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Luz sat on the porch of the owl house staring out at the clearing around her as she took shelter from the boiling rain just outside the awning. The droplets sizzled as they plopped into the grass, causing licks of steam to rise into the air with small, short bursts.
The sound was like nothing she had heard before. An acidic hissing that almost seemed to patter into a puddle that had gathered on a thin metal surface. It smelled like burning rubber and charred wood but despite the unpleasantness of the outside, and the risk of getting burned, Luz remained on the porch.
She rested her chin on her hands as she watched with half-lidded eyes, following the droplets as they exploded against the ground. The sounds of Hooty’s idle noises filled the background from just a few feet away, but she did her best to ignore him. She wasn’t in the mood for conversations, especially not with Hooty.
Luz missed the rain in the human realm. She missed watching the droplets streak across the window, silently betting on ones to see if they would win against the others. The rain on the boiling isles never got close enough to the windows for her to ever do that, it was much too dangerous.
One time, it must have only been a few years ago, Luz remembered her mother taking her by the hand, gently coaxing her off the front patio and into the misting rain. Camila had guided her to splash in the puddles and play in the rain for a little bit until both of them went back inside for some hot chocolate. Luz remembered that fondly.
But now, Luz was stuck in the demon realm for who knows how long, she had no way back to her mother, no way back to the normal rain. To the harmless droplets that sometimes spilled into her eyes when she wasn’t careful enough when looking up at the sky.
Luz was never too fond of the rain. It was nice when she was inside and able to watch it from her cozy spot on the couch. Not as fun when she was stuck outside walking home from somewhere only to get caught in a nasty storm. Luz never thought that she would miss it as much as she was now. A pit of dread settled in the pit of her stomach which grew larger the longer that Luz sat on the porch.
A part of her—a horrible, impulsive part of her—wanted to ignore Eda’s warnings about the rain. She wanted to go out and touch it, to see how the acid would feel against her skin. Just to know what it felt like.
She wanted to go out in the rain, to feel it against her skin, to feel the liquid running down her face, sticking her hair to her forehead and weighing down her clothes. She wanted to do it despite the pain that she knew would happen.
Just for a moment, she wanted to feel the sting on her hands. To see the little puffs of smoke lick against her arm and to know if her heart would feel the same way as it did before. If she could feel the same as when she was back home with her mother in the rain.
What would happen if she touched the rain right now? If she got her legs to work to walk outside of the awning onto the soiled grass. What would happen?
Luz had felt the boiling rain here before. It was a while ago but that didn’t mean she had already forgotten. How in her panic she hadn’t noticed the stinging until well after she was inside and dry. How she looked down at her arms and her clothes to notice small dot-shaped burns coating her skin and scorching through her clothes. The burns took a while to heal, even with potions and magic to help. And they didn’t stop hurting until it was almost completely healed.
It would suck to be caught completely off guard by the storm.
Before Luz got too caught up in her head, enough so to act on her impulses, she heard the door behind her open. Luz didn’t need to turn around to know who it probably was.
“Luz, what are you doing out here?” Eda asked, her voice filled with worry, “I’ve been looking all over the house for you.”
Luz swallowed thickly, sliding her tongue over her lips, “I was uh…” she glanced over her shoulder at Eda, “watching the rain.”
Maybe there was something in Luz’s expression that stopped Eda from scolding her for being out here when it was very clearly dangerous and she could get hurt. But when Eda opened her mouth to say something, nothing came out. Her expression softened and Eda looked at Luz with that same look she always wore when Luz was upset.
Her lips twitched into a small frown as she moved to sit down next to Luz on the stairs with a small sigh. Luz turned back to the rain, pulling her knees up to her chest and hugging her legs.
Silence settled around the two of them, only interrupted by the hissing of the rain. Luz chewed on the inside of her mouth, tilting her head to the side as she tiredly stared out at the distance. The trees swayed with the wind, bushes, and grass following along with the cycle. The rain battered down on their leaves and their bodies but it didn’t even seem like the acid did much.
Luz couldn’t believe how even the rain managed to sound different in the demon realm. Sure, it was a different liquid and it would burn your skin if you touched it, but even so, it should sound the same? But it didn’t.
It didn’t sound the same, it didn’t smell the same, and it didn’t feel the same. It wasn’t the same.
Everything about it was different from the rain in the human realm. Even the color was different. And Luz thought that she might’ve been able to find some solace in the sound and would be able to pretend that she was back home for a little bit.
She had chosen to stay here… Luz could have escaped and gone home and then destroyed the portal. But she chose to stay here and learn magic, and look where all of that had gotten her.
Luz loved it here. She loved the demon realm and yet everything was so stressful, so scary, so… different.
If she believed enough, maybe the rain wouldn’t hurt so bad. Nothing could hurt worse than the homesickness she felt.
God how much Luz missed her mom. Her home.
She missed the smell of the flowers in front of their house, the worms that dug around in her garden that Luz spent time digging up to try and befriend. She missed the blue sky and the trees. Everything that made the human realm so much more boring than the demon realm, Luz couldn’t help but long for.
Even just a moment to stand underneath the rain without fear of getting burned.
A conflicted feeling began to spread from the center of Luz’s chest. One that was beginning to eat away at her entire being. It filled her with a pang of sick, twisted guilt that seemed to writhe inside her.
She missed the human realm so badly and yet she felt that it would be the same if she had traveled back home. She loved the demon realm so much that even despite her longing for the normalcy of her home life, Luz didn’t think she would ever be able to give this up permanently.
“What’s on your mind, kid?” Eda finally asked, wrenching Luz out of her thoughts. Luz felt tears welling in the corners of her eyes which she quickly blinked away, avoiding looking at Eda in fear that the other woman would notice and point them out. She didn’t know what she would do if Eda started badgering her about why she was crying.
She’d probably start crying harder if she was being honest.
“Just thinking about the rain,” Luz admitted, not wanting to share too many details in fear of worrying Eda. She already had enough on her mind, Luz’s problem would go away by tomorrow and then everything would be fine. There was no need to get other people involved in something she would just have to sleep over.
“Staring pretty intensely out there,” Eda leaned back a little bit, splaying her palms against the wooden floorboards of the porch, “what about the rain?”
Luz frowned, puffing out her cheeks before exhaling with a slow breath. Her hair fell in front of her eyes when she looked down and she made no move to push it away. Luz found herself chuckling weakly, hugging her legs to her chest tighter.
“Just thinking about how different the rain is here compared to back home,” Luz muttered into her knees, hoping that Eda understood her well enough.
“Ah, yeah,” Eda clicked her tongue, “The rain doesn’t burn in the human realm, right? It’s cold and wet.”
“It’s just water back home, you don’t have to hide from it,” Luz flipped her wrist around, staring down at her open palm. The feeling was still there, the longing to touch the rain, knowing how badly it would hurt.
“You don’t seem to be hiding from it,” Eda snorted softly, “you’re looking ready to take a dance in it. Luz the human, afraid of no boiling isles rain.”
Eda’s joke fell flat when she looked over at Luz, her frown deepened slightly and Luz forced herself not to look back. She clenched her jaw tightly, managing to curl in on herself even more. The pit in her chest widened and Luz felt like she was going to be swallowed whole by its gaping maw.
“Luz,” Eda gave a small puff of a breath, “what’s wrong?”
Luz was silent for a long time, “it’s nothing, I’m just a bit tired from the day is all.”
And oh how Luz cursed that she had never really been that good of a liar because Eda saw through it almost immediately. Eda wrapped her arm around Luz’s shoulder, pulling the girl in closer with a comforting grasp.
“Tell me what’s up, I know you’re not just thinking about the rain,” Eda rubbed Luz’s arm gently, fingers tracing out a small pattern. Luz practically deflated against her, a small whimper spilling from her lips.
“I miss the human realm,” Luz finally whispered, after a long moment of making sure that she wouldn’t cry the moment she opened her mouth, “I don’t know why—I… I’m usually fine… I love it here. But I—I look at the rain… and I miss the things back home.”
Now that she had started, Luz found that the words just kept spilling out of her mouth before she could try and stop it. Eda didn’t interrupt, just let Luz keep talking, rubbing her arm gently and holding her a bit tighter.
“I don’t even like the rain… I…I didn’t like it back home… I don’t like it here, but I miss the human rain so much,” Luz tried her hardest to blink away the tears before they fell, rubbing her eyes frantically, “I would—I would watch the rain from the window… and me and my mom would have hot chocolate… and I…I… I miss back home.”
Luz sniffled, a sob tore itself from her throat, and before she knew it more tears were running down her face than she could wipe away with the back of her hand. She sniffled, burying her face in Eda’s side as she just continued to rub her back.
“It’s okay to be homesick,” Eda said after a few moments of contemplation, “We’ll get you home soon, I’m trying to make sure of that.”
Eda placed her chin on top of Luz’s, pulling the girl practically in her lap, “alright? We’re trying to get you home. So you can see your mom and you can have safe rain.”
“I don’t want to… to leave the demon realm either…” Luz whimpered, curling her fingers around the back of Eda’s shirt, pressing herself impossibly close, trying to close up the pit that was trying to eat her.
Eda made a noise in the back of her throat, “we’ll… We’ll make another door, some way that you’ll be able to pass between the human realm and the demon realm. And that way you don’t have to give up one or the other.”
That thought seemed to reassure Luz, at least a little bit. She sniffled and hiccuped, the sound of the rain barely heard over her distress. Eda held her close, one hand pressed to the back of Luz’s head, scratching lightly at her scalp.
“I just want something to make sense for once…” Luz whispered, hiding her expression in Eda’s shirt, “I… I want something to not be scary… for—for something to be normal.”
Eda frowned slightly, her gold tooth poking out from behind her lips as she did her best to comfort Luz.
“I don’t really… know how much of that stuff is available in the boiling isles…” Eda cleared her throat, causing Luz to nearly jump out of her skin, “but I have a lot of human stuff around the house. Might even have some movies or books… or something.”
Luz pulled away from Eda just enough to be able to look at her. There were tear marks running down Luz’s cheeks causing her eyes to get all red and puffy. She sniffled again.
“You wanna see if we can find a movie?” Eda asked with a strange amount of softness. She reached up, cupping Luz’s cheek in one hand and using her thumb to wipe away some tears that were still falling.
Luz opened her mouth, thought for a second, and then closed it again. She finally settled with a faint nod.
Eda smiled gently, “alright, how's about you get all settled on the couch with some blankets and get all cozy and I’ll see what I can find in the basement?”
Another nod. Luz dried her tears on the collar of her shirt.
Eda helped Luz to her feet, Luz’s knees nearly gave out from underneath her from how bad they were shaking. Luz chuckled weakly, her breath hitching as she took one last glance out at the rain before following Eda inside the owl house.
Settling on the couch, Luz wrapped herself in a worn blanket, pulling the fabric up over her head to block out some of the light (but not obscuring her vision) in the room. Eda disappeared somewhere else in the house, leaving Luz to collect herself for a bit.
The last of Luz’s tears ran down her cheeks before her sobs finally settled and calmed. Luz brought the hem of the blanket up to her face, pressing it against her cheek and feeling the old but still soft material. The pit in her chest seemed to lessen now that she was inside and warm.
Eda returned after a few minutes, a small stack of DVDs gathered in her arms. She let Luz pick from the options, she chose an older fantasy movie, one that she remembered her mom telling her about a few months before everything that had happened.
The movie played quietly (Eda was never able to get the volume very loud) and Eda settled on the couch, pulling Luz closer to her.
It wasn’t long before Eda could hear Luz quietly snoring from against her side with one hand curled around Eda’s sleeve, the other still gripping tightly to the blanket. Not wanting to wake her, Eda remained in the same position for the rest of the movie.