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“Luz, wait!” Eda cried, stumbling after the fresh Grimwalker dashing out of the front door of the Owl House.
“I’m not Luz!” She screamed, tugging at her short brown hair and disappearing into the treeline so she could run until her legs wouldn’t let her move any longer. She was even impressed with herself when she finally fell to her knees and laid down in the warm, wet dirt. Her breath caught in her throat and tears flooded down her cheeks.
The trees above her moved. “You,” a careful, heavily accented voice called out to her from above. “What brings you into my forest, little one?”
When the young Grimwalker turned her head, mud stuck to her face, she came face-to-face with bright red eyes perched above her. “I’m scared,” she admitted, nearly losing the words to the Titan below her.
“I see that,” the Bat Queen said, jumping down beside her and offering her a claw. “I sense you and I are not very different. You come from these trees just like me, do you not?”
“Bat Queen?” Another voice came from not too far off in the clearing. “Have you found a lost palisman?”
The Bat Queen eased ‘Luz’ to her feet and turned back to face the source of the noise. “Not quite,” she said, a smile tugging at her lips.
Dell stepped through the trees with one hand on the bark and the other tight atop his cane. “Oh!” He said, not quite jumping when he recognized the girl wiping dirt off of her clothes. Her piercing magenta eyes looked so scared when they snapped up and met his. “You’re... You’re Eda’s newest girl.”
She bit her lower lip in a feeble attempt to keep it from trembling, but she couldn’t keep herself from starting to sob all over again.
“Oh, little lightning bug, I didn’t mean to make you cry,” he said, approaching her and hovering a light hand over her shoulder.
She sniffled. “I’m not Luz,” she insisted, shying away from him. “I’m not Luz, and I never will be. I’m just a disappointment because I’m a Grimwalker.”
Dell wasn’t entirely sure how to respond.
“Well, little one, what have you done to be worth being a disappointment?” The Bat Queen asked her. “Because being a Grimwalker alone is not enough.”
She wiped away the rest of the mud and the tears on her cheek with the heel of her palm. “I came back wrong,” she whimpered, her gaze locked firmly on her feet.
The Bat Queen shook her head. “You are not a disappointment for that,” she said, the statement pure and definitive. “Come with us, little one. Have you ever planted a palistrom tree before?”
The young Grimwalker shook her head.
“We will teach you,” The Bat Queen said. “You are welcome in my forest. I can sense a pure heart, and you have one, through and through.”
“Thank you,” the Grimwalker said, letting out a soft, relieved sigh.
“And if it makes you feel any better,” Dell offered quietly. “I don’t expect you to be just like Luz.”