides. I made a terrible mistake myself when I was young. I spent three years, which was three years too many, married to the wrong person, and for as terrible as it was, I can't bring myself to regret it,” she admitted.

“Oh, why is that?” Lilith glanced at her and brown locked with dual teal-gray before she turned her eyes back to the field, finally landing on what she had been searching for. 

Luz was rushing toward them as fast as her legs would allow as she carried a massive pumpkin between her arms, Amity bringing up the rear with a much more modest gourd.

“I got something even better out of it…” she smiled and turned her attention fully to Luz as the two teens skidded to a stop in front of them.

“Look at this monster!” She proudly shoved out the giant pumpkin toward them. 

“You’re going to hurt yourself carrying that around, Mija,” Camila warned but only smiled down at her daughter as she laid the fruit on the ground next to Amity’s.

“Naw, all that time in the demon realm was a workout.” Luz grinned and held up both her arms and flexed. “I can even pick up Amity.”  She turned and looked like she was about to scoop her, thoroughly flushed, girlfriend up in her arms when Lilith huffed a laugh.

“Wait until Edalyn recovers and I’m sure you won’t have any trouble convincing her to take you two grumpkin hunting.” Lilith smirked as she crossed her arms over her chest. 

“Ooooh,” Luz grinned at the notion and Amity looked excited as well. 

Camila smiled but Lilith took notice of the slight strain in it. 

“I still need to pick out a pumpkin for Eda to carve…,” Luz hummed as she turned appraising eyes back to the patch.

“I’ll help you pick one out…,” Amity offered and Luz nodded before the two disappeared back out into the field, hand in hand. Camila watched the two run around amongst the plants for a moment, fingers kneading into the hem of her shirt at the idea of Luz running after something the size of the large pumpkin at her feet but with teeth. 

“They're mostly harmless,” Lilith said once the two were well out of ear-shot. 

“Hmm?” Camila looked over at her with a curiously, confused expression, her nervous fingers stopping.

“Grumpkin’s,” she clarified with a small smile. “They’re mostly harmless. They can bite but it’s nothing a bandage wouldn’t fix. It is a sport for young witchlings after all.” She folded her arms behind her back and watched as understanding dawned on Camila’s face before a small smile took its place.

“Am I that transparent?” she laughed quietly, meeting Lilith’s eyes. The witch smiled to herself, enjoying the warmth that accompanied the soft, bemused look. 

“Perhaps a tad…,” she admitted with a hum. 

~

The warm late afternoon sun was glinting through the windows as they drove back through the countryside, heading into town and Lilith was quietly watching the fields go passing by as the two teens dozed in the back seat, pumpkins sitting at their feet. They had really burned up some energy chasing each other through the field. A strange, but pleasant, lilting melody played over the ‘radio’ as she had been informed it was called. It was strange but pleasant and Lilith found her finger tapping along gently with the unfamiliar beat.

“They really tired themselves out.” Camila’s low voice was tinted with warm affection and a good dose of amusement and Lilith found herself smiling as she glanced over her shoulder at the two. Amity’s head was slumped across Luz’s shoulder and Luz’s was resting atop hers. 

“Luz tires everyone out…,” she said simply and Camila huffed a laugh under her breath. 

“That’s not... untrue,” she smiled, though she didn't take her eyes off the road.

The rest of the trip back to the Noceda household was made mostly in soft, comfortable silence punctuated only by the soft sounds of the radio, the setting sun casting long orange ways over their faces.  

The teens groggily crawled out of the car, taking their pumpkins with them and leaving Lilith to carry the one they had gotten for Eda into the house with them.

Lilith huffed as she sat the massive thing on the counter next to Luz and Amity’s.

“I hate to carve them without Eda and I bet King would like to try too…” Luz frowned at the fruits. 

“They’ll stay good for a while, Luz. We can wait till Eda is feeling better to carve them,” her mother offered and the girl lit up with a bright smile.

“Yeah, if that’s okay with you?” she turned to Amity who nodded.

“That’s fine, Luz, we can wait till Eda is better.” She nodded.

“It’s getting late then, we should head back so you can get home,” Lilith reminded, looking down at her former student, who frowned but nodded. 

Lilith moved toward the door and Camila followed, allowing the teens a moment alone, or rather one they wouldn’t have to witness. 

“As interesting as Eda can be, it was nice to have you along today,” Camila began, making Lilith look at her, surprised. When was the last time someone had said they enjoyed her company and not had some ulterior motive behind it? 

She couldn’t remember. 

“It was an enjoyable afternoon.” she nodded in agreement and was surprised by how much she meant it as well. There was something very calming and enjoyably about time spent in the older human’s presence that Lilith couldn’t quite put a finger on. 

“Perhaps when Eda is well and comes to help Luz carve you’ll come back with her?” she asked and Lilith couldn’t even begin to describe the strange flip her stomach suddenly did and frowned to herself. Maybe she was catching Eda’s dragon-hay fever? She shook it off and nodded.

“Perhaps, it will depend on how agreeable my sister is being on that day…,” she grumbled more to herself than anything but Camila heard it and chuckled.

“Of course…” She smiled up at her and a warm flash of… something, shot through Lilith. 

Just as Camila was about to go and pull the two teenagers out of the kitchen, Amity came walking out of the kitchen quickly, face flushed and ears twitching. Camila looked at her curiously and it was all Lilith could do to keep the grin off her face.

“Good evening.” The former coven leader tipped her head and followed the younger witch out the door as Camila, quickly joined by Luz, waved at the two’s retreating backs.

Amity looked positively smitten and red-faced and unlike her sister, Lilith chose to leave her former student be. Once they walked back through the portal Amity made a quick goodbye and thanks for taking her before quickly trotting off down the path leading away from the Owl House.

Lilith found herself smiling for no discernible reason as she walked into the house and with a twirl of her finger, dispelled the very simple illusion on her ears, though she could still feel the slight pull of the strain it caused on her limited magic.

A commotion in the kitchen drew her to the room where she found her sister, fixing herself a mug of hot appleblood. A rumpled mess that looked like she had just crawled out of her nest and knowing Eda, she likely had. 

“I see you’re up,” she said as she walked into the kitchen. Eda grumbled to herself as she plopped down into her usual place at the kitchen table.

“How was the... thing?” she asked, voice thick and scratchy. 

“It went very well and it was ‘pumpkin’ picking, not plumpkin.” she corrected and Eda snorted into her mug.

“Yeah, whatever. What was it anyway?” she asked.

“It was very much like the grumpkin hunting from our youths,” she said and that did get Eda’s attention.

“Oh, well damn, that I’m sorry I missed,” she grouched and Lilith waved a hand. 

“I doubt you would have enjoyed it the same, apparently these ‘pumpkins’ don’t even fight back,” she explained and Eda made a face.

"Lame… you musta been bored…”

“Not at all, I had a very enjoyable afternoon with Camila and the girls,” she felt herself smile and a strange look came over Eda’s face as she regarded her over the top of her mug. 

“We talkin’ bout the same stiff ‘ol Cammy?” Eda cocked a brow and Lilith couldn’t help but bristle at the comment.

“She is nothing of the sort. We had a very nice afternoon.” Lilith huffed. 

“Oh yeah?” she asked suspiciously and Lilith nodded as she recounted the very enjoyable afternoon she’d had on her first trip to the human realm, not taking notice of how wide her sister’s grin was growing behind her cup every time she spoke about Camila, which was the majority of the time. 

“I’m looking forward to seeing her again,” she finished and finally took notice of that look. A sense of unease washed over her. She knew that troublesome, shit-eating grin anywhere.

“What?” she frowned.

“Well, well, well!” Eda continued to grin at her. “I never thought I’d see the day!” she laughed and Lilith could feel her annoyance begin to rise, as was often the case with any amount of time spent in her sister’s presence. 

“What are you talking about?” she snapped.        

“Well I think it’s pretty obvious, “ Eda said, and even looking sick as a withered trashslug, she still managed to look smug. “Lilith Clawthorne has a thing for a human!” she crowed, slapping a hand down on the table. Lilith choked on the breath in her lungs as Eda began to laugh. Though, a hacking, choking laugh, thanks to her illness. 

“You can't be serious!?” Lilith snapped, cheeks burning with anger and embarrassment that her sister would even insinuate such a thing. “I would never develop any kind of romantic feelings for…” she fell short as she tried to think of one negative aspect of the older human that would turn her away and found herself drawing blank after blank as mental images of the smiling, bespectacled woman flashed through her mind. 

“So you didn’t just spend twenty minutes telling me what a good time you had with Cammy and how you ‘looked forward to seeing her again’?” Eda grinned at her as her sister floundered for something to say in her defense.

“She… I don’t...I wouldn’t…,” she stuttered as her face grew redder by the moment, especially as Eda’s snickering only continued to grow as well. 

“You’re right,” Eda nodded, face schooling into faux seriousness. “She’s not exactly a looker is she?” 

“You bite your tongue!” Lilith snapped and realized what she said a moment too late as Eda grinned at her like the griffin that ate the pixie.  

“Oh? You got something to say to the contrary, Lily?” she asked with that leering grin that Lilith just wanted to slap right off her face. 

She wanted to say something but couldn't, not as the images of a soft smile flashed through her mind along with bright autumn sunlight glinting off shiny, dark brown eyes as they looked at her softly and her cheeks turned hot as she stared back at her sister, still grinning like a manic as she came to a sudden, glaring realization.

Eda could also see the sudden epiphany in her bright, red, face and waited on bated breath, a grin threatening to split her own in twain as she watched the dawning moment in her older sister’s mismatched eyes.  

The tingling sensation whenever they so much as brushed, the flipping in her stomach, and the giddy delight that crawled along her spine when Camila smiled at her... 

“ Oh …,” she breathed and Eda began to crack up with great, hacking, laughter.

She very much did ‘have a thing’ for Camila Noceda.  

Chapter Text

Despite Camila’s suggestion, Lilith didn’t go back with Eda when she took Amity and King with her to the human world to carve the pumpkins they’d picked the weekend before.

Partially because she didn’t know what she would say to the woman when brought face to face with her once more but more importantly…

She’d caught Eda’s Dragon-hay fever.

“You sure you don’t wanna go and see Cammy ?” Eda asked, a certain lilt to her voice after Amity had scurried out the front door towards the portal with King to wait for Eda, who, at least, had had the decency to wait till the teen was out of earshot before giving her sister shit.  

“No, Edalyn, I do not want to face her right now when I can’t stop my nose from running or sneezing constantly!” she growled thickly, voice gummy and nose stopped up. She stopped, her face twisting up before sneezing, punctuating her statement. 

“Eh, you’ve looked worse.” Eda waved a hand and Lilith glared balefully at her from her place on the couch, buried under several blankets. “Alright alright, don’t snap your staff over it. If she asks, I’ll tell her you’re all snotty and couldn’t come…” she turned and started toward the door.

“You’ll do no such thing!” Lilith squawked, her face burning red but whether it was with anger, embarrassment, or fever, was unclear. “Edalyn, please…,” she hissed through clenched teeth.  Between her aching body, her inability to breathe properly, and the headache pulsating behind her eyes, she simply did not have the patience or energy for this today. “Just tell her I’m sick and am sorry that I couldn’t accompany the three of you today,” she mumbled, leaning back and closing her eyes behind her glasses.  

She rarely wore them but, as red and watery as her eyes were today, she just couldn’t bring herself to try and put her contacts in, but she still needed to see... somewhat at least, so she dusted off her old glasses. Honestly, she felt ridiculous wearing the large, round frame glasses again. The prescription was not as accurate as it could have been anymore but it was something at least. 

“Alright… I’ll tell her you’re sick…,” Eda grumbled, taking pity on her sister for the moment. She had been the one to give her the illness after all. 

“Thank you…,” she murmured with a tired sigh and Eda made an affirming noise before Lilith heard the door open and close, followed by Hooty’s distant yapping as Eda gave him his marching orders for the day, and then it was silent, blissfully silent.

No Eda, no King, and Hooty was busy doing whatever the heck the house demon did when he was alone. 

She really didn’t want to know whatever that might be. 

She sniffled and wiped at her constantly running nose with a handkerchief. She was very annoyed. Not only had Eda gone and given this damn illness to her but she also wasn’t able to go back to the human world because of it.

She had been on the fence about going anyway. Did she want to? Yes, absolutely. She wanted to see Camila, speak to her, which was such a strange thing for her. She knew all about how romantic attraction worked, in theory… but she had never participated in it. She just very much enjoyed the other woman’s company. She felt… different, when she was with her. 

After she’d joined the emperor’s coven her life had come to revolve around climbing the ranks and looking for a cure for Eda’s curse. She didn’t have time for outside distractions like relationships, nor had there been any desire; not since she had left school. The idea of romantic entanglements was one she never spent any of her precious time on.

Now, it was staring her in the face and she didn’t know what to do or say. Where should she even begin or should she just ignore it and continue on as usual? She’d been just fine all these years on her own and who knew if Camila would even be mildly interested in such a thing, with her especially.

A witch from another world who had made more than a few mistakes in her life and had yet to truly fix any of them. 

She kept her eyes closed and hissed out a sharp, aggravated breath from between her teeth in frustration, pulling the blankets up to her chin, eyes still clenched tight against the intrusive light of day.  

She didn’t have the mental capacity to deal with all that today. She’d spent the last week agonizing over every angle and aspect of every single interaction with Camila. Trying to decide what she should do, while being constantly needled by Eda about it, till she had begun to feel under the weather two days ago and had been confined to the couch ever since. She hadn’t even managed to straighten her hair and it was quickly trying to return to its natural state of poofy, untameable, curliness. She grunted and endeavored to ignore it for now. No one was going to see it other than the other residents of the house and they had all seen it before. She would straighten it when she was feeling more up to the task.

For now, all she wanted to do was lay here and rest. Where Eda’s case had been more mild, Lilith had caught the brunt of it. Her whole body ached from her ears to her toes and a mild fever had kept her sluggish and dazed as it came and went. She could feel it coming on again now, a fuzzy, ever-growing heat in her head and face.  

She huddled further into the nest of blankets that had been made on the couch for her by Luz when she had come by last night. The teenager had wanted to do a quick check that Eda was still going over today with Amity and King to carve pumpkins. 

Titan bless that child.

She had a pretty good idea of where she had picked up some of those mannerisms now. A soft but genuine smile filled her mind’s eye and she let herself slowly drift off into sleep, huddled down in her nest. 

She wasn’t sure how long she had been asleep but she could feel as soon as she awoke that her fever had returned in full force based off of how out of it and groggy she felt. 

Her mind was fuzzy and she grumbled to herself as she shifted in the blankets, trying to get comfortable despite all the aches and pains in her joints and muscles. Her skin was hot and she could feel the unpleasant sweat that was sitting atop her skin like a second layer, sticky and wet. She kicked her feet almost drunkenly, trying to get comfortable. 

Something cool and damp was laid against her forehead and she grimaced at the icy cold touch at first before finding herself relaxing as the quiet mumbling of voices around her lulled her back into a calm state and her rising consciousness slunk back down into the inky, black depths of slumber. 

The next time she blearily blinked her eyes open, it was quiet again, save for the soft sounds of someone moving around in the kitchen. Eda, no doubt, having returned from her excursion to the human realm. She still felt foggy and tired but not nearly so much like she was dying as she had been when she’d almost awoken earlier. 

Her throat was raw and dry and she still couldn’t breathe out of her nose much. She slowly managed to get herself half sitting up and something cool and wet flopped off her forehead and into her lap. She blinked down at the folded cloth and picked it up. It was still cool and damp. She glanced over and sitting on the table by the end of the couch was a tall, untouched glass of water and suddenly, Lilith had never been thirstier in all her life. 

She reached over and grasped it in her weakened grip and took a long gulp, the cool water an instant relief to the scorched, burning Sahara in her throat

“Oh, you’re awake.” 

Lilith glanced over and her eyes fell on Camila, smiling at her from the kitchen doorway. She inhaled sharply, choking on the water now filling her lungs. Camila rushed over as Lilith coughed and sputtered and gave her back a few gentle pats, helping to dislodge the water. 

How many times in their acquaintance was this woman going to make her choke?! She thought vaguely as she tried to get her breathing back under control. 

“I didn’t mean to startle you…,” Camila said, frowning and Lilith rapidly shook her head.

“No…!” she managed to gasp. “No, it’s fine… what… what are you doing here?” she asked, managing to sound halfway competent in asking, and she congratulated herself on that small accomplishment. That said, she wasn’t looking at the woman so much as at the glass of water clutched in her hands. 

“Eda and the kids came over to carve pumpkins with Luz earlier this evening, after they left, Eda came back and said you had been sick when she left but that you had gotten worse and she didn’t know what to do, so I offered to come and have a look,” she explained as she took a step back to look down at Lilith’s sick and curled up form on the couch 

It was then, over the thumping cacophony of her heart that Lilith remembered what a mess she must look. Hair a frazzled nest of tangles, wearing these ridiculous clothes and just generally looking to all the world like something a Barghest had just spit-up. Beneath her burning embarrassment was a white-hot flickering of anger at her sister, who knew damn well that she didn’t want anyone, much less Camila, to see her like this. She wasn’t worried, she was just being a smart-ass brat! She swallowed the growl that threatened to rise up in her throat and turned her attention back to the nurse. 

"That's very….," her voice trailed off as she stared back into those soft brown eyes looking at her and her already dry throat grew dryer. This was the first time she'd come face to face with Camila since her realization last week and she was suddenly very aware of this fact. She felt like an awkward, out of place, lump, and just… disgusting. She set the water aside and tried to casually run a hand through her thick mane of curly, and fever-sweat, damp hair. She managed to keep from grimacing as she stared back at the other woman, whose eyes seemed to bore into her and if her face hadn’t already been warm, it certainly was now. Still, sitting here, saying nothing was even worse and she tried to rally herself. 

“...that’s very kind of you but not necessary, Camila," she managed to spit out, after a few attempts at getting her tongue to do what she wanted it to. “I’ll be alright…,” she quickly croaked out, dual-colored eyes flickering to anything but the other woman. 

Titan, why did she have to be so sickly and horrid looking today of all days!?

The couch dipped and Lilith nearly jumped out of her skin as the other woman sat herself on the sliver of space Lilith wasn’t occupying on the couch. 

“You had a very high fever when I came in… or… at least you seemed to, I’m not sure what a witch’s normal body temperature is…” she frowned as she looked over Lilith with a critical eye and the witch in question, squirmed in her spot as Camila appraised her.

“Not that high.”

They both looked over to find Eda, leaning against the wall of the opening to the kitchen, arms crossed and looking at them. “Ours is about the same as humans,” she said helpfully.

Camila clicked her tongue at that and turned back to Lilith and before she knew what was happening the woman was pressing the palm of her hand gently to Lilith’s forehead.

The dark-haired witch jerked backward and slammed into her nest of blankets with an audible ‘poomf’ , out of reach, making Camila stared down at her, shocked. Eda’s shock was short-lived and a moment later she burst into loud, uncontrollable laughter.

Camila blinked, looking down at the sickly witch staring back up at her from the pool of blankets. Her curly, dark hair a mess around her head and her large, round-rimmed glasses askew across her face, bright-red all the way from her neck to the tips of her ears as her mismatched eyes blinked back, like she also wasn’t sure what had just happened.  

“Are you alright?” She asked as Eda continued to howl in the background, bent over and wheezing as tears dripped down her cheeks. 

I… you surprised me is all. I... forgive me…,” she stuttered, embarrassed, and slowly, sat back up, feeling a little dizzy from the sudden backward divebomb. 

“No, I’m sorry, I should have given you some warning. May I?” she asked and what was Lilith supposed to say to that other than ‘yes’? She nodded dumbly and this time was more prepared, if only barely, for the warm skin that was now pressed to her flushed forehead, though, whether it was from her fever or her unparalleled embarrassment was hard to say. 

“You’re still burning up…” Camila pursed her lips as she searched Lilith’s face, for what, the witch couldn’t say. “What exactly is dragon-hay fever?” she asked, looking between the two sisters.

“It’s a magic plant that grows wild here in the Isles and at this time of year it spores and fills the air and can infect our bile sacs, causing a mild sickness,” Lilith explained, voice tight and thick with phlegm before a tickle in her throat sent her to coughing once more. Camila patted her back gently as she did. 

“Luz has mentioned this… bile sac, what is it?” Camila turned to Eda who was already digging through her hair and pulling out a piece of paper and holding it up to Camila. A diagram of what she could only assume was a witch’s heart on it.

“It’s an organ, attached to our hearts that stores ‘magical bile’ which is what allows witches to pull the magic out of the world around us and do spells. It's sensitive to magical illnesses like dragon-hay fever, which is normally pretty mild. Luz said it was like a cold when I told her the usual symptoms.” Eda rolled the paper back up and stashed the diagram back into her hair,

“So, this is worse than usual?” Camila asked Eda who nodded. Lilith grumbled to herself.

“I’ve never had it this bad before..,” she mumbled under her breath and Eda frowned before a sudden thought came to her and she smacked her left fist into her right palm.

“I just remembered, right after I got the curse, the first time I had dragon-hay fever, it was really bad like this, cause the curse had weakened my magic,” she explained and Lilith frowned.

“It’s stronger this year because my magic is weak from sharing the curse with you?” Lilith's raw voice croaked and Eda nodded.

“Probably…,” was Eda’s simple answer as she folded her arms and Lilith scowled, guilt washing over her like an ocean wave crashing into the shore. Sudden and violent. She didn’t think it was possible, but her mood sank even lower. Of course that was why. Yet more consequences for her actions. 

Not like it wasn’t deserved, this was a mess of her own making and every little thing that kept popping up was a symptom of her own design. Her loss of power, this…and other things her sister had already been enduring for years, and for all her attempts to right her wrongs, some things she would simply have to endure as repentance. 

“Well, if it’s like a human cold, then we might be able to help alleviate some of its symptoms the same way,” Camila offered. “We need to bring down your fever if nothing else,” she said and Lilith frowned.

“It's fine,” her scratchy voice drew both their attention. “If this is symptomatic of the curse, then it seems only fitting that I should suffer through it as you did then, Edalyn,” she said and Eda frowned but not nearly as hard as Camila.

“You have an incredibly high fever, Lilith, that's not safe to ignore,” she said sternly as she leaned in closer, making certain to catch the witch’s eye. Her fever must have been trying to rear its head again because the other woman’s face was quickly turning scarlet again. Eda watched from the doorway as her sister’s ears turned red and her mouth opened and closed like a fish out of water. She would be more than a little amused by her older sister’s crush on her apprentice’s mother if she wasn’t so concerned by her apparent desire to test her body’s limits in some crazy attempt of penance and self-flagellation for the curse.

“You got something you can give her?” Eda asked, drawing their attention and Camila pursed her lips in thought.

“I have some things at home but they were made for human physiology, and I’m not sure it would help. They could make her worse or have unintended side effects,” Camila explained with a frown, making Eda grimace. “We can bring it down the old-fashioned way though…” She picked up the folded and wet cloth that had fallen from Lilith’s forehead when she sat up and hurried into the kitchen with it, moving past Eda. As soon as she was out of sight, Lilith turned her red-faced glare on her sister and scowled.

“Why did you bring her here!?” She hissed under her breath and Eda rolled her eyes and moved toward the couch.

“Despite what you probably think, it wasn’t so your crush could see you looking like a hot mess… that was just a bonus.” The gray-maned witch grinned wickedly at her older sister whose already red face continued to darken to a near purple in a mix of embarrassment and anger.  

“Edalyn…,” she snarled, triggering a violent coughing fit, which was, at least, short-lived.

“I was... you know, worried about you… you were burning up and flopping around all crazy… and we can’t exactly go to any healer cause you know, wanted criminals, so I went to Cammy.” 

“Edalyn, I…” 

“You don’t need to do this crazy suffering to make up for my curse thing, Lily. I had it bad right after I got the curse but I was also twenty years younger and it wasn’t this bad… so just let her help you, okay? If you want to suffer or whatever, I’ll let you clean Hooty later.” She jerked a thumb toward the front door where the house demon was resting and felt herself shudder. 

Before anything else could be said, Camilareturnedt with a freshly wet cloth and instructed Lilith to lay back down. She glanced at her sister before doing so and tried not to look the human in the face as she gently placed it on her forehead and immediately Lilith breathed a gentle sigh of relief as some of the sting was taken out of her burning face. She let her eyes slide closed. It was a little easier, knowing that Camila was hardly a foot away if she didn’t have to look her in the eye. 

“Have you tried taking a warm bath to help loosen some of that congestion?” Camila asked and Lilith shook her head tiredly. “You should do that, it will help,” she said and Lilith grumbled something unintelligible under her breath and Eda rolled her eyes. 

“You heard her, Lily. Bath time.” Eda couldn't keep the grin off her face, especially as Lilith’s eyes popped open and she shot up to glare at her sister but she wobbled a little as a wave of dizziness rushed over her. She shook it off quickly.  

“I am not a child, Edalyn!” she grunted, glaring at her sister who only looked back at her with an unimpressed expression. 

“Then go get in the bath and stop your whining like a good girl,” Eda smirked and Lilith continued to scowl. 

“It couldn’t hurt to try…” Camila’s voice to her right made her glance over and she pursed her lips, not really wanting to get into a childish argument with Eda in front of her. 

“Very well, you’re the healer.” With some effort, she managed to untangle herself from the blankets and stand, though once she did her legs tried to buckle beneath her. Before she could go careening to the living room floor, a pair of strong hands wrapped tightly around her arms, steadying her and setting her flushed skin to tingling at the place where Camila’s fingers wrapped around her biceps. 

“Are you alright?” she asked her, concern lacing her words and Lilith managed to swallow the lump in her throat and nod.  

“Y-yes, I’m fine now, thank you…,” she fumbled over the words and hurried over to the stairs, stumbling a little as she passed her sister with that shit-eating grin plastered to her face. Lilith glared at her as she shuffled by, one arm reaching out to balance herself against furniture as she went. She started, shakily, up the stairs when Camila called out to her.

“Are you certain you’ll be alright bathing by yourself, Lilith? I can help you if you need…,” she trailed off.

That thought smacked Lilith like a rampaging basilisk and her legs buckled. She slammed into the stairs with a thunderous bang, making Camila and Eda jerk.

“Are you alright?” Camila hurried over to the base of the stairs where Eda stood.

“No!” Lilith shouted, voice pitching so high it cracked and Eda snorted loudly. “I mean, yes… yes I’m fine, no, I don’t need any assistance,” she squawked and hoped the human healer would attribute it to her sickness and not the scorching embarrassment blazing through her body and turning her face red as bloodroot. At the bottom of the stairs, Eda was bent over, wheezing with laughter and Camila shot her a look. 

Lilith silently resolved to smother her sister in her sleep as soon as she was well enough to do so. 

"I will manage!" she said, sounding, almost, halfway normal and quickly scrambled up the stairs and into the bathroom, the door slamming closed behind her. She could still hear her sister’s uproarious laughter from outside the door but a few sharp, muffled words from Camila quieted it. She breathed a sigh of relief to finally be alone. She was suddenly glad this had never happened before, feelings were stressful. 

After getting herself calmed down she ran the bath and spent the better part of the next hour soaking and weakly working her fingers through her thick mane of curly hair. 

It was a lost cause until she could straighten it out later but she did succeed in untangling it. At least Camila would be long gone by the time she came out. Letting Camila see her like this had been humiliating enough, she wasn’t sure she could go out and face her again. 

When she finally did get out, she realized that she had neglected, in her rush, to get fresh clothes and all that was in the bathroom was her usual, thin, black robe and slippers. Anything was better than her sweat-damp clothes though and, after drying off, she slipped it on, tying the sash tightly around her middle and sluggishly moving out of the bathroom. She did feel a little better and more refreshed but that didn’t stop the wheezing, hacking coughs that all but took her breath away as she slowly climbed down the stairs.

“That doesn’t sound very good either…”

Lilith jerked, looking up to find Camila sitting on the couch with a small bag at her feet. Her sister was nowhere to be seen and, for the first time ever, she was suddenly very aware of how thin and clingy her robe was. 

“It’s… not as bad as it was,” she mumbled as she stood there awkwardly at the bottom of the stairs, adjusting her glasses on her nose. An old habit that reared its head anytime she wore them. She was completely covered yet she had never felt so exposed. She still looked quite bad, she knew. Her damp hair was a frizzy mess and she looked like something a chupacabra had drug in. She self consciously wrapped her arms around her middle. Camila smiled softly at her and patted the cushion next to her in gentle invitation.

“Come, sit here, Lirio,” she said. “I went back to the house and got a few things I think will help you.” Lilith’s brows furrowed at the unfamiliar word but she did as she was told and shuffled over to the couch. She sat down carefully, suddenly very mindful of her robe, which now felt much too short where it fell at mid-thigh, and of the distance between herself and Camila, who reached down and pulled something out of the bag at her feet. It was a small, dark blue container with a pale blue lid.

“You should be fine with this and it should help you breathe better…,” Camila explained as she unscrewed the lid and a sharp smell immediately filled Lilith’s nose, making her eyes water and her face screw up. She was very glad now that she wasn’t wearing her contacts. Camila chuckled at her twisted expression. 

“It’s quite potent, but it will help,” she promised and Lilith nodded sharply. 

“What is it, something I eat?” her voice cracked as it passed her lips and she grimaced at the sound of it. Camila let out a breathy laugh that sent shivers running down Lilith’s spine like ice water.

“No, it’s topical. I’ll show you. Open your robe.”

The record scratch in Lilith's head was so loud she was sure Camila must have heard it.

“W….What?” she managed to spit out around numb lips as she stared, wide-eyed at Camila, who seemed totally unbothered by that statement as if she had just asked Lilith to hand her a cup and not to disrobe right here in the middle of her sister’s living room. “I-” Just when she thought she’d managed to get the temperature of her face back under control, it was suddenly shooting through the roof like a volcanic eruption, red stretching from her neck to her hairline as she reached up and clutched at the edges of the black garment in a white-knuckled grip. 

Camila seemed to catch on quick enough and she laughed, shaking her head. 

“No, no. Just your chest,” she motioned. 

Somehow, that did not make Lilith feel much better but with numb fingers, she did as instructed. limbs stiff and jerky as she pulled it open. She felt like she might combust while Camila looked as cool and calm as always. The fabric was only barely pulled back to expose her collar and upper chest and then Camila was dipping her fingers in the jar and before Lilith could register what was happening, she was rubbing the strong-smelling substance across her chest and Lilith broke out in full-body shivers. Not just from the burning sensation of the white, gooey substance but Camila’s hand on her skin. 

Surely the other woman could feel how hard her heart was thumping in her chest right below her fingertips?

She sat stone-still, eyes locked on Camila as she carefully applied the medicine. She wanted to say something, anything but before she could, the front door opened.

“Hey, Eda? I forgot to give you the book Luz lent me…,” Amity was saying as she walked inside the house but stopped cold as she stared at the scene playing out in front of her.

Her former teacher, sitting on the couch in a robe, pulled down away from her upper chest and shoulders, while her girlfriend’s mom was rubbing her hand across said teacher’s chest. 

“Oh, hello, Amity, I’ll take the book back with me, just lay it down there, brujaita,” Camila greeted the teen, who stood there, blinking her wide, gold eyes, mouth hanging open slightly. 

Lilith stared back, face practically glowing red as she met Amity’s eyes. She wasn’t sure this could become anymore embarrassing.  

Amity, cheeks turning pink, set the book down on the table and whipped around, quickly darting back out of the house without another word.

That would be fun to explain later. 

“There we are, how does that feel?” Camila asked as she leaned back to look at Lilith, who felt like the floor could open up and swallow her whole and she’d be very glad for it. 

“It… tingles…,” she mumbled, doing her best to look anywhere but directly at Camila. She was sure the woman meant the ointment on her chest but her whole body was tingling. 

Semantics. 

Camila nodded as she screwed the lid back on the jar and set it back in the bag on the floor and Lilith pulled the edges of her robe back together sharply, face still burning.

That was becoming a very common theme this evening.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had felt so vulnerable and embarrassed, and while she didn’t like it one bit… she wasn’t sure she entirely minded. She hated the insecurity and nerves pressing against her when those deep, brown eyes were focused on her. They made her feel like she was squirming in her skin. But, at the same time, a small, small , part of her, deep down, buried beneath a thick layer of dignity and pride, longed for the attention... and reveled in it.

“Let it soak in and it should help you breathe better,” Camila explained and Lilith nodded mutely, still clutching the edges of the thin, black material that may as well have been transparent for as covered as she felt. 

“I didn’t know you wore glasses…,” the nurse said out of nowhere and Lilith blinked, her attention focusing back on Camila as she looked up at her.

“Ah… yes, I wear contacts but my eyes have been watering so much…,” she trailed off and Camila nodded in understanding and carelessly wiped any extra ointment from her fingers onto the leg of her pants. 

“Hopefully you’ll start clearing up soon.” She smiled at her and Lilith swallowed thickly, struck speechless by that smile, as she had been all evening. It grew quiet and, to Lilith, the silence was deafening. 

She was trying to think of something to say, anything at all to express her gratitude. Camila certainly didn’t have to come and check on her, nor rub sharp-smelling ointments on her skin with a tender care that made her whole body flush. 

Though, she imagined Edalyn had been quite insistent. 

That stray thought made her stop cold and grimace. Camila was a human healer by trade and her sister had no doubt been very insistent that she come, not only because she was worried but also for her own amusement. She scolded herself for the childish thought that Camila had come for any reason other than her own oath as a healer and her younger sister’s badgering.

She frowned, fingers clutching at the thin fabric. Her nerves drained, leaving behind a sudden sharp and raw disappointment and exhaustion but she was nothing if not polite and appreciative under the sting of a disappointing reality. 

“Thank you… for coming to check on me. It really wasn’t necessary but I appreciate it nonetheless.” 

“Of course,” Camila smiled softly at her, but it turned into an exasperated sort of smile. “Eda was very insistent,” she chuckled and Lilith managed to swallow her grimace at the confirmation of her theory. 

“Of course… Thank you all the same…” she nodded, her voice was still raspy and low but even she could hear the change in pitch and tightness. Camila looked at her, concerned but before she could say anything another voice broke the quiet. 

“Oh, hey, you didn’t drown up there.”

They both turned to see Eda peeking her head into the room from the kitchen and Lilith was suddenly very glad her sister had been preoccupied with… whatever she had been doing. She would have died had Amity and Edalyn walked in on… a very normal and routine healing procedure…. she assumed. 

“No,” Lilith snapped, making both Camila and her sister look at her in surprise. She bit her tongue and tried to reel her aggravation back in. “No, I didn’t drown… but I am very tired…,” she grumbled and stood. While it was an excuse to escape, it was also true. She was exhausted and her whole body ached. If she was more than a little bit tired after this whole emotional ordeal, well, such was the way. She turned back to Camila once more.

“Thank you again, for coming,” she said softly, with a tilt of her head and the woman nodded.

“Of course, I should be getting back to Luz now. You should rest,” she said and Lilith nodded.

“I will, goodnight,” she nodded and quickly moved up the stairs, as fast as her legs would allow, which was not as fast as she would have liked. She didn’t look back and shut herself in her room.

She sat on her bed and pulled off her glasses, setting them on the nightstand, and sighed, slumping forward and burying her face in her hands. Why was she acting like such a fool? It wasn’t like Camila could ever have anything but platonic feelings for her in turn. She was being ridiculous, like a school-age witchling again. 

Awkward and ridiculous!

And yet…

Her realization had dulled it significantly but the searing, affectionate heat that had been throbbing in her chest all evening remained. A warm flickering flame in her chest that had nothing to do with the strong-smelling ointment slathered across it. 

She groaned loudly into her palms. This would be a problem. 

“I know you’re sick and all but I figured even you’d be a little more chipper after playing healer with your crush…”

Lilith’s head whipped up and she scowled at the red and gray blob that was her sister standing in her doorway, nonchalantly as usual. 

“I specifically said I did not want her to see me this way!” she barked at Eda and while she couldn’t see her face very clearly, she just knew the other witch was giving her an annoyed look. 

“I told you, I only brought her here cause you were burning up to the touch, besides, she came, didn’t she? She wanted to help.”

“She came because you insisted she come, not because she…” she choked on the words as another violent round of coughing made her frame shake. Eda quickly crossed the room and patted her back gently. Once it passed, she took a deep breath and hissed through her teeth as the reality settled down on her further. “...Not because she wanted to see me,” she said quietly and Eda frowned at her sister as she slumped back over, forehead pressed into her palm.

“Aw, come on Lily, you never know…,” Eda started but Lilith just sighed.

“I’m tired, Edalyn…,” she mumbled, voice strained and low. Eda pursed her lips but nodded

“Alright, Lily.” With that, the younger witch moved out the door and shut it quietly behind her without another word. 

Lilith laid back and breathed out a wheezy sigh. 

Why in the Isles did she think for one moment that her burgeoning feelings could be anything but unrequited? 

She grumbled to herself before slipping into a deep, dreamless sleep.

~ ~ ~

It was around noon the next day and Lilith had once more taken up residence in her blanket nest on the couch, having grown tired of sulking in her room when the front door opened and Luz came trotting in with a grin.

“Good Sunday afternoon, Owl House family!” she called as she strutted inside.

“Hello, Luz,” Lilith mumbled, not looking up from her book, which she hadn’t really been reading so much as staring at the same page for the better part of an hour. “Edalyn is in the kitchen,” she said.

“Great, I got something for you though!” 

That did make Lilith look up and clutched between the teen's hands was a clear, round container filled with a pale, yellow liquid and assorted vegetables perhaps, by the looks of it. 

Lilith set the book aside as Luz walked up to the couch and held the container out to her. 

“Here, it’s from mom. She made Sancocho for you since you’re sick,” Luz said as Lilith took the container. It was still hot, the sides warm against the skin of her palms.

“Sancocho…,” she repeated the strange word, unsure and Luz nodded,

“It’s a stew from the Dominican Republic, where my mom was born. It’s so good… but it’s really labor-intensive so she almost never makes it, except when I’m sick and now you, you lucky witch!” Luz laughed before hurrying off into the kitchen where Eda was bustling about. The witch stared down at the container still sitting in her lap and felt a familiar bloom of heat in the pit of her stomach at Luz’s words. Camila had made this for her? 

Carefully, Lilith took the spoon sitting on top and carefully pulled the lid off. A strong and mouthwatering smell hit her along with the warm steam wafting off the contents of the bowl. 

It smelled divine and looked just as good. She dipped the spoon into the broth and lifted it to her lips. An explosion of sharp, bright flavors exploded in her mouth and her eyes widened.  

She’d never tasted anything like it in her life.

She couldn’t help the soft curling at the corners of her mouth as she stared down at the food in amazement. Her heart thumped appreciatively against her ribs.

Maybe… it wasn’t as hopeless as she thought.

Chapter Text

Lilith spent the arduous week after her illness had cleared up thinking long and hard about what to do regarding her tenuous situation with Camila; much to Eda’s annoyance, because Lilith, was a pacer. 

She spent long and unending bouts of time, sometimes hours, pacing around her room like a caged animal, mumbling and muttering aloud to herself. It was driving King and Eda mad, listening to her constant footsteps through the ceiling but getting her to stop had proven a fruitless effort. 

“What is her problem!?” King finally screeched from his place on the floor, stuffed animals piled up around him as he turned to glare at Eda on the couch, a pair of stuffed animals tied to a headband and shoved down over his head to block out the sound.

“Eh, don’t mind her, she’s having what we call a ‘Clawthorne Catastrophe’,” she said, barely looking up from the game of Hexes Hold ‘em in front of her and Owlbert. “She used to do it all the time when we were kids. Cammy’s got her all in a tizzy,” Eda snorted, rolling her eyes. She hadn’t ever seen her sister this bad, not even when they were kids. She had never shown the slightest interest in anyone back then and certainly not since they became adults- at least, not that she knew of. There was a pretty big gap in their relationship in which she had little to no knowledge of her older sister’s personal doings but she was fairly certain that this was new territory for her. Lilith’s intense panic told her as much.

King grunted and went back to his ‘minions’ mumbling under his breath about annoying witches and their dumb human crushes. Eda rolled her eyes. Suddenly, the pacing above her head stopped, making her look up. A shapely brow rose slowly into her hairline at the suspicious quiet now roaring in the absence of frantic footsteps. 

It might be time to finally go check on her… She stood from the couch and moved up the stairs towards her sister's room. She didn’t even stop to knock before opening the door. It was her darn house after all. The door silently swung open and Eda stared at her sister’s back. She was hunched over the small table that served as her desk, scribbling rapidly across a piece of paper. She didn’t look up as Eda strutted across the room, her heels thumping on the wooden floors but still, her sister’s head stayed bent in concentration, never acknowledging her sister’s presence.

Eda hummed as she peeked over her sister’s shoulder, eyebrow rising further and further into her hair as she read.

“I intend to be nothing but forthcoming and right in my pursuit of her hand and all my interactions with her will be of the most noble and…

“What the hell are you writing?” Eda finally barked, making Lilith jump, flinging her quill away from her with a screech and spilling the bottle of ink that had been sitting on the table next to her. Dark, splotchy, black ink quickly rushed across the table and was quickly soaked up by the dry, yellowed parchment paper Lilith had been scratching away at.

“Edalyn!” Lilith snarled, whipping around to glare at her sister as her hard work was quickly ruined by ink. “What are you doing in here?!” she bit out, glaring at her sister who waved a hand dismissively. 

“You’ve been pacing around up here for hours and then, boom, nothing. I thought you might have finally paced yourself to death.” She shrugged and Lilith scowled, red-faced.

“No, I finally came up with the solution to my problem,” she sniffed and Eda cocked her head, waiting for the, no doubt, incoming explanation of whatever the hell Lilith thought her problem was. 

“Can’t wait to hear this,” she mumbled and ignored the stink eye Lilith shot her.

“I have decided that I will… try... to pursue Camila,” she finally announced after a moment of psyching herself up. 

"It took you a week to come up with that?” Eda grunted, unimpressed, and Lilith scowled at her. “I figured you were up here trying to come up with some plan to… I dunno… romance her or whatever you do.” She twirled a hand and Lilith’s face continued to burn.

“I don’t ‘do’ anything and I’ve never… never done anything of this sort before… this was a difficult enough decision to make as it was, Edalyn. Who’s to say this, like so many other things, won’t crumble to ruin under my touch...?” She scowled to herself, long fingers curling into a tight fist. 

Eda frowned, watching emotions flicker across her sister’s face. Guilt, anger, and some she couldn’t decipher. She knew well enough that Lilith blamed herself for the curse - and so she should, it was her fault - but she seemed determined to suffer in every way possible in some misguided attempt to make amends. As though, if she wasn’t suffering, she wasn’t making up for what she’d done. The Owl Lady was at a loss for what to do about it. Was she still sore at Lilith in some ways for the curse? Absolutely. Did she want Lilith to suffer every waking moment for the rest of her life till she herself was content? 

No, no she didn’t, because, despite all the issues and the yelling and arguing, she did love her sister in her own way, just like she knew Lilith loved her or she wouldn’t have spent her whole life trying to fix her mistake. 

She didn’t know yet how to get Lilith to stop the crazy beating herself up all the time thing but she could at least derail this devolving conversation.

“Alright, so you’re gonna go after her, what is that?” She crossed her arms and nodded at the now sopping wet letter stained with ink. Lilith frowned and picked it up, grimacing as ink dripped off it.

“This was my letter of intention…” she grumbled.

“Wait, wait, wait!” Eda held up her hands. “You mean that old-fashioned crud where you give a letter to their parents saying you want to date them?” Eda asked and Lilith nodded. “Who were you going to give it to? I don't think Cammy is gonna let you anywhere near her parents...not even sure they’re still alive…: 

“Well, of course not, don’t be ridiculous,” Lilith scoffed. “It was for Luz,” she said and Eda choked at that.

“Luz?!” she repeated and Lilith jerked back at her sister’s yell. 

“Of course, Luz! She’s her daughter and her only close family, it would be her whose permission I would need before pursuing anything,” Lilith huffed, rolling her eyes and Eda opened her mouth to speak but stopped.

Lilith had a point. All this was old-fashioned bologna to Eda but she’s seen for herself that Luz was the most important person in the older human’s life and she probably wouldn’t consider anyone that Luz didn’t like.

“Alright, you’ve got a point, you probably should ask Luz what she thinks before you just try and pick up her mom,” Eda conceded.

“Thank you, now…”

“But not like this,” Eda said, pointing at the paper with a frown.

“What’s wrong with a letter of intent? It’s traditional.” Lilith frowned.

“Yeah, for us. Luz is human and a kid. Even if she was a witch, she would have no idea what the hell this is. She doesn't need to know about the warm tingly feelings her mom gives you,” she deadpanned and Lilith frowned but started to agree when her sister grumbled. "And she definitely doesn't need to know where you get those warm tingly feelings."

“EDALYN!” Lilith screeched, face practically molten as it flashed red. 

“Look, Luz is easy,” Eda went on, cutting her sister off before she could really get going. “Just tell her that you like her mom, none of the extra shit, and ask her if she’s okay with it,” she said with a casual wave of her hand.

“And if she isn’t?” Lilith asked. Eda’s mouth screwed up at that, given their… history, it was possible Luz might not actually be okay with it.

They’d cross that bridge if they came to it.  

“Eh, don’t worry about that, it’s Luz and she's going to be here tonight. Her and littlest Blight are going to go meet their friends for dinner; it’s the perfect time to ask her.” 

Lilith’s mouth screwed up, unsure but then Eda clamped a hand firmly onto her shoulder. 

“Look, Luz is the least of your problems. You still have to actually talk to Cammy at some point too.”

“Yes… you’re right, one thing at a time…” Lilith nodded, frowning and looking down at the stained paper still hanging from her fingertips.

“And give me that!” she snatched it up and crumpled it up into a ball and threw it somewhere behind her.

“No one does that anymore, you old crone!” she snapped and Lilith scowled.

King sat on the living room floor, digging through the pile of stuffed animals when a thunderous crash from upstairs made him jump, followed by muffled yelling and screaming.

“Ugh,” he grunted, rolling his eyes before returning to his faithful army.  

~ ~ ~

Lilith took a deep breath as she finally stopped her pacing about the room. She’d heard Luz come in about ten minutes ago and greet Amity, who had already shown up about an hour earlier, eager to see her girlfriend after a week. She’d had to make an earlier appearance herself to explain just what the young witch had walked in on last weekend.

The second Amity had spotted her, her face had pinked and she’d looked anywhere but at Lilith, who sighed internally before sitting next to her on the couch and beginning to explain that what she had… walked in on… the weekend before had been a very, normal and routine medical procedure, that Camila had been administering while taking care of her as she suffered from a bad case of dragon-hay fever. The girl had nodded along in understanding but there was certainly something else glittering behind her eyes that Lilith couldn’t quite pinpoint. She decided not to spare it much thought.  

Now she had to go and have another uncomfortable conversation with a teenager but this one would be far less easy. 

“Okay, you can do this, Lilith, Luz likes you well enough… I think,” she mumbled to herself as she left her room and walked slowly down the stairs, not in any real hurry to get there and have this dreaded conversation with Luz.

She peeked over the banister and both teens were sitting on the couch, Luz with her face buried in her phone and Amity casually flipping through a book as they waited for Gus and Willow to arrive.

Lilith took another deep breath before walking over.

“Good evening, girls,” she greeted casually, at least, she hoped it was casual. She felt stiff and unsure as she approached.

“Hey, Lilith,” Luz mumbled without looking up from the game she was playing on her phone, fingers tapping rapidly at the screen and her tongue poking out the side of her mouth. 

Lilith stood in front of the two, looking unsure, and folded her arms behind her back, if for no other reason than to have something to do with them as she looked down at the human teen and cleared her throat. Still, Luz didn’t look up but she saw Amity’s eyes flicker upward briefly and her brows furrowed in confusion before gently nudging her girlfriend to get her attention. A sharp sound pinged out of her phone and Luz grunted, looking up at Amity, who nodded to Lilith before returning her eyes back to her book.

Luz looked up at the older witch curiously.

“What’s up, Lilith?” she asked and the dark-haired witch cleared her throat once more.

“Luz, may I talk to you for a moment?” she asked and the confusion in Luz’s eyes only grew but she nodded, stiffening as Lilith stood in front of her looking quite serious. Had she done something, was she in trouble with the older Clawthorne? 

“I wished to ask you something…,” she started at last, eyes flickering around to look anywhere but the teenager sitting in front of her. 

“Okaaay?” Luz drawled nervously as Lilith shifted her weight from foot to foot in front of her, the older witch was never this twitchy, and Luz’s mind started to jump to the worst possible conclusions. Lilith sighed and finally caught Luz’s eyes. Best to just rip the bandage off and get this over with. She didn’t notice Eda peeking her head out of the kitchen, waiting. 

“I wish to ask you for your consent to pursue your mother in courtship,” she finally said and the whole living room went quiet as Amity and Eda both looked at Luz, who stared up at Lilith in utter confusion. 

“Wh….what?” Luz cocked her head.

“I know this must seem very sudden but I can assure you that my intentions are only motivated by the most…,” she was just getting going when Luz shook her off.

“No, no no, I mean… what is courting?” Luz asked and Lilith blinked at her, wide-eyed. A loud groan sounded from the kitchen and Luz blinked, turning toward the sound till Amity laid a hand on her knee, drawing her girlfriend's attention.

"Luz, she wants to date your mom,” Amity said and there was a long beat of silence as Luz stared back at her, eyes widening and mouth hanging slack before she whipped back around to look at Lilith, standing there, wringing her hands together nervously.

“I… what?” Luz blinked at her. “You… wanna date my mom?!” Luz squawked and Lilith flinched at the loud yell. “You… but…” Luz looked totally lost for words as she stared back at the older witch, who was beginning to sweat at the reaction. 

“Why!?” Luz finally asked, still looking utterly perplexed by the conversation she was having.

Lilith hesitated for a moment as the teenagers stared up at her and Eda watched silently from around the corner. 

“I like her,” was the simple answer and Luz blinked at her again, processing that. “I enjoy spending time with her. I’ve… never felt this way before about someone. Wanting to get to know them, caring about every little thing they have to say. She’s caring and beautiful and I…,” she stopped as she realized she was going too far off-topic and cleared her throat. “I like her and as the most important person in her life, I wanted to ask you if it was alright for me to pursue this,” she finished and everyone's eyes turned to Luz, who no longer looked quite so shell-shocked, merely contemplative. 

“I… I mean… this is… weird,” she admitted and Lilith frowned but Luz went on. “It’s not really up to me though, if my mom likes you back then that’s fine with me.” She shrugged and Lilith couldn’t help the surprised look that flitted across her face. 

Eda chose that moment to come strutting into the living room and throw an arm around Lilith’s shoulders.

“See, nothing to be worried about, not with Luz anyway. You just gotta worry about Cammy and impressing her,” Eda reminded her helpfully.

Lilith frowned at that. Yes, there was still that little thing to deal with. Actually making her feelings known to Camila.

“I have no idea what to do there…,” she admitted with a frown and Eda patted her shoulder.

“Don’t you worry your pretty little head, Lilly! I know all kinds of things about human dating, I was even married to one once!” she declared.  

“What!?” All three of the room's other occupants barked but Eda waved them off carelessly. 

“Nevermind that. Now, the first thing you’ll need is a bundle of shrunken heads…,” Eda said, holding up a single finger. 

“And what do I do with them?” Lilith cocked a brow curiously, but she was willing to admit that Eda knew far more about humans than she herself.

“What? No!” Luz jumped up at that and Amity closed her book and set it aside. “Humans like… flowers and… stuff like that!” Luz said, she couldn’t even imagine what would happen if Lilith showed up at her house with a bouquet of shrunken heads. 

“Flowers?” Both older witches made a face at that and Luz sighed. She was sure she could hear Amity snickering at her side.

“Whatever you would normally do… just, don’t,” Luz said just as the front door flung open.

“New friends! Hoot, hoot! Well, old friends but newly here... Have I told you about my friendship with a fly It all began-” Hooty started off on a tangent as Gus and Willow stuck their heads in the door. 

“Hey, are you two ready to hit the town?” Gus asked with a grin and Amity nodded, nudging Luz as she walked towards the door. 

“Please hurry,” Willow hissed, side-eyeing the door. Luz nodded but turned her attention back to Lilith. 

“Just… wait and I’ll help you come up with some things,” Luz said as she moved toward the door, turning around walking backward to look at the two. “No heads!” she pointed a finger at them. “Shrunken or otherwise!” were her parting words before Amity rolled her eyes and grabbed her hand, spinning her around before she could trip.

“What’s going on?” Gus asked just as the door slammed shut, leaving the sisters alone. 

“Welp, let's get started,” Eda grinned and Lilith shot her a look. “You heard the kid,” Eda nudged her sister and winked lasciviously, “you’re not allowed to give Camila head, so we’ll have to come up with something else.” She delighted in the nearly purple shade of red her sister was turning

“I think I’ll wait for Luz…,” she started only for Eda to snort.

“You think the kid knows what her mom would be impressed by?” she asked, giving her sister a look. 

“She is human… like her mother…,” Lilith reminded her with a deadpan expression and Eda scoffed, waving a hand. 

“Look, I love the kid but she is a kid. Little Blight wouldn’t be wooed by the same things as us though, and you can’t expect Luz to know what her mother would like,” Eda reasoned and Lilith did have to agree with that. 

She did not trust her sister at all though. She would mess with her, she knew it. She ducked out from under Eda’s arm. 

“I think I will navigate this on my own,” she said, moving up the stairs 

“Suit yourself.” Eda shrugged but once Lilith had gone, clicked her tongue in mild disappointment that she couldn't at least mess with her a little.  

Chapter Text

Luz had to rush back home after she returned from dinner with her friends and didn’t have time to talk to Lilith, leaving the witch wondering what to do. She knew Edalyn was not an option. Her sister may have genuinely wanted to help her but Edalyn also had a habit of letting her natural… sense of humor … color her judgment and Lilith was not about to let Edalyn make a fool out of her in front of Camila for her own amusement. No, she was going to have to come up with something on her own.

All the things she knew were witch traditions and she wasn’t entirely sure what would work or not. It was always an option but she would at least take Luz’s suggestion of trying out human customs since the object of her pursuit - was human. Luz was unavailable for the week though, attending school in the human world so she would have to find another source which, as much as it pained her, was why she found herself here.

“So, you want to know about humans,” Gus asked, eyeing the witch carefully from over his carefully laced fingers. Lilith tried not to sigh to herself from the other side of the table as they sat in one of the empty classrooms at Hexside that was the designated meeting place for the ‘Human Appreciation Society’. She couldn’t believe she was doing this but the young witch was one of Luz’s closest friends and the head of the society. He was the only person she could think of even approaching her sister's level of knowledge on humans - and she refused to ask Eda; the risk of being tricked into looking like a fool was too great.

“Luz always speaks very highly of your tenacity in learning about humans from her and I wish to know about human courting customs,” she explained and Gus nodded along sagely, unfolding his hands to stroke his chin between his thumb and finger as though curling around a beard.

“You’ve come to the right place then, I’ve been studying the human art of romance for a while now for Amity,” he said.

That did not surprise Lilith at all. 

“I simply wish to convey my interest to Luz’s mother in a human fashion. What do you suggest?” She couldn’t believe she was sitting here, in a chair too small to hold her completely, asking a witchling who couldn’t even shave for advice in her pursuit of a human woman.

Lilith really couldn’t decide if this was some sort of divine joke being played on her by the Titan or not. 

“Well, I’m not sure if the same things that worked for Amity will work for you since Ms. Noceda is older…,” he hummed thoughtfully and continued to stroke his non-existent beard before his eyes snapped open and he ducked beneath the table. A sharp, black brow rose upward as he dug through the human artifacts piled up beneath the table before coming back with a medium-sized box cradled in his arms. “This is the answer to your problems!”

Lilith could see herself in the black glass and blinked.

“What is it?” she finally asked.

“Watch and be amazed by the powers of human magic!” Gus grinned as he held up a black rectangle between his fingers and slipped it into a slot on the front of the box. A quiet whirring sound filled the quiet. Suddenly the glass lit up and a scene was playing out in front of her of a man, human by the looks of it, in a long coat and standing out in a pouring rainstorm, holding something over his head and blaring music as he stood outside in the dark. 

“Why is he standing in the rain?” Lilith asked, amazed that the man never flinched as he became soaked.

“This is the most sacred and ancient of human courtship traditions. You prove your might, mettle, and devotion by standing in the boiling rain and playing a song of love!” Gus held up a tightly clenched fist and sniffled a little. “Humans really are, as Luz says, hardcore.” 

Lilith watched the display for a moment and she had to admit. It would be impressive, if not a bit foolish to be able to show one’s seriousness and tenacity to a potential partner this way.

“What do I need to do?” she asked and Gus grinned brightly at her as he stopped the box and set it back down on the floor. 

“First, you’re going to need it to rain but luckily it's supposed to rain Saturday evening when Luz is coming over with her mom so we can all have dinner at the Owl House, you can do it then. Secondly, you’re going to need the box that plays music.” 

“I don't think we have anything like that…,” Lilith mumbled to herself, thinking. Something small that she could hold overhead that would sing or play music. She could only think of one thing and she hated the very idea of it. “I know what I need,” she grumbled with a grimace. “Is that all?” she asked. 

“One more thing, apparently humans have a specific term for potential mates, so when you approach her, make sure to say ask her to be your ‘bae’...”

“ Bae …,” Lilith repeated with a frown, brows furrowed between her eyes. 

Lilith frowned at the boy but nodded before thanking him and taking her leave. She knew what she had to do.

She didn’t like it but she knew. 

~ ~ 

The wait for Saturday evening was a long one for Lilith, though she managed to keep herself busy scouring the woods for what she needed to complete this plan. It took three days to find it but find it she did.

A Yatterang. 

A long, serpent-like demon with bright yellow skin and dark purple stripes, well known for it’s beautiful, warbling, singing abilities. It was the closest she was going to get to the song box that Augustus had shown her. The house demon finally came in handy and she had him corral the creature in a small section of the woods till she needed it.

There was no reason this plan shouldn’t work.

She was sitting in the living room, half-listening to Amity, Gus, and Willow chat amongst themselves when Camila and Luz arrived.

“We’ve arrived!” Luz announced when the door flung open with a bang, Hooty squawking.  

All the witchlings jumped up but the green-haired witch was quicker and was the first to fall into her girlfriend's arms, though, if Gus and Willow were just a hair slower by design, who could say. Lilith huffed in mild amusement as she watched them before she stood from the couch and turned to face the older human, who was smiling at her, holding a large red pot in both hands. She couldn't see what was in it but she could smell it and it smelled divine. 

“G-good evening, Camila. It’s very nice to see you again,” she greeted, mentally patting herself on the back for managing to get through that unscathed. 

“It’s nice to see you too, Lilith. You seem to be much better now,” she walked over to the witch and seemed to be looking her over.

“Yes!” she yelped, trying to fight the heat that threatened to rise to her cheeks as she cleared her throat. “Thanks to you, that is. I started to feel much better after…,” she said.

The four teens stood a few feet away watching the display and Luz felt a little bad, she’d never been able to help Lilith come up with some ways to impress her mother, as weird a prospect as that was. She glanced over at the older woman, who was smiling back, and Lilith as they talked quietly, or at least her mother did. Lilith seemed incapable of controlling the volume or pitch of her voice. 

“Do you think she has a chance at impressing your mom?” Amity leaned over and whispered in her girlfriend's ear. 

“I dunno...” Luz shrugged. She honestly wasn’t sure what kind of chance Lilith had, or if her mom was even inclined that way. She’d never been on a date with anyone in Luz’s entire life - man, woman, human, or witch. She still wasn’t even completely sure how she felt about Lilith, at least, not like this. They’d hashed out the whole bridge and petrification thing and were working on having a better relationship all the time, just like her and Eda, but potentially dating her mom was something else entirely. 

If her mom did like Lilith though? She, of course, wasn’t gonna stand in the way of it.

That didn’t make it any less bizarre to watch though.   

“What’s going on?” Willow leaned over and whispered in Gus’s ear as the boy watched with glee and rapt attention.

“Human courtship rituals,” he squealed quietly. 

“Thank you for the soup as well, it was wonderful… you didn’t need to…,” Lilith started but Camila just waved a hand and smiled at her. 

“It was my pleasure. I was making some anyway, so I thought I’d send some with Luz. You seemed like you could use something warm and hearty. 

Luz narrowed her eyes at her mother’s back. That was… not what had happened at all. Her mother had made the soup specifically for Lilith. She hummed to herself, drawing Amity’s attention. The witch shot her a curious look but Luz shook her head.

'Later, ’ she mouthed and Amity nodded. 

“Regardless, it was very kind of you,” Lilith said, quick to continue with her display of gratitude. They stood there for a moment longer as if looking for something more to say but not knowing what as the kids watched with morbid curiosity. Luckily, that was when Eda chose to pop her head out of the kitchen.

“I thought I heard you, squirt,” Eda grinned and Luz jumped on the witch with a blinding grin. Eda ruffled her hair before looking up at Camila and Lilith, a knowing smile splitting her face that Lilith was all too familiar with. 

That ‘oh, I'm gonna have so much fun with this’ grin that Lilith hated so much.

“Heya, Cammy,” the Owl Lady greeted with that same grin and Camilla nodded to her with a smile, one that Lilith took great pleasure in noticing was much smaller than the one that had been aimed at her.  

“Good evening, Eda, I brought pollo guisado to go with whatever you’ve made.” She offered Eda the pot, who took it with a grin.

“Great, I made the drinks to go with this.” She grinned and moved toward the kitchen. Camila rolled her eyes and followed. 

A rumble of thunder overhead alerted all of them to the incoming rain and the four teens all turned to look at Lilith expectantly and she nodded.

“We best put the barrier up now before the rain starts,” she said and Luz nodded and hurried upstairs to draw up a barrier glyph, the rest of the teens waiting for her so they could augment her spell and Lilith swallowed. Once the barrier was up, they would leave an opening so they wouldn’t have to expend any more magic putting it up and taking it down. She would be able to put her plan into action.

Luz hurried back and the four made quick work of setting up the barrier under Eda and Camila’s watchful gaze from the doorway; Lilith stood in the yard with them.

Once it was done the kids moved back inside, just as the first few drops of rain began to fall, plinking quietly atop the pale, orange glowing shield of magic.

Lilith moved unseen out of the opening in the barrier to where Hooty had corralled the Yatterang just outside for her. The slowly falling rain hissed and smoked as it hit the ground, as did Lilith as drops of boiling rain splashed across her skin. 

She winced, hissing between her teeth as she hauled the docile beast up into her arms and overhead. Its serpentine body held between her hands. It was awkward and wriggled in her grasp and she grumbled to herself about stupid, human courtship traditions, thankful that the trees shielded her, for the moment, from the worst of the rain. It wriggled in her hands and she grit her teeth, lips pulling back over a pair of sharp fangs as she moved out from under the cover of the trees into the rain, determined to make her intentions known and accept the answer either way. Then, at the very least, she could leave this uncertainty. She took a deep breath and hurried out from under the trees just as the rain picked up into a heavy deluge.

It was then Lilith realized she’d made a grave miscalculation in this plan. 

“Where’d Lily go?” Eda looked up, realizing that her sister had vanished.

“Did she never come in with us?” Amity asked and Luz shrugged.

Suddenly, a loud, high-pitched howling suddenly echoed from outside, making everyone jump.

“What the heck was that?” Luz blinked and Eda frowned, moving quickly toward the door with the kids on her heels and Camila not far behind.

She shoved the front door open and the sound grew louder along with the hissing and clatter of rain. She blinked out into the pouring rain, eyes widening as she caught sight of the figure scrabbling through the water.

“Is that Lilith?” Amity’s mouth hung loose as they watched the undeniable figure of Lilith, running through the boiling rain, yelling and shouting while trying to hold onto a long, yellow serpent as it made loud, disjointed, screeching noises at varying pitches.

“What is she doing?” Luz blinked as they all watched the witch running back and forth through the rain, trying to get a grip on the demon as it writhed under the boiling hot drops of water.

“Lilith looks like she’s having fun!” Hooty wiggled excitedly and Eda rolled her eyes as she walked out into the yard toward the opening in the barrier.

What are you doing?!” Eda yelled and then Lilith was darting inside, dropping the Yatterang to the ground as she did and panting, steam rising off her splotchy, red skin and soaked hair. 

“What were you doing out there?” Eda barked at her, frowning as she looked at the litany of burns that were splashed across her skin. 

“I… Yatterang… human music… hardcore…” she huffed as Eda just blinked at her.

“Uh-oh…,” Gus mumbled as he watched and Luz looked at him.

“What?” Eda frowned, head cocked as she tried to figure out just what her sister was talking about. Camila rushed forward and started looking over her many burns.

“Ai dios mio, Lirio! What were you doing?” Camila frowned, eyes lit with worry as she looked at the burning red skin that was usually much paler.

Lilith blinked at her, still panting and rattled by the pain of her burns, mind whirring a mile a minute as her steaming, boiling water, soaked clothes clung to her flushed skin. 

"I… courtship…. bae?" she rasped, breathlessly and Camila and Eda both blinked at her in confusion.

Behind them, Gus hummed.

"Well, that's not quite how I told her to do it…." 

Luz turned fully to him.

"What did you tell her?!" she hissed, making him jump. 

“I just showed her that thing you showed me; where the guy stood in the rain with the music box and the girl fell in love with him!” Gus hissed back and Luz had to quickly comb through her brain before she remembered what the younger boy was talking about and slapped her palm to her face.

“Gus, the rain in the human world isn’t boiling though!” she reminded him.

“Oh… that’s right…,” he trailed off and glanced back over at Lilith as she finally managed to get her breathing back under control. 

“What were you thinking?” Camila gently scolded her as she took her hand and gently began to examine the many burns that marked her skin. 

“I…,” she hesitated, she couldn’t very well make her intentions known right now, not after making an absolute fool out of herself. Lilith could have withstood the pain of the boiling water droplets for at least a few minutes but the Yatterang could not. It had immediately panicked in her grip and instead of the beautiful music it was known for, a loud and panicked squawking had come out as it tried to escape her grasp and get out of the rain.

“I… thought I saw someone lurking in the trees and went to check it out and was attacked by that demon just as the rain picked up…,” she quickly came up with a lie that didn’t make her look quite so much like an idiot. 

She still very much felt like one though, especially as Camila clicked her tongue and quickly pulled her back toward the house. 

“We need to look at your burns. Mija!” she called and Luz jumped to attention. “Go and grab that first aid kit I gave you,” she instructed and Luz nodded and took off inside.

“Let me go change into dry clothes first…,” Lilith mumbled, doing her best not to look the nurse in the eye as heat crept up her neck and cheeks that had nothing to do with the burns on her skin or the steam still wafting off her sodden clothes. Camila nodded and she hurried up the stairs, wincing at every grating rub of the wet fabric on her irritated skin. 

She grumbled angrily under her breath about what a foolish idea that was. Lilith didn’t understand human courtship customs evidently, and probably didn’t want to either. 

Her pride stung as much if not more than her skin.

She took her time changing and trying to pull together as much of her dignity as possible. It felt like there was very little left after that debacle. She sighed and after twenty minutes of hiding in her bedroom, finally, ventured back downstairs where Camila was waiting for her with the small first aid kit she had sent with Luz one weekend some months ago because, while she’d seen the benefits of healing magic, Eda couldn’t perform any and Lilith’s was weakened. 

“Sit here, Lirio.” She motioned to the sofa and Lilith did as she was told, listening to the commotion in the kitchen as the four teens helped Eda with… whatever she happened to be doing in there. Camila clicked her tongue as she took hold of one of Lilith’s arms and started to apply a pale, white cream to the many burns that littered her skin. 

Lilith sat, stone still and stiff, doing her best not to look at the woman until a gentle hand on her cheek made her turn to look at her as Camila gauged the degree of the wounds on her face and made a quiet humming noise. She was so close as she inspected her that Lilith could feel the warmth coming off her and smell the same delectable, spicy smell that had come from whatever had been in the pot she brought. It was all she could do to keep her heart from beating straight out of her chest at the close proximity of the human.

“They're not as bad as I first thought but they're still not good,” Camila mumbled, shaking her head as her eyes continued to roam over Lilith's face, searching. “They shouldn’t blister but they're going to be very tender for a few days,” she advised and Lilith nodded mutely. 

“Dinner is ready, mom,” Luz poked her head into the living room and called. Camila nodded and finally pulled her hand away from Lilith’s cheek. She immediately missed the warmth. She watched as the nurse stood and moved toward the kitchen, stopping to look at Lilith over her shoulder. 

“Are you coming, Lilith?” she asked and the witch had to mentally shake herself from her stupor.

“Yes, of course…,” she nodded and stood, wincing as her clean, dry clothes rubbed on her burns. Camila seemed to notice and frowned but said nothing as Lilith followed. 

Dinner was lively and energetic as ever, save for Lilith who ate silently and gave short, clipped answers when asked anything from Eda and tried her damndest not to snip at any of the kids. Her mood was absolutely vile and the last thing she wanted right now was to be around anyone. She could hardly look Camila in the eye but she had no choice at this moment. She ate as quickly as possible without being rude. 

The food Camila had brought was delicious but she had a hard time enjoying it over the burning sting of both her body and her pride. 

As soon as her plate was empty she stood, drawing the table's attention.

“This was quite enjoyable, but I think I really need to go lay down,” she lied through her teeth and Eda frowned at her while the teens and Camila nodded in understanding. She didn't waste any time retreating to her room and throwing herself down on her bed the moment the door had closed. She groaned loudly into her pillow in a mixture of pain and shame.

Downstairs Gus grimaced and Luz pursed her lips, now she really wished she’d made the time to help Lilith out because that had been painful, both for the witch and to watch. 

Luz glanced at her mother and could see the tiny furrows that lined the edges of her eyes whenever she was upset and she frowned. She wasn’t sure what to make of that exactly. Her mother had never been the easiest to read. 

A hand on her knee under the table made her turn to look at Amity, who was looking back at her from the corner of her eye, worried as she gave her knee a gentle squeeze.

‘Are you okay?’

 Luz reached under the table and laid a hand atop the witch's giving it a gentle squeeze. 

‘Yeah’

“Stop playing touchy-feely under the table!” Eda’s voice made them all jump and their hands jerked back as they blushed.

~ 

Lilith hadn’t moved from her bed for the better part of an hour and she had no plans to do so until her bedroom door swung open and she sighed to herself but did not move. She knew who it was already. 

“So, you wanna talk about… all that?” Eda’s voice filtered into her ears and Lilith knew that ignoring her sister was a futile effort and it would be best to appease her curiosity if she wanted her out of here quickly, so she pushed herself up to sit and looked over at Eda with a frown.

“No, I do not want to talk about it, Edalyn,” she grumbled and Eda frowned back at her. 

“Okay, don’t talk then, listen,” Eda huffed and folded her arms as she locked her own dual-colored eyes with Lilith’s. “I talked to the kids after Cammy and Luz left and figured out where you went wrong…,” she declared and it took everything Lilith had not to heave the largest sigh she ever had.

“And where did I go wrong, Edalyn?” she asked tiredly, pressing a finger to her temple.  

“You tried to do a human thing that you didn’t understand… and that the kid got wrong… The rain in the human world isn’t boiling… so… what you did… she still didn’t understand.” Eda said and Lilith looked at her for a long moment before burying her face in both hands and screamed.

Eda jumped at the muffled screaming. That… that was new. 

“So I injured myself and made a fool of myself for absolutely no reason!?” She snapped and pressed a hand back over her eyes.

“Well, it was kind of amusing to me…” Eda smirked and Lilith growled, hand whipping away to growl at her.

“I’m not in the mood, Edalyn,” she growled out lowly and Eda could hear the dangerous edge to it and sniffed. Even she knew when it was best to back off a little. 

“Look, you went about this all wrong. You tried to do it human style. You aren’t human, you need to stick to what you know. Just… edit it a little”

“I’m not sure Camila would understand witch courting customs…,” Lilith mumbled and Eda shrugged.

“You never know. Luz fits in here like a slughorn buzzard in a gore-tree, who's to say Cammy won’t be charmed by some good ‘ol demon realm charm?” Eda asked her, brow hiked up in genuine question as she shot her sister a finger gun, clicking her tongue. Lilith pursed her lips as she looked at her sister’s crooked grin.

Maybe Edalyn had a point. She’d tried the human way, to disastrous results. Partly because her information had been questionable at best and she hadn’t the slightest clue what she was doing. Perhaps it would be wise to try something she actually knew.

“Perhaps you’re right…,” she conceded. “I wanted to do something she was familiar with but there's no way for me to know outside of Luz and to be honest… I hate the idea of involving her in this any more than she already is, it’s not something she should be concerned about,” she said and Eda nodded. She’d have to agree with that. Funny as it was watching Lily flounder and Luz be flabbergasted by the whole thing, the kid shouldn’t have to worry or even think about Lilith trying to romance her mom. 

“So, what are you going to do?” Eda asked, leaning against the doorframe and looking curiously at Lilith, who looked thoughtful for a long moment, staring into the distance as she tapped her finger to her chin before finally seeming to come to a decision and turning her gaze back to Eda. 

“I’m going to do this the only way I know how….” she paused to take a deep, resigned breath. “The Clawthorne way.” 

“Oh yeah, baby!” Eda grinned that sharp tooth grin at her, finger guns pointing in her direction and Lilith was already regretting this.         

Chapter Text

When humans spoke of their ‘playbooks’ in terms of courting and relationships, it was usually something said in jest but in the Boiling Isles, it wasn’t just a jaunty euphemism. It was a real, physical book passed down in witch families from generation to generation and added onto by each one that possessed it. 

Eda had absconded with the book when she left home years ago, not that Lilith had ever cared about nor needed it, til now. Luckily, it was, somewhat curiously, not something Eda had pawned or traded away at some point over the years.

Lilith grumbled to herself as she flipped through the large black and red, leather-bound book on the table. It was old and worn, covered in scratches and knicks. It looked like it had fallen off a cliff and then been chewed on by a chupacabra and knowing her sister, it probably had been, but the word ‘Clawthorne’ was still sharp and legible in bright, glittering gold letters embossed across the front cover. 

So far, her family’s esteemed history of wooing their would-be partners had been failing her in every way.

Several, of course, had to do with grand displays of magical ability, which left a sour taste in her mouth now that such a thing wasn't even an option to consider anymore. 

Not that she had anyone to blame for that but herself.

She flipped angrily through the old weathered pages with growing annoyance, the tips of her fangs poking out from her top lip in visible irritation as she gnawed on her bottom lip. At first, the yellowed pages with various entries in different penmanship had been fascinating to her but the charm had quickly worn away with every failure she had notched into her belt over the last few weeks.

She’d decided to be proactive and go to the human world, acting as an escort to Luz’s usual cohort of friends as an excuse to see Camila. 

A warm feeling had bubbled up and spread through her whole body at the way Camila’s face had brightened upon seeing her and she couldn’t help but smile back. 

If only it could have lasted.

At some point, they had all ended up crammed into the Noceda family kitchen helping Camila prepare dinner, which Lilith now couldn’t remember the name of for the life of her. Camila had said but sometimes Lilith couldn't even begin to decipher the heavily accented words of the human language the two humans spoke. She did, however, vividly remember what had followed.

Lilith sat at the kitchen table watching Camila move about with an easy grace that she couldn’t help but admire, especially in the kitchen. A place where Lilith was particularly lacking. She was happy to sit and watch while the four teens buzzed around helping the other woman prepare some kind of meal. She hadn’t the faintest idea what it was but the smell wafting through the air was enough to make saliva pool in her mouth. 

Right now, Camila had her back turned as she fiddled with something on the counter and Lilith pondered in what way she could employ some of her family’s, apparently, tried and true methods of courtship - if the family tree lines detailing the various marriages that came about, as a result, was anything to go by. She wasn’t sure exactly what she was going to do. One of the last listings in the book had been added by her grandfather, who had, of course, gone the traditional route of showing off the strength of his fangs, by biting through the horn of a jackalope. A common tactic but one she wasn’t sure she could possibly pull off here in the human world, if for no other reason than a distinct lack of jackalopes. 

She was still lost in her thoughts, considering what to do when quiet, angry muttering in that rapid ‘spanish’, as Luz had told her was called, made her look up. Camila was standing over the counter grumbling in frustration to herself as she finagled something round and brown in her hands.

“What’s wrong, mom?” Luz piped up from the other counter where she and Willow were hard at work on another task for the meal ahead.

“I can’t find the hammer to break open the coconut…” she huffed.

“What is a ‘coconut’?” Lilith asked, brows creasing in the middle of her forehead as she looked at the object.

“It’s like… a hard-shelled fruit. You have to crack it open to get to the meat inside,” Luiz explained.

“I can’t find the hammer… so I don’t think I’m going to be able to make dulce de coco…” Camila frowned and Luz groaned just as an idea popped into Lilith’s head and she stood from the table so fast the chair skittered backward, drawing everyone's attention.

“I can help,” she announced and moved toward the counter, nearly stumbling at the breath-taking smile that Camila sent in her direction.

“That’s very kind of you, Lilith…,” Camila started as she handed the coconut to Lilith, who eyed it for a second before nodding. “Are you going to use your magi-” The rest of that sentence was choked short as the witch opened her mouth, her jaw seeming to unhinge and, in a quick flash, she snapped her fangs closed around the fruit, making a loud ‘crack’ echo through the kitchen as all other sounds died. The teens and Camila stared at her with wide-eyed wonder as coconut milk spilled on the floor and the two cracked halves sat in Lilith’s open palms as she smirked proudly, running her tongue over one sharp fang.

“Simple,” she said, holding the two halves out to Camila, who was still staring back at her, speechless, for a long moment before taking them.

“Um, thank you, Lilith…,” she mumbled, eyes turning to the liquid spilled across the tile floor.

“My apologies for the mess…” 

“It’s alright… I’ll go get some towels.” Camila quickly exited the kitchen and Lilith frowned. She had looked less than impressed. 

The second she was out of earshot, Luz seemed to recover.

“What the heck was that?!” she hissed.

“Really impressive, is what it was!” Gus piped up, grinning and Amity couldn’t help but nod, looking awed.

“What?” Luz blinked and Willow chuckled.

“It’s a witch thing,” she explained as Luz turned to look at her. “In the days before covens and the emperor, proving how strong you were to potential partners was important and one-way witches did that was by showing how strong their fangs were,” she said. Luz blinked at her, seeming to think before a look of realization came over her face and she whipped around to look at Amity, who was already turning red.

“Is that why you bit that stick in half on our first date?!” she yelped.

Lilith sighed tiredly to herself. It was only after dinner that Luz had explained that such displays were not something humans did and that Camila more than likely only thought she was a little strange now. She would need to try a different tack. She sighed heavily through her nose and flipped another page tiredly. She had no idea what was and wasn’t acceptable to humans in terms of showing interest. So far, she was oh for two and Camila probably thought she was more bizarre than even Eda at this point.

That certainly didn’t put her in a good mood.

She slapped the book closed with a heavy sigh and drummed her fingers impatiently on the hardened leather surface. A soft chittering in her ear made her reach up and scratch her fingers gently under her palisman’s chin. The white raven gave a little shake, its feathers fluffed and Lilith let his presence ease her mind.

“What am I going to do, Bram?” She glanced at the magical familiar who cooed in response and she scoffed.

“I think she would be even less inclined towards that…,” she grumbled.

It was Saturday and she was alone in the house. She wasn’t sure where her sister nor King had gone, but she was enjoying the rare peace and quiet. 

She was starting to understand why people talked too much about their issues in romantic endeavors. This was not half as simple as she thought it would be. 

Bram cawed in her ear and she pursed her lips in thought.

“I’m not sure ‘something shiny’ is specific enough for me to do anything with…,” she said, a smirk pulling at her lips.

Before the familiar could respond, she heard the front door open. 

“Lily, get your butt out here!” Eda’s voice boomed through the house and Lilith sighed before standing from the table and walking out of the kitchen. She froze the moment her eyes landed on Camila, standing next to her sister and Luz. 

“Ah, Camila… you’re here…why?” she asked nervously, especially when the nurse smiled at her, which was surprising, given how awkward she’d felt after the entire coconut incident.

“Eda invited Luz and me to a festival. All her friends will be there as well. We were hoping you would join us.” Camila’s gaze on her made her feel like she was squirming in her skin, especially knowing what a fool she had made of herself last time. She swore she was only getting more awkward around the woman with every passing day. She managed to pull herself together long enough to turn to her sister

“What festival?” She narrowed her eyes and Eda snorted. 

“What, did you fall and hit your head? It's Mabon!” Eda threw up her hands.

Oh, she had completely forgotten all about that, what with everything that had been going on since they had stolen the portal back all those months ago. Luz had blasted Belos with Eda’s staff in the wake of their escape and he had all but barricaded himself inside his castle and had yet to come back out - not that most people seemed to mind; life, for the most part, continued on as it had before, even without his direct influence. With the notable exception that in his absence, some savage era customs had started to return to fashion, such as Mabon.

“What is it exactly?” Luz asked and her mentor made a face.

“I can’t remember what humans call it…,” the Owl Lady trailed off, thinking.

“The autumnal equinox,” Lilith said. “It used to be an important, spiritual day for witches until the emperor outlawed it under the pretense that it celebrated wild magic. But, since he’s been… indisposed as of late, they’ve begun to make a resurgence…”

“And tonight's the night, lots of food, drink, games and all that stuff, so-” She leveled a finger at Lilith, who frowned, looking down cross-eyed at the digit almost poking her in the nose, “put your nerd books away and let’s go!” Eda demanded and Lilith narrowed her eyes at her sister, lips pulled back over her teeth and about to bite the offending digit, before a quiet chuckle drew her gaze to Camila, hand pressed over her mouth to suppress her laughter, though it did nothing to hide her smile or the joyous light in her eyes that made her feel faint when they were pinned on her.

A sharp jab to her cheek made her snarl and turn, teeth snapping angrily but Eda yanked her finger back before she could lose it, still grinning impishly as Lilith growled but it was cut short by Camila.

"If you're not busy, we'd love to have you along with us," she smiled, ignoring Eda's "ehhh" and wiggling her hand in a so-so manner.

"That's very kind of you...I…" She glanced at Luz and Eda, who looked back at her, eyebrow arching in a very 'well?' manner. “I’d like that very much, yes, thank you.”

“Well, what are we waiting for then? Let’s go!” Eda wasted no time turning and strutting out of the house with Luz hot on her heels. Lilith rolled her eyes and shared a brief look with Camila before they too followed her out.

Camila glanced over and her eyes fell on the white raven perched on Lilith’s shoulder, looking back at her with two, big blue eyes.

“I didn’t know you had a bird…,” she said, drawing Lilith’s attention.

“Ah, this is Bram, my palisman.” She held up a hand and the familiar cawed. 

“A palisman… Luz has talked about those, they’re the little wooden creatures, yes?” she asked and Lilith nodded and twirled her finger, making her staff appear.

“They’re part of the staff that we receive when we finish school; they have their own, innate power but are also… a part of us in a way,” she said, holding up her hand and allowing Bram to hop onto her extended finger. 

“He’s very cute.” Camila smiled at him and Lilith held her hand out to the other woman. She hesitated a moment before reaching up to pet him with a finger. He made a quiet cooing noise and Camila smiled as he nuzzled against her hand. Lilith’s heart thudded painfully against her ribs at the sight and she swallowed thickly before Eda’s voice brought her out of her infatuated stupor.

“Hey, let’s go already!” 

She turned to find Eda and Luz already mounted on her staff, and looking at them expectantly, bringing Lilith to a horrifying conclusion. 

The second she did, her sister grinned wickedly, seeing the realization break out across Lilith’s face. 

“Since Owlbert’s at full capacity, you’ll have to take Cammy,” Eda’s smirk was plain to see and everyone but Camila herself understood the hidden meaning in that sharp grin.

“Of course,” Lilith had to suppress the growl in her voice. She was more than happy to be Camila’s ride but she knew damn well what her sister was doing. Trying to force her hand.

She held up her staff and Bram hopped back to the top, solidifying back into wood. Camila made a small sound of awe and surprise before Lilith hopped on and it remained floating gently in the air. 

“Shall we then?” she asked and was impressed with herself and how steady her voice sounded as she asked the question. Camila nodded, even though she looked more than a little unsure as she carefully climbed onto the staff, arms immediately wrapping tight around Lilith, who froze solid at the arms squeezing around her midsection. 

The older human was too busy trying to get herself situated to notice the absolutely wicked grin that had continued to pull at Eda’a lips till it was nearly maniacal. Lilith, however, did not and Luz couldn’t help the snort that eked out when she caught sight of Lilith’s bright red face.

Once Camila was settled they took off, though at a much slower pace than normal to accommodate their first-time flyer. Even so, Camila still clung to Lilith so tightly it was almost painful and, if she didn’t know better, Lilith would have thought the human was holding her breath.

She couldn't remember a longer flight than the twenty minutes spent with Camila pressed flush against her back. She could feel how tense the woman was and Lilith didn't blame her. She could vividly remember her first staff ride. She'd only been about four maybe. 

Her father had scooped her up one bright, clear morning just as the sun had begun to rise and hopped on the dark wood staff bearing a cardinal palisman and took off.

She'd been terrified at first, so high off the ground and the wind whipping through both their manes of bright, curly, red hair. She had clung tightly to his shirt at first, eyes clenched tightly shut when they stopped but then he'd laughed and his large hand rested gently atop her head and his voice rumbled in her ear.

“Look, my flower.” 

She’d managed to peel her eyes open and turn her face out of the fabric of his shirt and when she did, she gasped.

A sharp pain in her chest made her push away the memory. How she missed him.

She glanced over her shoulder and, sure enough, Camila’s eyes were shut tight behind her glasses. Lilith hummed and made a quick decision. She pulled her staff up much higher than was strictly necessary, at least to get to their destination but it was absolutely necessary for this.

“What’s she doing?” Luz asked as she watched Lilith pull up and the two moved much higher than them and Eda smirked to herself.

“Just having a look. Don’t worry ‘bout it, kid, Lily has it under control,” Eda promised and Luz grunted in response.   

Once they were high enough Lilith pulled them to a gentle stop, floating in the air as a gentle breeze tugged at their clothes. The perfect weather for this. Usually, the wind was much too harsh this high up, but today was all but perfect. 

“No need to be afraid,” Lilith spoke softly over her shoulder. “Look…” 

Slowly, Camila blinked her eyes open and gasped. 

The entire Isles were laid out in front of her, the sun setting beyond the crest of the Titan’s large skull and casting long golden rays over everything from the bright, auburn forests that littered the Isles to the large bones jutting up from the ground, the light gilding the ivory with bright, blinding flashes as the sun sank below the skull.

Camila’s mouth hung agape as she looked out at the Isles in awe. 

“Up close, to you, I’m sure the Isles appear rather rancid and inhospitable but they do have their charms, especially if you know how to look at it,” Lilith glanced over her shoulder at the woman, whose eyes were lit by the slowly fading sun and Lilith felt her breath hitch in her throat as her eyes roved over Camila’s amazed face.

“Es hermosa…,” the nurse mumbled, breaking Lilith from her trance and she blinked as Camila’s eyes turned from the island below and locked with hers.

She blinked and jerked back, turning back around so Camila couldn’t see her, now, bright red face. She had no idea what she’d said but she nodded regardless. 

“We should catch up with Edalyn and Luz…,” Lilith mumbled, clearing her throat, unaware of the eyes boreing into the back of her head.

Without another word, she directed her staff back down and followed along behind the distant speck that was her sister and her apprentice.

It was easy to tell when they had arrived. The cheering could be heard far into the distance and the light of all the raging bonfires lit the area with shadows dancing between the trees as witches yelled and cheered, drinking and eating till they fell to the ground in a drunken stupor.

“This is amazing!” Luz grinned as she ran up to the edges of the ongoing celebration, followed closely by the older women.

“Do you smell that, Lily?” Eda asked with a grin as her sister merely cocked a brow at her. “Drunk suckers…” she said, making Lilith roll her eyes.

“Luz!” A voice called over the revelry and Luz grinned as Amity came dashing over, running straight into her girlfriend's open arms.

“What are you doing here?” she asked. “This doesn’t seem like the kind of things your parents would want you coming to, wild witch stuff and all that…”  

“That’s why I came with Ed and Em.” She smirked and Luz chuckled. 

A few witches dressed in the gaudiest and most bizarre outfits Luz had ever seen walked by, immediately snagging her attention. Colored coats inlaid with gems and large, ornate decorations made of feathers. Griffin, if she had to guess by the size of them. 

“What the heck is that?” she asked, blinking at the large, feathered plumes and garish bright colors. 

“Eh, that's for the dancing…” Eda waved a hand.

“What kind of dancing?” Luz looked up at the wild, gray-maned witch, who snorted.

“Used to be that witches would use Mabon to try and impress people they had the hots for with a specific dance - they actually still teach it at Hexside, I think - and, from what I hear, they’re coming back with that tonight. It should be good for a couple of laughs if nothing else.” Eda grinned at her apprentice. 

“Oh! That sounds kinda like the merengue - a dance from where mom is from - it's all about trying to attract a partner. It's... kind of... suggestive though..." she trailed off, drawing Eda and Amity’s attention to her rapidly reddening face. Camila and Lilith were too busy watching the festivities going on around them to notice. The blush was short-lived though and she grinned, nudging Amity with her hip. “You gonna dance?” she asked with a salacious grin, making Amity pinken but she scoffed.

“I already have you,” she said, chin tilting up and Luz laughed.

“Can’t argue with that,” she agreed. 

“Come on, let’s get some food, your mom might want to try some too.” Amity smiled and took Luz’s hand, who nodded.

“ Hey, mami, you want to come to get some food with us?” Luz called, drawing her mother’s attention away from the festivities. She nodded.

“Excuse me, I’ll be back,” she said, looking at Lilith, who could only nod dumbly.

Once the three had vanished from sight, Eda turned to her sister with a grin.

"So, you gonna do it?” she asked, catching Lilith off guard.

“Am I going to do… what?” she asked, confused and Eda rolled her eyes.

“Dance, you doofus! Are you going to join in on the dance?” 

“What?!” Lilith snapped. “Why in all the realm would I join in on that ridiculous dance?” she snorted. 

“To impress Cammy, of course. You heard Luz, they have a dance too and I know you can dance. This is a great opportunity for you to knock her socks off.” Her sister was grinning at her in a way that immediately set Lilith on edge.   

“Somehow, I doubt the ancient dance common to the Isles is the same one that she is familiar with…,” she started but Eda just waved a hand. 

"A dance is a dance is a dance and this way you won’t be the only one out there dancing, you’ll be part of the group, and besides, lots of the stories in that book were about the dance working, you know.” Eda held her hand out at all the brightly dressed witches preparing themselves and Lilith pursed her lips. 

Eda had a point, much as she hated it. 

“I don’t even have anything to wear…,” the excuse was halfway out her mouth when Eda’s grin brightened further and she started digging through her hair.

“I have just the thing!” she said before pulling out some length of pale blue fabric with flashes of pink, lime green, and purple.

“What. is. That?” Lilith sneered and Eda only continued to grin.  

“Fresh from the human world! They dance in these, so I figured it would be perfect,” Eda said and held it out to Lilith, who flinched back as though the thing were diseased.

“It’s hideous,” she grimaced and Eda shrugged. 

“They’re humans, what did you expect? Look, do you want to impress Cammy or not?” she asked, holding it out between them. 

Their eyes remained locked for a long minute as they stared silently back at each other, the sounds of revelry continuing around them.

“Fine!” Lilith hissed, snatching it out of Eda’s hand. “We’ll try it…,” she grumbled before stalking off back into the woods with Eda on her trail. 

~

“Tastes kind of weird…,” Luz mumbled as she swallowed another Kraken ball off a stick.

“These are one of the best things about festivals,” Amity gushed as she inhaled her second stick’s worth of the deep-fried treat. Luz watched her with a grin, happy that Amity was having a good time. Her mother sat on the large log on her other side, watching the festival continue to unfold around them.

The promised dancing seemed about to start as the dancers, all dressed in the brightest, most outrageous outfits Luz had ever seen all moved closer to the main bonfire in the middle of it all.  

The sun had long set and the flames of the bonfires lit the darkness of the woods with long, laughing shadows that flickered in every direction. The bright light of the flames bathed their faces in orange and gold. 

“I'm going to go get some more,” Amity declared when she'd finished the last of her treat and stood. Luz glanced over at the long line and stood too.

“Let me get it!” 

“You both sit down and watch the dances, I'll get Amity’s snack,” Camila said, and stood, smiling at the two of them.

“You don’t have to do that, Ms. Noceda…,” Amity was quick to object but the older woman just waved a hand. 

“Don’t worry yourself over it, you two watch the dancing, I’ll be back soon.” She told them and walked off through the crowd, toward the food.

“Your mom’s so nice. No wonder Lilith likes her so much… how's that going by the way?”

“I honestly couldn’t tell you… I think she likes Lilith… not that I’ve asked her or anything. She always asks me though if she’s going to come when you or Eda come over and I know she made Sancocho just for her, which takes a while… but then she did the thing with the boiling rain and the coconut thing…,” Luz trailed off.

“Which was actually quite impressive,” the teen said and Luz snorted. 

“Should I worry about losing you to Lilith?” she laughed even as Amity shoved her off the log.

“Don’t be gross!” she squealed as Luz snorted with laughter. The pounding of drums filled the air and many of the other sounds quieted.

“Oh, it’s starting!” Luz grinned as the flames of the roaring bonfire flashed and began to change color with the beat of the drum. “Magic is so cool,” Luz breathed as all the colorful and brightly painted and gaudily dressed witches began to stamp their feet and clap their hands in time with the swelling music.

Luz had to swallow her snort of laughter as they truly got going, hopping around the fire in beat to the song, their elaborate outfits flashing in the light and jingling loudly as they tried to impress their chosen paramour.

Her snickering stopped as she spotted Eda on the other side of the fire, sticking her head out of the bushes and laughing by the looks of it. She was too far away and the music was too loud to hear to be sure though. 

“What is Eda doing?” she asked aloud but Amity didn’t respond, making Luz look up to find her girlfriend staring open-mouthed at something. She turned to look and her mouth dropped open as well as they fell on Lilith.

“Que demonios…” she muttered as Lilith, wearing a light blue leotard with hot pink and lime green stripes, went hopping by. The pink tassels attached to the pale blue arm warmers she was wearing on her forearms flapped about as she waved her arms. Her face was set in a serious look as she glanced over at Eda, who, while very clearly wheezing, gave an enthusiastic thumbs up. The embarrassed flush of Lilith’s face was carefully hidden by the light of the fire. 

“Why does this keep happening to me?” She heard Amity whisper, horrified, to herself as they watched the former coven leader hop and twirl around the fire in time with the other dancers.

“What… What am I looking at?” Luz asked, gobsmacked. 

Amity pressed both her hands over her eyes and groaned, her ears pressed flat against her head as Luz continued to watch the scene unfold like a car wreck, especially as the stalwart witch stomped her feet and did jazz hands with the most serious expression Luz had ever seen.

By the time Camila came back, the song had ended and the dancers dispersed.

“How was it?” she asked both teens as she sat down beside them, handing Amity the stick of Kraken balls which she took with a limp hand, unseeing eyes trained on the ground. 

“I don’t think Amity or I will ever forget it…,” Luz said honestly just as Eda came strutting up, an arm thrown over Lilith’s hunched shoulders. 

“So, what did you think?” Eda asked with a grin and Camila smiled apologetically back at her.

“I’m afraid I missed it, I was getting the girls some food,’ she said and both witches' faces went slack, but neither so much as Lilith’s.

“You missed it?” Eda repeated and Camila nodded regretfully before turning her attention to Lilith, her eyes widened as she took in the witch’s gaudy and flamboyant outfit. 

“Oh, you look… different, Lirio,” she said and Lilith’s face brightened.

“I…” 

“She lost a bet and had to dance...,” Eda quickly cut off her sister, who frowned but Camila nodded. 

“That would explain it,” she agreed and, if possible, Lilith felt her face grow even hotter. 

‘I’m going to kill Edalyn’ she thought bitterly. 

“I’m sorry I missed it. So, shall we enjoy the rest of the festival?” she asked, looking at the two teens, who nodded numbly.

“Please allow me to go change first…,” Lilith bit out and jerked out from Eda’s hold and hurried off into the woods to change back into her dress before she humiliated herself any further.

The rest of the evening went fairly smoothly and the two teens did their best to put what they had seen out of their heads and Eda scammed any passerby she could while Lilith and Camila watched everything unfold in silence. Camila was too preoccupied watching the girls play games, trying to outdo each other in prizes, to notice Lilith’s angry and embarrassed silence, her arms folded tightly across her chest as she followed along and stewed. 

She didn’t know why she had listened to Edalyn at all. The maniacal grinning should have tipped her off that she was being played for a fool, though Eda claimed her help had been sincere. 

It hardly mattered. 

Once again she had made a complete fool of herself in front of everyone and was still not a hair's breadth closer to actually garnering Camila’s attention or affection. 

She sighed heavily through her nose.

What was she even doing?

She was so wrapped up in her pity party that she didn’t notice the occasional glances being thrown her way from behind a pair of red-framed spectacles. 

Chapter Text

The room was dim, no light managed to pierce the thick veil of curtains drawn tightly shut over the windows and that was just the way the room's sole occupant wanted it. 

Dark, quiet, and alone. The way it had been for the last two days since the Mabon.

Lilith wanted nothing more than to lay under her blankets, in the gloom for all the rest of her life in shame and embarrassment. 

The first thing she had done when she got home was burn the ugly blue outfit and then had secluded herself in her bedroom, ignoring everything and everyone. She just wanted to die here.  

The bedroom door burst open and light flooded the cave of a room.

“Okay, that's enough of your little pity party!” Eda shouted as she stood in the doorway, staring at the lump that was her sister, hidden beneath the covers.  

“Go. Away.” was the angry, muffled reply that made Eda roll her eyes. 

“You’ve been hiding in here for two days. You need to eat… and probably shower by the smell of this room…” She made a face and from beneath the blankets, Lilith growled angrily. “So the Mabon didn’t go great…” Eda started.

“No thanks to you!” Lilith snarled, popping up and the blanket sliding off her head as she glared balefully at Eda, who frowned.

“I was trying to help!” The Owl Lady snapped back. “So the outfit didn’t work out. I know I know more about humans than most witches but I’m not an expert, I gave my best guess and it might have worked, she didn’t see it, so we’ll never know!” Eda huffed, crossing her arms and Lilith grumbled, dropping back down to the bed with an aggravated huff, letting the blanket cover her head once more as she buried her face in her pillow.

“Well, thank you very much, she probably thinks I’m an even bigger fool than before now!” Lilith grumbled from beneath her blankets. “I think it’s time to yield…” her voice was even quieter at that but Eda still heard it and frowned as she walked further into the room and sat on the edge of the bed.

“Hey, don’t throw in the towel yet. Cammy’s a catch and I think you’ve still got a shot,” she slapped a hand on the lump of blankets, making Lilith grunt. 

“How did you come to that brilliant conclusion?” The sharp tone rumbled out bitterly and Eda smirked.

“Cause Luz told me that her momma made that soup just for you when you were sick and whenever I go over there to see the kid, she asks about you,” Eda grinned as the lump went quiet for a long moment before her sister’s poofy, bedhead appeared again from beneath the blanket.

“Really?” she asked quietly and Eda nodded.

“Yup, I think you just need to give it another go.”

“How, Edalyn?” Lilith stressed as she finally sat up, letting the blanket fall off her shoulders to pool around her waist. “I know less than nothing about human customs and she doesn’t know witch ones,” she sighed, running a hand through her mussed and curling hair.

“Right… that is a problem… But you could just… tell her?” Eda suggested and Lilith frowned. 

“Not after making a fool out of myself all this time, I have to do something to gain back some ground…,” Lilith grumbled to herself, hands fisting into the blankets. Eda frowned but knew better than to try and talk Lilith out of anything.

“Well, think about your great master plan to woo Cammy after a shower, you look like something King dragged in from one of my trash piles…,” Eda said as she stood and made her way toward the door. Lilith glanced down at her herself and frowned. Her hair could certainly use a washing. “Tiny Blight and the kid are gonna be here soon for breakfast,” Eda tacked on.

“It’s Tuesday, what is Luz doing here?” she asked as she crawled out from under the blankets finally.

“No human school or whatever, Cammy let her come, they should be here soon,” were her sister’s final words before disappearing out the kicked open door.

Lilith grunted to herself and dug out some fresh clothes before making her way to the shower. 

~

When she finally entered the kitchen, both teens were already sitting at the table, munching on spoonfuls of Unlucky Omens.

“Hey Lilith,” Luz greeted around a mouthful of cereal, and Amity rolled her eyes as food fell out of her mouth.  

“Luz…,” she mumbled and Luz’s mouth snapped shut and she swallowed quickly before speaking again as Lilith made herself a cup of tea. “How are you doing since Saturday?” She asked and Lilith grunted as she plopped down into the chair across from the teens.

“Fine…,” she mumbled, taking a sip from her tea. 

“She’s been hiding in her room ever since the Mabon,” Eda supplied helpfully, making her sister turn red behind her teacup as she shot Eda a venomous look.

“Well, hey! If it makes you feel any better, mom had a really good time anyway.” Luz smiled at her and Lilith grunted. She supposed that was the most important thing, that Camila enjoyed the culture of the Isles.

“Yes, I suppose that is what is most important… I simply wish I could have played a role in the good time she had,” she sighed before taking a sip of her tea.

“Well, what’s your next plan?” Luz asked, spooning more cereal into her mouth.

“I don’t know, so far, everything has been an unmitigated disaster and the family book has not been as helpful as I had hoped…” she grumbled.

“Your family's book?” Amity perked up and Lilith nodded, twirling a finger and making the black and red, leather-bound book appear, falling into her open hand. She held it out to Amity who grinned brightly as she took it in her hands. 

Luz watched her with a knowing grin. They both had a certain affinity for books but Amity was even more niche than that where she had a thing for old books and it was both hilarious and gratifying to watch her pour-over one ancient tome or another. 

She flipped through the weathered pages with a sharp eye. 

“Nothing in the book can help?” Luz asked and Lilith shook her head.

“They're all witch customs, which your mother wouldn’t understand…” 

“Well, I mean, she didn’t understand the coconut thing… but surely you have something else that might apply, we're not that different,” Luz cocked her head.

“Part of the problem, Luz, is that I don’t know what is and isn’t different…,” Lilith said, frustrated by the entire ordeal. “Your friend Augustus is unreliable.. And you,” she started just as Luz opened her mouth. “Should not be involved in my… whatever this is with your mother,” she quickly cut out the possibility of Luz getting involved.

The human teen pouted, crossing her arms over her chest.

“I could help you though,” Amity piped up, still flipping through the Clawthorne family book.

“How do you figure that?” Lilith asked her, making Amity look up from the book, single brow cocked as she looked at the witch before glancing over at her very human girlfriend sitting beside her. Behind her, at the counter, Eda started to cackle.

“Fair enough,” Lilith grumbled.

“I think this one has the right idea,” Amity said and turned the book around to Lilith, who took it and her eyes fell on a brief passage detailing the capture and extraction of a chimera tooth that was then carved into a necklace and presented as a gift.

“Humans do exchanges of jewelry and tokens like we do,” Amity told her as she ran over the neat script. 

“Oh! Yeah, Amity gave me this bracelet!” Luz smiled and held the simple braided cord with a small purple gemstone weaved into it.  

Lilith hummed thoughtfully. As she got to the end of the passage, she found father’s name was signed at the bottom. Her grip on the book tightened as she stared at it for a long while before slapping the book closed with a resounding clap.

“I’ll do it,” she declared. “I will hunt down a chimera and extract one of its fangs.”

“Oh, can I come?” Luz grinned.

“No!” Eda and Amity echoed and Luz slumped back down, pouting. 

“Lily shouldn’t even be going,” Eda turned her annoyed gaze on her sister, who frowned back.

“And just why not, dear sister?” She asked.

“Have your hots for Cammy melted your brain?” she asked and Lilith flushed while Luz choked on the bite of cereal she had just taken. “Chimera are highly resistant to magic, it wouldn’t have been the easiest fight in the world even if you had all your magic. How are you going to subdue a chimera?” Eda leveled her with a long, hard look as she planted a fist to her hip.

“I will come up with something,” she insisted.

“Uh-huh…” Eda continued to look at her, unconvinced. 

“You could just… buy her something,” Luz offered but Lilith shook her head.

“After all the attempts where I’ve made a fool of myself? No, I need to actually do something right!” She slapped the book down on the table, making the two teens jerk and their bowls jump.

“Come on, Lily, how are you going to subdue a chimera without getting torn to shreds, use your head!” Eda scowled. For all the shit she liked to give her sister and as slightly bitter as she still was about the curse, she still had no desire to see Lilith torn apart by a magical creature for a tooth.

“I don’t know yet!” she snarled, shooting out of the chair to stand face to face with the other witch.  

“What if you… put it to sleep, with a potion?” Amity suggested after a moment of tapping her lip thoughtfully while the two sisters snarled and glared at each other. All three of the room’s other occupants turned to look at her.

“That’s a great idea, Amity, you’re so smart,” Luz cooed, making the witchling blush. She knew exactly what she was doing when she made Amity turn tomato red like that.

“That… is actually a very good idea…” Lilith hummed to herself and even Eda seemed to be thinking. 

“I could whip up something strong enough to knock one out for a week, easy as slug-pie.” The Owl Lady nodded. 

“Slug pie…,” Luz muttered to herself, making a face as the witches around her all looked thoughtful, trying to come up with a plan for Lilith to get her tooth.

“How do we get a chimera to drink a sleeping potion strong enough to knock it into next week?” Eda asked with a frown and Lilith pursed her lips. There certainly wasn’t going to be any sneaking up on the creature. That was nearly impossible with three heads to contend with. 

Not to mention the fangs, claws, and acidic venom…

Luz looked down at her cereal bowl, sitting mostly empty save a few pieces of loose floating cereal. An idea sparked and her head snapped up.

“What if we put it in food?” she asked, drawing their attention. “Could we like… soak a piece of meat or maybe fill a pie with sleeping potion and leave it out for it to eat?” she asked, looking between all three witches staring back at her.

“Kid, you’re brilliant!” Eda declared, making her apprentice grin. “We’ll drug it!” Eda grinned.

“When you say it like that…” Lilith mumbled quietly to herself but her sister and Luz’s enthusiasm for drugging a magical creature could not be quelled. She instead shared a long quiet look with Amity who shrugged.

“We’re gonna drug a magical creature and harvest it, aren’t you excited?” Luz grabbed her girlfriend’s shoulder and shook her excitedly. Amity, despite being rattled around, laughed.

“Elated, Luz,” she laughed.

Lilith rolled her eyes at the two of them but said nothing as she listened to her sister muttering off ingredients for a potion.

“We do have one other problem,” she reminded, drawing everyone's attention once more. “We have to find a chimera first.

“Oh… I forgot about that…” Eda frowned.  

~

  “How the heck did I end up here?” Eda grumbled, frowning as they moved through the thick underbrush of the woods near the left shoulder where the rare, magical creatures were said to be spotted from time to time. The thicket-rush bushes snagged on the ends of her dress.

“Because you messed up her last attempt by giving her that ugly 80’s leotard…,” Luz said as she hopped over a log and held a hand out to Amity to help her hop over.

“I was trying to help!” Eda threw up her hands. 

“Yeah, but you made it worse instead…,” Luz said and Eda snorted, crossing her arms over her chest as they moved through and over the rocky territory. 

“My beast-keeping professor says they like low, dark places hidden in the underbrush…” Luz said as she darted among the trees, looking for… something.

“She’s going to get eaten by something…” Lilith sighed as she watched the human teen dip out of sight into a large thicket.

“Eh, she’d be too hard to digest,” Eda snorted, grinning and Amity frowned at the two witches. 

“Found some tracks!” Luz’s voice called out from the underbrush and they all hurried forward... “Check out this tree!” Luz grinned, slapping the trunk of a tree. “See these gouges?” She asked, pointing at two different sets of scratches in the tree. “These are claw marks and these are horn marks, we’re definitely in chimera territory,” Luz said.

“Good job, Kid.” Eda grinned.

“Your Beast-keeping classes have come in quite handy,” Lilith smiled at the girl, who beamed proudly under both witches' praise. 

“Now… where is it?” Eda asked, looking around the dim woods carefully. 

“According to my classes, they have small territories so we should be close to its den…” A sudden, distant growl made them all freeze. The older witches acted first. Eda snatched Luz up by the collar, making her choke just as Lilith scooped up Amity and the two hurled themselves and their students into the bushes. 

“What-“ Luz started, only for Eda to slap a hand over her mouth and shush her.

They waited in the oppressive quiet for several long moments when a hulking shadow appeared among the underbrush. 

A chimera.

Its large lion body padded into sight and luckily for Luz, her shocked gasp was muffled by Eda’s hand. 

Lilith watched it carefully, its lion’s and goat’s heads sniffling at the ground as the snake tail whipped around, watching. She could feel Amity tense up in her arms and patted her shoulder gently, calming. 

It jumped up on a tree and dug its claws into the bark, the goat’s head-scratching its horns on the tree at the same time. 

“Now what?” Amity mumbled softly, looking between the sisters.  

“We follow it,” Eda rumbled quietly and once it had moved nearly out of sight, they did just that, following along behind it at a distance and keeping as quiet as possible till eventually, they followed it to the yawning mouth of a cave, carved into the side of the rocks.

“We found the den,” Luz whispered loudly and grinning. 

“Now what?” Amity muttered, looking up as Eda began digging through her hair.

“We drug it and steal its parts,” the Owl Lady grinned as she pulled out a small, glass vial of dimly glowing, blue potion. 

“I have the bait,” Luz said excitedly as she started digging through her bag before pulling out something about the size of her palm and yellow, housed in crinkly plastic.

“What is that?” Amity cocked her head curiously.

“A twinkie!” Luz grinned as she carefully opened one end of the package and allowed Eda to pour the potion inside. “They’re human junk food,” she said as they watched the yellow sponge soak up the potion. “And here we have a sleeper snack.” Luz grinned and elbowed her girlfriend, who snorted, more so at the dorky face Luz was making than the joke. Eda rolled her eyes at the two of them.

“Just get on with it!” The Owl Lady hissed and Luz pulled it out of the package after it had soaked up all of the potion and tossed it into the small clearing in front of the den opening. “Now, we wait,” Luz said.

“Anyone wanna play hex’s hold ‘em?” Eda asked, looking around. Lilith rolled her eyes. 

They didn’t have to wait long, within twenty minutes the beast came lumbering out of its den and immediately noticed the glowing, blue confection. It sniffed at it tentatively before snarfing it down.

“Yes… and King said it would never work!” Luz hissed.

The creature swallowed, took two steps, and collapsed into a heap on the ground. 

“Oh my Titan, is it dead?” Amity asked as they stood from the bushes. Eda waved a dismissive hand.

"Naw... it was just a very, very strong sleeping draught,” the witch said with a shrug. “Now let’s get to harvesting!” She grinned, pulling out a pair of pliers.

  “We only need one tooth, Edalyn.” Lilith glanced at her sister as they approached the unconscious beast.

“What if you mess up? What if you want to make earrings?” She reasoned. “You’re gonna need more than one tooth.”

Lilith pursed her lips as she shared a long look with her sister, the two teens waiting for the outcome of the silent conversation that seemed to be going on between the two.

“FIne, pull a few,” she finally agreed and Eda grinned wickedly, snapping her pliers open and closed. Amity and Luz shared a look.

~ ~ 

“We did not need this many…,” Lilith sighed tiredly as Eda poured a leather sack full of teeth onto the kitchen table.

“It’s fine, the thing had two other heads it can eat with.” Eda waved a hand. “Besides, these are some premium potion ingredients and one of us has to make money around here…,” she helpfully informed them, making Lilith flush. 

That was something else she needed to work on but first things first.

“So, what are you going to carve?” Luz asked as she sat at the table next to Amity, playing with the loose teeth scattered in front of them, bits of blood and gum staining the tabletop.

“I’m not sure… an animal is traditional,” she hummed, picking up a large, white, and wickedly curved incisor. “What does your mother like?” She asked and Luz shrugged helpfully.

“I don’t know, she's never talked about liking anything in particular.” Luz scratched the back of her head and shot Lilith an apologetic look.

“It’s alright, I will think of something, I appreciate all of your help in this matter,” she said to the two teens before glancing up at her sister, standing at the counter, sipping appleblood out of her favorite mug. She nodded and Eda only smirked back before she hurried out of the kitchen and back up to her room. 

Lilith ruminated on it for two days and was still no closer to deciding what she should make than she had been at the start.

She sighed to herself as she stared at the untouched fang still sitting in front of her.

Bram chirped quietly in her ear from her shoulder and she leaned back in her chair tiredly. 

“I don’t know,” she sighed, pinching the bridge of her nose and Bram cawed. “It will be shiny, yes!” she huffed at her palisman, who fluffed his wings in an avian pout. “I need to think of an actual form first.” She tapped her nails against the table in aggravation as Bram continued to chitter and chirp in her ear. “I need to think,” she snapped and waved him away with a swat. 

He moved away in an offended fluttering of wings and landed on the nearby open window and made a small sound Lilith recognized as him sulking. She rolled her eyes and turned to further scold the creature but stopped as she looked at him, the moonlight streaming in through the window lit his bright, pristine, white feathers. She blinked and was struck by a sudden idea before turning back to the ivory fang still sitting untouched and went to work at last.

~ ~

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Eda asked, not for the first time that night and Lilith rolled her eyes at her sister.

“Yes, Edalyn, I’m ready… I believe…” she frowned, not really believing the answer herself. She was… nervous, to put it mildly, she’d decided she couldn’t just give Camila what she’d made with no explanation, much like everything else she had done. No, she would need to explain the intent behind her gift if she wished for her feelings to be known this time.

“You don’t look ready…” Eda said flatly and Lilith huffed. 

“Well, excuse me for never having done this before! I-” She snapped her mouth closed, thinking. “I like Camila very much and I don't want to mess this up any more than I already have…:” she grumbled and Eda threw an arm over her shoulders and tugged her in.

“Listen to me, Lily, she didn’t even know what you were trying to do all those times you made yourself look like an idiot, which means they don’t count, so don’t worry about it.” She grinned and Lilith’s face fell.

“How inspiring…” Lilith growled under her breath as her sister only continued to grin.

“I do my best, anyway, I'm gonna take the kid to the party after she gets here so it’ll just be you and Cammy. Alone.” She grinned devilishly and Lilith flushed, shoving her sister away at the implications.

Before she could snap out a sharp retort the front door slammed open, making Hooty squawk and Luz came sliding inside.

“I’m here, I’m ready!” she huffed, out of breath.

“Well, don’t you look snazzy,” Eda grinned at her in her clean and sharply pressed clothes. 

“I know it’s just Ed and Em’s birthday party but it's the first time I’m meeting Amity’s parents too, so I wanted to look nice…”

“You look very nice, Luz,” Lilith assured her but her attention quickly shifted to Camila as she came walking in behind Luz. 

“She doesn't seem to believe me,” Camila laughed quietly, shaking her head before her eyes met Lilith’s, who sucked in a sharp breath, all courage leaving her now that the woman was actually in front of her.  

“Welp, let’s get going, kiddo. Knowing your girlfriend, she's pacing around her yard just waiting for you to show up.” Eda held out a hand and her staff came flying into the room, into her waiting hand.  

“You’re probably right…. Bye, Mami,” she grabbed her mother up in a hug before hurrying right back out the door. 

“I’ll be back, Lily,” Eda called as she followed the girl out the door, leaving Lilith and Camila alone.

“I suppose I should head back…” Camila started, making Lilith jerk.

“Actually, if you aren’t busy, perhaps you wouldn’t mind joining me on… a walk before it grows too late?” she managed to ask, doing her best not to fidget under the other woman’s intense gaze. The trinket in her pocket felt heavy as a stone. 

“That sounds lovely, yes.” she agreed and Lilith could only nod her head dumbly and gesture back out the still-open door.

“Have fuuuun, hoot!” Hooty called after them and Lilith shot a death-glare over her shoulder at the demon as they moved away from the house into the nearby woods lit by the last rays of the evening sun.

The woods were quiet in that late fall way, leaves crunching under their feet and the occasional bird chirping somewhere in the distance, the lone sound in the forest at this time of year when most wildlife had moved on for the remaining days of the season. She was glad for that noise at least.

She had no idea what to say. 

She glanced occasionally over at Camila who was looking at the forest around them in awe as they moved along the cliffs that lay sandwiched between the forest on one side and the boiling sea on the other.  

She had to say something, she couldn’t back out this time, no, she would never hear the end of it from Edalyn if she did. 

Just as she opened her mouth to say… something, Camila beat her to it.

“This place, despite how rather terrifying it is, is very beautiful,” she said, turning to look at Lilith as they walked along.

“It has its charms,” Lilith agreed breathlessly as the sinking sun caught Camila's eyes, and the brown was lit to a near honey-gold in its light. Her heart jumped and she could feel her palms starting to sweat as she quickly turned her gaze back to the path in front of them.

How did people do this? Lay all their feelings out in front of them to be potentially crushed into dust? 

“I’m starting to see, I think, why Luz loves this place so much. Besides the obvious bits about magic and such.”

“Oh?” was all Lilith could force past her lips and Camila nodded.

“She has such good friends here and is actually happy, doing what she’s always wanted to do… I’ve been thinking about letting her attend Hexside full-time next year…”

“Really?” That did surprise Lilith and Camila nodded. 

“I don’t understand everything going on around here or even half the people but I know Luz is happy and seems… relatively safe… And I’m not sure she’d ever speak to me again if I kept her from Amity for very long,” she chuckled and Lilith couldn’t help but grin at that, despite her nerves. The couple was nearly attached at the hip when they were in the same world. Before she could even begin to form a response, Camila went on.

“I’ve rather been enjoying my time here as well, for all it’s… otherworldliness, it’s been very exciting.” Camila glanced at her from the corner of her eye and once more set Lilith’s heart to thundering against the confines of her ribs. “Perhaps… we could spend more time together?” Camila asked and Lilith may as well have swallowed her tongue for all the words she was able to force past her lips.  

Her stunned silence must have gone on for too long for some time after - she wasn’t too certain on the passing of time at the moment - Camila frowned and turned to look at the trees on the other side of her.

“If you would prefer not to, that fi-” The moment she started to retract the offer, Lilith did the only thing she could; panicked.

“I like you!” she shouted and it bounced off the quiet trees around them and she flinched at her own volume but it did the intended thing and redrew Camila’s attention to her immediately.

“What?” she asked and Lilith turned such a fierce shade of red she was surprised that she hadn’t passed out yet. 

“I… didn’t mean to yell that…,” she admitted and swallowed thickly. It was much too late to turn back now. “I… very much enjoy your company… and you…” she said slowly, trying not to concentrate too hard on Camila’s eyes boring into her. “You’re very lovely and I enjoy our time together immensely… and, should you not be opposed to it…would like if we could… spend more time together,” she finished, thoroughly embarrassed as she stood there, waiting to hear the other woman’s response.

She didn’t need to wait long before Camila began to chuckle quietly, sending a spike of dread through Lilith, though it was short-lived as the chuckling quickly faded away. 

“I’m glad I’m not the only one who feels that way,” she admitted, smiling up at the tall witch, who stood there, gobsmacked by the words that had just come out of her mouth.

“I…,” Lilith wasn’t sure what to say to that. Her emotions were all over the place and she wasn’t even sure what to do with herself but, in that moment, she remembered the tooth.

“I have a gift for you!” she yelped and Camila jerked but smiled at her and Lilith could very much see the pale pink that seemed to tint Camila’s cheeks at that. 

“For me?” she repeated and Lilith nodded, reaching into her pocket and wrapping her fingers around the trinket.

“It's among the customary traditions in my family to carve something from the tooth of a chimera for someone when approaching them for courtship… I hope this is to your liking.” She held out a small, carved shape attached to a black cord.

“Oh…,” Camila breathed as she picked it up. 

The bone had been carved into a small but intricately detailed visage of a white raven in flight, down to the smallest of details on its feathers.

"It’s lovely… you made this?” Camila asked and Lilith couldn't help but puff up in pride somewhat at the awed tone in Camila’s voice.

“I did, since my other attempts were so disastrous…,” she grumbled but her jaw snapped shut the moment she realized what she had said.

“Other attempts?” Camila repeated, looking up at her from the pendant. 

“I… uh…” Lilith floundered and Camila seemed to realize exactly what she was talking about.

“The creature out in the rain, the coconut, and the…. leotard? Those were all attempts of yours to woo me?” Camila asked, the corner of her lips twitching upward and Lilith's face returned to its previous shade of red.

“The first was based on misinformation… technically, the second would have worked… had you been a witch,” she grumbled. “I… have no reasonable explanation for that third attempt,” she mumbled under her breath as she stared down at her feet. 

There was a long pause before a soft hand pressed to Lilith’s left cheek and then something else, equally as soft pressed against her right, very briefly. It was only after she had pulled back that Lilith realized Camila had just kissed her cheek. She stared open-mouthed at the human standing across from her, looking at her softly. 

“You needn’t try so hard, Lirio, I like you too,” she said quietly, fingering the bone pendant in her hand. 

~ ~

Lilith was sitting at the kitchen table, sipping happily on her tea when Eda and Luz returned from the party.

“How was the party?” Lilith asked, noticing the strange green stains on Luz’s pale purple shirt.

“Don’t ask…” the teen grumbled and Eda grunted as well. 

“Forget about that,” the witch huffed. “How did things go with you and Cammy?” Eda asked, leaning eagerly over the table. 

“Quite well, actually,” Lilith smiled as she set her teacup on the table. “We are having dinner together tomorrow night,” she said and Eda grinned.

“Alright, Lily, high five!” Eda held up a hand and Lilith was in such a good mood that she indulged her sister, slapping her hand to hers. “Now, let me give you some tips on scoring…”

“Edalyn!” Lilith shrieked.

“Okay, I’m going home!” Luz turned and scurried out of the kitchen while Eda cackled and Lilith flushed.