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“Oh! Want to see my Azura book collection?”
Luz and Amity were sitting on the couch of the Noceda household for the first time in months. Camila had allowed Luz to invite her girlfriend over, and she had not wasted the opportunity. They had arrived a few minutes earlier and had just finished having a snack.
“Sure!” said Amity, taking one final bite from those yellow-looking things Camila had called ‘maduros’. “These are really good, by the way.”
“I know, right?” said Luz, jumping up from her seat. “Wait till you have mami’s empanadas. They’ll blow your mind.”
Amity blinked. “Is human food that dangerous?”
Luz did a double-take, then snorted. “It’s a human expression,” she explained, taking her girlfriend’s hand. “It means it will surprise you.”
“Oh, alright,” Amity said, nodding but still not altogether reassured.
The couple made their way up the stairs while Amity took everything about their surroundings in. As they ascended, she saw multiple framed pictures on the walls, depicting various moments in Camila and Luz’s lives. One of them showed Luz standing in front of a large wall with colored crevices on it. Another was of Camila lifting Luz up on her shoulders standing in a place Luz had told her was called a zoo, a few furry animals pressing their faces against a glass pane behind them.
Luz opened the door and Amity walked in slowly, looking around. The space was smaller than her own room but seemed cozier and more inviting. A desk filled to the brim with papers stood on the opposite side of the room, a few glyph combinations drawn on most of them. A bunk bed lay unmade on the right side, several plushies littering both mattresses.
She knew Vee, Luz’s adoptive basilisk sister, would be out the entire day with her girlfriend, so she walked over and sat on the bottom bed. She spotted some posters hanging from the walls, most of them depicting one or more characters from Luz’s favorite shows.
“I like your room,” she said, glancing at Luz, who had taken a seat at the desk chair.
“Thanks,” the brunette replied. “Vee adjusted really well here, actually. She even added some of her drawings to the wall. That one is fanart of a fanfic I wrote.” She gestured to the wall over the desk where, sure enough, hand-made drawings had been hung up. They were pretty good, Amity thought in her own humble opinion.
Then something else on the wall caught her eye. It was a rectangular piece of cloth with three distinct horizontal lines in pink, blue, and purple. She stood up and studied it for a while before turning to her girlfriend.
“Is that your… nation’s flag?” she asked, hoping she got the terminology right. Luz had tried teaching her about countries and states and all that, but it was all so confusing.
Luz blinked. “My – No, that’s the bisexual flag,” she said, raising an eyebrow.
“What does bisexual mean?” asked Amity.
The human stared at her for a while before slapping her forehead and chuckling. “Oh right, you guys don’t have a concept of sexuality,” she said, leaving Amity quite a deal more perplexed than she had started.
“A concept of… what?”
“Okay, so,” said Luz. “In the human realm, people who are attracted to certain genders have their own flags and names to sorta… label themselves I suppose. Bisexual, which is what I am, means you’re attracted to boys and girls.”
“But why would it matter who you’re attracted to?” said Amity, frowning. “I’m attracted to girls, and I don’t have a flag…”
Luz pursed her lips, seemingly pondering her words. “Well, some people here are real jerks about it,” she explained slowly. “There’s this thing called homophobia, which is essentially hating anyone that isn’t only attracted to the opposite gender.”
“That’s stupid,” said Amity, to which Luz nodded with a grin. “Isn’t it all just normal? Like, you say, ‘I like girls’ and people just shrug it off?”
“Nope,” Luz said sadly. “Some people even get kicked out of their homes for it, in fact.”
“Titan,” Amity muttered. The Human Realm seemed much less forgiving than she had first thought. “So what’s up with the flags, then?”
Luz took the piece of cloth from the wall and held it lovingly in her hands. “A couple decades ago, more and more people like us started advocating for fair treatment and equal rights, and the LGBT+ movement started.” Amity nodded along, leaning against the desk with a frown on her face. To think people like them didn’t even have rights; it… blew her mind. She hoped she was using that expression correctly.
“Queer people – that’s anyone who isn’t part of the ‘norm’, basically – wanted to be proud of who they were,” continued Luz, emphasizing the air quotes, “so among other things, they created flags to represent their sexuality. This is the bi flag.” She handed it to Amity, who ran her thumb over the colored lines.
While the whole concept of labeling one’s preference seemed completely bizarre to her, she could sympathize with having a symbol to represent it. Plus, this clearly meant a lot to Luz, who seemed to have shrunk in on herself the moment the flag left her hands. Amity gave it back and cocked her head to the side.
“So, if I’m only attracted to girls,” she asked slowly, “what does that make me?”
“That would be a lesbian,” said Luz with a beaming smile. Then she snapped her fingers and started rummaging through a cardboard box at the foot of the desk. The inside was filled with trinkets and other things which clinked and clanked as Luz dug through it. Eventually, she resurfaced with a small pin and gave it to Amity.
She inspected it in her hands. Unlike the bisexual flag, this one was divided into seven lines. The three at the top were different shades of orange and the three at the bottom were shades of pink. The one in the middle was white. She couldn’t quite explain why it made her so happy to be holding this, but maybe it had to do with the fact that it had been Luz who gave it to her.
“That’s the lesbian flag,” Luz said. “Vee had the same question a few months ago, and when we figured out what her sexuality could be, she ordered this. But they sent two on accident, so you can have that one.”
Amity nodded, smiling at the human. “So Vee is also a lesbian?”
Luz shrugged. “As far as we could tell,” she said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way forever. You could keep figuring things out as you go along and change with time.”
“Thanks, Luz,” said the witch, pocketing the pin. “I know how much this stuff means to you, so I’m glad you’re comfortable enough to share it with me.”
“There’s nothing that means more to me than you, Amity,” said Luz, taking hold of the witch’s hand. The girl in question had blushed a deep red. “I love you.”
Amity tucked a lavender strand of hair behind her ear and whispered, “I love you too.”
“So,” said Luz, kissing her girlfriend’s hand. “Any other questions or doubts about the human realm?”
“Hmm, yeah,” said Amity. “You mentioned something called… fanfic? What’s that?”
Luz gulped. “Oh boy.”