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"Hey, what's that noise outside?" Amity asks, putting her knees up on the couch so she can stare out the window.
"Oh!" Luz exclaims. "I really should have told you. Today is the Fourth of July."
Amity responds with an expectant look, waiting for Luz to explain how the date has any relevance to the bursting and popping sounds coming from outside.
"It's meant to be like a celebration thing," She says. "About our country's independence. It's kinda stupid, but people like to set off fireworks in the evening."
"Is that what those sounds are?" Amity asks. "Fireworks?"
"Yeah, people go really overboard with them," Luz says. "At least they're pretty to look at. Sometimes. I just try to tune them out."
"Yeah…"
Amity isn't sure why, but those noises really bother her.
It's not just because they're loud; she's dealt with a lot of loud noises before. But that is part of it.
Luz is trying to act normal, but Amity can tell she's bothered by them too. Whenever Luz is uncomfortable with a situation, she tends to move around a lot. It looks like she's pacing a lot of the time, but she's just trying to detach herself from what's actually going on.
Amity is the opposite. She freezes up. There's a lot of things that can do that, but one of them is loud noises.
And again, it's not the volume level on its own that makes her uncomfortable. It's knowing that even in the Noceda household, which should be a calm and safe place, she has to listen to the noises of these fireworks from outside. Couldn't people find a quieter way to celebrate whatever dumb 'independence' they care so much about?
There's another aspect of it too. Amity's gotten used to a lot of the sounds of the Human Realm, the whirring car engines and grinding lawn mowers, and they don't bother her anymore. But there's a reason for that. Those things are predictable. If she hears someone turn on a loud machine, that noise just starts and it'll continue until it stops. Simple.
Still annoying, and she'd rather not listen to it, but it's predictable.
Fireworks are not. People are lighting off these loud things all around her, at completely random intervals. There's a pop, then an arbitrary amount of nothing, then another.
What's wrong with these people? Do they seriously have this little consideration for others?
Either way, it's getting too much to handle. She's at the point where she knows if it keeps up, there's going to be an issue. Luz seems uncomfortable, maybe she knows how to deal with it?
"Luz?"
"Yeah?"
"How long do people set these things off for?" She asks.
"A few hours, usually. They like to go almost 'til midnight."
She checks the time. It's not even nine yet! How could she possibly stand another three hours of what feels like actual torture?
She doesn't know where to, but she needs to leave. Find a better place. A quieter place.
She worries it'll come across as overreacting, though. But it's not, right? These sounds almost physically hurt. They scare her. They make her want to cry. How is running from that overreacting?
But somehow, there's something inside her that says it is, says that someone would get mad at her for it. So she stays put.
Nervously laughing, and now beginning to fidget, Amity offhandedly says, "I wish they weren't so loud."
Luz nods. "Yeah. Me too. I kinda have to psych myself up for it every year. Or it can be a little overwhelming."
"No kidding," Amity replies, now noticing the way her entire body begins to sweat. Her heart rate is up as well.
There's a particularly loud boom from the outside, and it takes everything in her for Amity not to quiver.
Okay. Now she's getting to the 'bad level'. Of stress, that is. She doesn't really know what else to call it, but it's the moment where you feel so uncomfortable with the situation you will do almost anything to escape it, regardless of how people around you react.
Just hold on, hold on. She covers her ears, but it doesn't help that much. It maybe even makes it more stressful, knowing that the noise protection you have at your disposal is hopelessly inadequate.
She puts her feet up on the chair she's sitting on, for some reason just wanting her body to be very close together. Of course, what it does is essentially nothing, and that only adds to her discomfort.
This hurts! Why won't anyone do something about it?! She doesn't care how, a lightning bolt could strike the offenders in question and she'd exclaim loudly in excited relief.
Yeah, she's not doing this. She's done.
Amity says nothing, standing up and walking as casually as possible out of the room and up the stairs. It's not as though she believes this will particularly help, she's moving about a dozen feet, but she just has to get out.
"Hey, Amity," Luz says, noticing her leaving. "Where are you going?"
When Amity doesn't reply, Luz thinks she knows what's wrong.
Amity continues up the stairs, heading for Luz's room. It won't change the noise, but at least maybe she can lie down. On her bed.
She turns the doorknob, her ears still focused on listening so intently that she can hear every mechanism in the door move.
She immediately lunges onto the bed, and now that she's away from anyone, lets tears well in her eyes.
It's not long though, before Luz enters behind her, rushing beside her when she notices Amity's disposition.
"Amity?" She asks. "Is everything alright?"
Luz doesn't touch her without Amity's permission, instead, she simply waits for a response.
Amity keeps trying to push back her tears, but it feels like such a rush of relief to let them out that she kind of doesn't want to stop.
"I'm sorry, Luz," Amity says. "I didn't want to be so dramatic."
"What? Amity, you aren't being dramatic." Luz says. "Is this about the fireworks?"
Amity nods.
Luz sends her a bittersweet and sympathetic smile, turning to dig in her closet for something.
"Here," She says, coming up with a pair of weird ear-muffs. They look similar to what you'd wear in the cold, just bulkier. "Try this."
Hesitantly, Amity takes the object, placing it over her ears and feeling the weight over them. It's nice. She tenses her ears, searching for any of those loud popping noises.
When after a solid minute, none of them come, she finally embraces Luz, still crying, but in such a different way than before.
Instead of being in pain and needing to cry to cope with that, now she's crying because the relief these things make her feel is so large.
"My mom got these for me when I was eight," Luz says. "I used to struggle a lot with noise. It's still not easy for me, but I can handle it better now."
"Thank you, Luz," Amity says, still wrapping her arms around her girlfriend's body. She laughs. "I don't know what I would do without you."
"Right back atcha." She replies. "You know, I was diagnosed pretty young. Have you ever been diagnosed with anything?" Luz asks.
"Diagnosed… with what?"
Luz chuckles. "The Demon Realm doesn't have that stuff, you're right." She says, taking Amity's tiny hand in hers. "Well, let me explain it the way my mom did, all those years back."
Luz has to stand on her tip-toes to reach something in the top of her closet, and she pulls out a small children's book titled Some Brains are Different, and That's Okay. Sitting on the floor, she begins reading, and over the next quarter-hour, a lot of things in Amity's past will suddenly make so much more sense.
"Once there was a girl named Amber, who lived in a special village with her fathers…"