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Amity does not like Ms. Noceda’s palisman.
Gus had come to the human realm a week before she did and warned her about this large human palisman — a car, as her girlfriend insisted it was called — but no description or illusion could fully prepare Amity for the actual experience.
She did not like the concept of getting inside the car. When Luz first opened her door to the dark blue object, Amity was very hesitant, unsure if it would digest them. Her girlfriend just laughed and said it was a machine and wasn’t alive, so with as much bravery as she could muster, she sat in the leather chair, stiff and unmoving, just to not upset it. Y’know in case.
When Luz shut her in the “car,” the moments between the shutting of the door and watching Luz climb into it herself were long and nerve wracking, but when she was there, she just smiled at Amity, which was reassuring, but the witch would soon discover this was some sort of trap.
Her human twisted the key, like she was opening a door and it then became very apparent that Luz had lied. “Wha?!” Amity yelped. This thing was alive! It started roaring and taking extremely short yet heavy breaths, like it was buzzing, and it exhaled a warm breath out of its gills in front of their faces. Then it started to play a very annoying melody. Like a scroll notification sound. Only three notes over and over. “What’s…what’s going on? With the noises?”
“Oh, here, put your seatbelt on!” she’s offered in response, a hand motioning to a strap near her right shoulder. She tentatively wraps her fingers around the gray, stretchy object and pulls lightly. “Okay, now bring it across your body,” Luz coaches and Amity does so slowly. Eventually Luz reaches over her and grabs the oddly shaped plastic and metallic piece and tucks it into a little rectangle by Amity’s hip. The little click makes her let out an ‘eep!’
“You okay?”
“Mhm.”
The tritone stopped, but it was still buzzing and roaring softly.
“Luz,” Amity started, her voice in a hushed whisper, just in case it could hear her. “I’m already inside of this palisman, please be honest. Is this alive?”
She has the audacity to laugh, laugh mirthfuly at the question. “Babe, it’s not alive: it’s a machine.”
Of course, Amity doesn’t find this amusing. Does she take her for a fool? “Then why is it buzzing and breathing out of its gills?”
“The motor is under us — Don’t check for it it’s under the flooring — Don’t look at me like that. Anyway that’s what sounds like buzzing and is vibrating under our butts. And those aren’t gills. They’re vents.”
“Vents?”
“There are vents in the Boiling Isles. I’ve crawled through them! With you—“
“Yes, but buildings have vents. Palismen do not.”
“This is a car.”
She supposes. She only breathes in response.
“Okay, well, I’m gonna start driving, okay?”
Even if this human palisman — car — was strange, she was already in it, wasn’t she? “Okey-dokey.” She agrees as she exhales and gives Luz a thumbs up.
Luz gives her a warm smile in return and her heart flutters. If only the beating of her heart was enough to keep her from getting disoriented when the two-tone machine started moving backwards.
Amity took a sharp gasp at the jerk, but Luz was just looking over her shoulder, guiding the creature off the concrete pavement that led to her home. She just tried to take deep breaths, but they became more and shallow. As Luz turned the tail end into the road, she tuned to see Amity staring straight ahead and gripping her thighs tightly.
“Amity?”
“I’m sorry,” she apologized reflexively, eyes glued forward.
“Huh, for what?”
Amity frowned, “For being scared.”
“I—“ The brunette reaches across to place her hand above Amity’s knee and squeezes slightly. “I mean, you’ve never been in a car before, and it’s a lot.” She looks up to meet Luz’s soft and encouraging gaze, as she finishes, “You know I’d never let you get hurt, right mi brujita?”
And Amity is so, so in love with Luz, so she just sighs out of her nose and quietly nods, because she does trust her, and even if this human palisman was secretly alive (which she hadn’t exactly ruled out), Luz wouldn’t let it digest them. As her girlfriend’s hands returned to the wheel, she could almost feel the warmth where her hand was pleasantly burning on her leg and her heart feels a little more full.
Then they started like, actually moving. It was like being on a roller coaster, but slow, not quite as fun. Then they turn onto a much bigger street where there are a bunch of other human palismen zipping along the streets. It’s not as though Amity never encountered other fliers in the sky back on the isles, but they had the entire sky. These “cars” all drove between lines not much bigger than them and switched and got near and far and blink their lights and—
“You good, babe?”
“Mhm,” Amity affirmed, “there are just, a lot of…these.” She isn’t quite as scared anymore, but she can see concern reappearing on Luz’s face, which she does not wish to inspire, so she rushes to change the subject, “But, uh, where are we going?”
“To look at Christmas lights!”
“Right!” Luz had told her, quite extensively about the holiday. None of it made very much sense though? The concept of a man watching you all year and passing judgments on your morality from afar seemed, unsettling, to say the least. Not to mention the holiday was supposed to celebrate some other guy’s birthday but it’s not his birthday? Or something?
But she looked over at her girlfriend, who was practically bounding in her seat, a beaming smile on her face. Then Amity stopped thinking almost entirely. Her only conscious thought was I love her so much.
“You look happy,” the witch noted.
“Of course I am,” her human said. “I’m with you.”
The declaration made her tremble slightly in the leathery seat of the human palisman. After three years, Luz could so easily just say the sweetest things and make Amity swoon. If Amity were a smoother girl, or anything other than the awkward lesbian she is, she’d say it back. But she’s not, so she just mutters, “You’re ridiculous.”
Luz stops the ‘car’ at a yellowish fixture with a glowing red light. Others line up beside and behind them. In their pause a pair of brown eyes stares directly into Amity and says, “If that’s ridiculous, then I’m a freaking town jester.”
And obviously, she either meant court jester or town fool, and Amity knows she’s just being silly, but at the same time, she thinks it’s the most romantic thing Luz has ever said. Okay, that wasn’t true, but as the blood rushes to her pale cheeks and her girlfriend smirks as the light turns green and the palismen all start driving again, it feels like it.
“Oh! I almost forgot! I got you a drink,” Luz declared. “It’s the one closest to you.”
Amity picks up the cup beside her she hadn’t noticed before. It was very warm. She brings the small opening of the lid to her nose and sniffs. It smelled sweet. She caught the scent of something minty and something she couldn’t quite place. “What is this?”
In reply, she receives a coy smile, “Guess.” And her girlfriend’s mischievous voice and little smirk were very cute and endearing. In most situations Amity would have guessed, or just drank the drink herself.
But she was still a little more on edge than she’d like to admit from being in this human palisman, so she just flatly says, “Luz.”
“Okay, okay, it’s a peppermint hot chocolate,” she conceded, as she turned them down a smaller road. “You liked chocolate when I gave you the bars so I thought you might like it hot too.”
Titan damn, she loved this woman.
Amity had only had chocolate a handful of times, but holy fuck was it amazing every single time. Luz brought her chocolate on one of her visits to the Isles a year ago and Amity loved it so much, that Luz brought it every time she visited. She didn’t even knew humans drank it!
“Oh, and if you don’t like yours, you can have mine. Most people get plain chocolate, and I did for mine, but I got yours with peppermint since you like mint,” Luz informs.
The witch sniffs the warm concoction once more time before taking a sip and oh Titan, it was like drinking a hug. The warmth, the sweetness, the slight bitterness of the chocolate, that minty kick? She’d have to talk to Willow about planting chocolate seed vines or however humans get this delectable stuff when she went home.
“I’m guessing you like it,” Luz tossed out. “Since you’ve just been drinking and nodding silently for a few minutes.”
“Oh, yes! Uh, I love it a lot,” she confirmed. “I’m sorry I was being awkward.”
Her human scoffs, eyes still glued to the road, “Babe, you’re cute when your being awkward. I mean, I only glanced cuz I’m driving but you were just so calm and pensive. You’re just—“ and a pair of brown eyes cuts a quick glance at her while giving Amity an innocent yet mischievous smile she can’t quite place, before her attention returns to the road, “—yeah.”
“What do you mean ‘yeah’?”
“I mean, you’re so — yeah.”
“What does that mean, Luz?”
“Not sure.”
“How are you not sure?”
“You gotta a lot questions, Blight.”
“And you don’t have a lot of answers, Noceda.”
At this Luz audibly gasps and drops her jaw overdramtically. Amity can tell that her chauffeur is pretending to be offended, like she often when Amity bested her in an exchange of wits. So per routine, Amity attempts to apologize, but she is stopped by the sound of…a crisp jingling of bells?
Luz had turned a dial on what seemed to be the palisman’s inner face and suddenly bells and music and a chorus of children’s voices were filling the car.
Gus had warned her about this though, so she wasn’t as frightened as she was startled. It was just a speaker. They had those on the Isles. They just weren’t installed on a palisman. Or inside. But nonetheless.
“Luz,” Amity started in an overly sweet tone, “I’m sor—“
“Sleigh bells ring, are you listening?” Luz sang obnoxiously loud.
“Darling, I—“
But she was interrupted by an even louder, “In the lane, snow is glistenin’.”
And this continued for a minute or so, their voices progressively getting louder and more aggressive as Amity piled on pet names and had her obligatory apology for being right interrupted by what was essentially yelling with musical notes. They’d long since bursted into laughter.
“Thank you!” Amity finally interjected over the recorded children singing about unmarried men made of snow.
This threw off her rhythm (just as the witch had planned), and though her giggles stopped, she still seemed very amused. “For what?”
“Saying that I’m ‘yeah’.”
She still wasn’t quite sure what it was supposed to mean, if it meant anything at all, but a satisfied smile spread across her girlfriend’s face as she nodded subtly, “Yeah.”
A comfortable silence fell between them. Well, not a silence. They stopped talking, but those children’s voices still rang through the car and Luz hummed and sang a long as Amity drank the rest of the best drink she’d had in months. Luz had a very pretty voice, at least to Amity. And between her girlfriend’s songs and the warmth of the drink and of the breath coming from the vent gills aimed at them, she could have almost fell asleep…
Almost.
Then they hit a “speed bump.”
Amity lets out a small yelp as they bounce. This alerts the driver who looks over at her. “Aw, shoot I forgot to warn you. Are you okay?”
Secretly, Amity was a little upset because a little bit of her drink had hopped out of the cup and onto her hand, but she nodded nonetheless. “Why did the palis— Ahem, car just jump?”
“Um, so sometime they put bumps in the roads—“
“The cars?”
“No, the government.”
“The government?”
“Yes,” Luz insists, “they do it so that way you don’t go over the speed limit in neighborhoods and stuff.”
Amity titled her head. The government limits their speed? That sounds miserable. Why would they even know, or care? Jeez. Their palismen were way more complicated. “How do you know how fast your going.”
Luz points to a little glass half circle with changing numbers in it that Amity had in the folds of her brain categorized that long ago as an internal seeing eye, but that made more sense as a function.
Suddenly, when Amity looks up, she finds that they’ve ended up in a line of palismen that snake their way around a street and dozens of houses the emerge them in a sea of lights.
They’re blinking and still. They’re all white and all colorful. There are snowmen and upside down striped J’s and trees. And it was overwhelming, in the best way possible.
“The lights,” Amity starts. “Are they for the Saint of the Claws?”
Luz laughs, “No, they’re more for decoration and spirit. And his name is Santa Claus. Santa is saint in Spanish.”
“That’s the language you speak, yes?” the passenger confirms. “So is Santa Claus also Dominican?”
“No. Well—“ A look of deep thought crosses Luz’s face. She trails off in a “Hmm…” like she’ll be thinking of it later, as she turns her attention back to the road.
It’s calm and serene. The lights twinkle and dazzle and shine as the car continues it’s slow trudge down the street with the others. It’s so simple. They’re just lights, but they’re so beautiful and breathtaking. She can see why Luz brought her here.
And Amity looks at Luz for the first time in a few minutes and Luz is perfect. She’s cutting her attention between the road and the lights, but when they come to a stop and Luz gets to look at a particularly complexly lit house, she is in awe.
She’s leaning slightly left and forward where the house is, her mouth agape, and eyes wide. Luz Noceda looks like a work of art - the kind of portrait you’d put inside glass behind a velvet rope that had security guards at all hours of the day because if anyone could have something so lovely for themselves, they’d probably never have a single problem in their life again.
Yes, Amity is, in fact, looking at her with same expression — the leaning, the wide eyes, and the mouth agape. But Amity catches the glimmers of the lights on the houses in her girlfriend’s brown eyes. And when she takes a breath in she holds it for a while. Perhaps to freeze this moment of time because if she had the choice she’s stay in this moment forever.
But when she finally exhales, it’s a little more vocal than she planned, and Luz checks back into her, her leg bouncing slightly in excitement as it often does. “Have you been looking at the lights?”
Without moving or shifting expression, with the same lovesick look on her face Amity replies, “Yeah,” but now with an added goofy grin.
“Really?” Luz presses suspiciously, “Because it looks like you were looking at me.”
“You are light,” the witch replied bluntly.
Suddenly, her human becomes bashful, though the statement wasn’t intended as flirtatious. “Ams…stop.”
“Isn’t that what you name means? In Spanish?”
“Yeah, but you should look at the lights on the houses,” the driver insisted as she gestured to the ocean of lit homes.
“I was,” Amity said. “The lights from the houses were in your eyes.”
Then came a rare moment, where Luz grew quiet. Not where she fell quiet, but as though her soul had hushed itself to focus all her intensity into her girlfriend in front of her. Amity’s heart skipped a beat.
“You were looking at me like that?”
What a question that feel so softly and quietly from her lips. It feels silly to Amity, because she looks at Luz like that whenever she can, but Luz is always rushing and ripping and running and bouncing and absolutely beaming, she doesn’t always stop to notice Amity’s quiet moments of admiration. She doesn’t have to, because her energy and exuberance is what Amity loves about her.
But right now Luz is quiet and doe-eyed and curious about a question that she surely knows the answer to.
“Yeah,” Amity affirms. “You looked—“ And now the abomination maker has back herself into a corner. She started the sentence, so she had to finish it.
There were millions of words to describe the way Luz looked moments ago and another million to describe the way she looked right now, a soft and focused gaze. She was absolutely breathtaking, and downright picturesque, yet also adorable, and striking, and so many other things that Amity could easily say, but she couldn’t say them all at once.
With Luz’s intense stare, the sea of lights that surrounded them, the peaceful air, and only the sound of breathing and the roaring of the palisman beneath them, Amity couldn’t think at all.
“You look…yeah.”
Without her gaze changing, a small smile starts to stretch across Luz’s lips. “I look yeah?”
“Yeah.”
Luz’s eyes flutter to Amity’s lips and she leans closer, and the witch could swear she know what would happen next, but her girlfriend just leans back and scoffs as she turns her eyes back to the road and says, “What’s that supposed to mean, Blight?”
“You—“
“Our cheeks are nice and rosy and comfy and cozy are we!” Oh no, she’s reached for the dial on it’s internal face. “We’re snuggled up together like two birds of feather would be.”
“Luz—“ And this time, Amity can’t even feign a playful anger, laugher spilling from her lips as if ellicted from her stomach like a spell.
“Outside the snow is falling and friends are calling ‘yoohoo’!”
“Luz’s there’s not even snow on the grou—“
Her girlfriend gives her a big, goofy grin while she laces their fingers together, continuing to sing obnoxiously, “Come on, it’s lovely weather for a sleigh ride together with you!”
As Luz pilots Ms. Noceda’s “car” forward, squeezing her girlfriend’s hand tightly while she sings along to a pre-recorded chorus of children and jingling bells, a dazzling smile on her face, Amity decides that whether they were alive or not, the worst thing about these human palismen was it made it far to difficult to kiss Luz.
Fin.