Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Luz turns her phone over in her hands, sitting at the edge of her bed.

“You’re going to have to start eventually,” Maritza says.

Luz’s daemon is watching her from where she’s got her head resting on Luz’s knee, a pug with her dark ears pinned back against her skull and her dark eyes fixed on Luz’s face. It’s a form Luz has known ever since they Settled just before entering the Demon Realm, and her daemon’s nails press lightly against her skin.

“You’re the one who wants to call, Mari.” Luz traces the edge of a crack fractured through the center of her phone’s screen and makes no move to turn it on. “You do it.”

Mari’s lip curls as she presses the tips of her claws to their phone, a shick-click. The phone doesn’t respond. “You’re the human.”

“Coward,” Luz says, quietly. Mari growls low. “You were the one who made the choice.”

Mari jerks her face up and off of Luz, and her skin prickles with the distance. But Luz picks up her phone before Mari can growl again, turning it on and opening up her texts. Takes a deep breath, steels herself—Mari sits, stiff, at her side—and starts a new video.

Hola, Mami, Luz tries to say, but can’t get the words to come, not with Mari’s fur scratchy against her side, where it pushes through the fabric of her hoodie. So instead it is Mari who says it, “hola, Mami,” stepping up with her forepaws on Luz’s knee to better fit in frame, her little head poking in.

Luz stands. Her hand’s shaking, just a bit, and keeps shaking even when she dislodges her daemon, who follows her off their bed—well, sleeping bag, moreso, low to the ground—with her claws clicking against the wood. She doesn’t really think walking around will fix things, but there is something smoldering down her bond, something sharp around the edges, and Mari lifts her head higher and steps over it.

Not here, Mari is saying, not for Mom.

Luz whispers, to their mom, and maybe to Mari, too, a bit, “there’s…a lot that happened. And it’s not…good.”

She doesn’t know how she’s supposed to say the Not Good part out loud. Her bond itches, stray embers sparking. She angles the phone camera down at Mari, shadowed by Luz’s legs as Luz paces aimless circles around her room.

Mari doesn’t look at Luz. But she looks to the phone, and says, “we didn’t actually go to summer camp. Let’s start there.”

Summer camp. Luz swallows, wants—something. Wants to be anywhere but filming this video, but Mari keeps talking, and Luz keeps not saying anything, and her bond aches.

“I’m sorry!” There’s a whine to Mari’s voice, a catch, and Luz fists her hand not steadying the phone. “I know you wanted us to go, I know we needed to go, but—but it’s okay! I was smart about it, Mami, I swear, and we found somewhere to stay! And I was going to go back, I promise, but—but—”

“The way back is a door,” Luz says. It’s hard to think about. If she does for too long she starts to cry and even Mari trembles, pressing the dark fur of her muzzle to Luz’s chest. But now Mari is walking ahead, and doesn’t look back, though her gait falters for a moment. “And—and Eda was going to—to—”

“Eda is who we’ve been staying with,” Mari cuts in, her voice level, and she catches Luz’s eye, something hard. “The ‘door’ is a portal. A way between realms. We—er. Sort of…”

Luz breathes, and this, if nothing else, is easy to say, “witches. We found witches.”

“Not,” says Mari, coming to a stop, her tail twitching upwards, “like—not those witches. Not—witch-legends. I promise, Mami, this place is—we’re good! We’re good, I promise, Mami, and—”

“He was going to kill her.” Mari glares, but Luz ignores it, the words tumbling out of her. It’s the first time she’s said this, tried to put word to any of it, and Mari’s snarling down the bond can’t stop her. “There’s—Belos, the Emperor, he…he wanted her dead, Mami, I couldn’t—watch—he wanted the door. And. I couldn’t let him keep it. Couldn’t. So…”

It was, at the end of the day, just wood and magic. And wood is very, very flammable, and magic calls magic: her glyphs caught, and sparked, and…

Luz rubs her wrist, where Mari’s teeth have worried wounds into her skin, in those long nights where neither of them can sleep, because sleep means dreams means seeing it, means waking up and rolling to a Mari who’s curled in on herself, hidden away in a fawn coat, and Luz can’t—keep—seeing—

“But we’re okay,” Mari says. “Don’t worry. Luz and I are safe here, and we’re going to find some way back to you. All in one piece, I promise.”

Luz manages, shaking herself, “right.”

Sometimes it hits her, that she’s stuck here. Mari burns with it all the time. Even now, Luz can see it in her eyes, that steely determination.

But this is Luz’s video, too, and so Luz swallows, forces cheer, and says, “but we aren’t alone, either! I know we mentioned Eda, she took us in, and, I know!” She shoves past Mari, pushes open her bedroom door, and Mari slips out into the hallway after her. “I’ll just introduce you to everyone! So you know who I’ve been staying with, and can see that they’re good, and—and they’ll keep us safe.”

Mari huffs. Luz ignores her.

“This is the Owl House!” Luz spins her camera in a circle, though upstairs hallway isn’t exactly the best shot. To Mari, she thinks, very hard, you said your stuff, now I say my stuff.

Mari rolls her eyes. Fine, is her response, in the twitch of her tail, but you aren’t allowed to be annoying tonight if we have any nightmares.

Deal! Luz skips down the hallway. Aloud, she continues, trying to catch both herself and her daemon in-frame, “it’s really cool! Probably the coolest house on the Boiling Isles, and that’s not even my bias, ‘cause this is the only one that has a…palisman?” Luz pauses. “Mari, did Eda say Hooty was the house’s palisman?”

“Uh.” Mari’s muzzle crinkles. “I think her exact words were, kid, do you think I know what Hooty is?”

Luz snorts. Wants, for a brief, blinding moment, but—Mari is playing nice. So she swallows down the feeling, and grasps instead for joy. For the bubbly excitement that was first setting foot into a world of magic, because she needs her mom to see that. “Oooh, yeah. That was the day Hooty tried to eat François! And we had to save him and keep King from killing Hooty!”

“That’s a metaphor,” Mari cuts in. “Nobody nearly died.”

Luz grins. “That was a fun day.”

It was also the last time Eda left Luz in charge when she went out shopping, which Luz still thinks is maybe a little unfair. It’s not like she tried to eat François, she just started a little fire on accident during her rescue mission! But she’s not about to tell her Mom that, so instead Luz says, “wait, Mami, I didn’t tell you about daemons here. They’re called palismen! Or palisman if you’re just talking about one. It’s like all those old witch-stories they make you learn about in school, and, uh.” Luz swallows, her skin crawling. “Except—except more like the Good Witch Azura!”

“Not,” says Mari, her voice tripping over itself as she paws at Luz’s hands to try and get her to lower the camera, “not entirely like the Good Witch Azura. Witches Settle. Uh—I guess for a time they don’t have range, but that comes with Settling, too! And things are—are weird here, but, really the only similarity is the magic. And the name. Not—nothing else.”

Luz says, turning away from Mari, “it’s exactly like the Good Witch Azura. Palismen talk, Mami! All the time! Like Azura! To everyone! And there’s magic, too! Which! Wait wait wait!”

Luz pulls one of her pre-prepared light glyphs out of her pocket, fumbling to keep her phone’s camera straight, and taps it. “Boom! Magic.”

The little orb of light hovers in front of them for a few moments, Luz making sure to focus the camera on it, until Mari swipes a paw through it to dispel the light. “We can’t do magic like witches,” Luz says, as Mari traces out her own ice onto a new sheet of paper, “since that has a whole biological thing about bile sacs and the witch-palisman bond, which absorbs Dust and makes magic. Er—Rusakov particles, for you, Mami, the things daemons are made out of! It can become magic here. Is magic here? I might have to ask Eda again.”

Mari activates her ice glyph, forming a little ice-star, and says, “palismen aren’t made out of the same things daemons are. It’s very weird.”

“But cool,” says Luz, “because magic! Anyways, since Mari and I don’t have all that stuff, we use glyphs! Those shapes you saw us draw! ‘cause the Demon Realm is like, super magic, there’s a bunch of Dust all-over! And glyphs draw on that.”

“But we only know four of them,” Mari says, frowning. “Luz and I are trying to find more.”

“Yes! So, even if you’re sad we’re not home, don’t worry!” Luz offers the camera a thumbs-up “‘Cause we’re learning a lot here! And we have the best mentor, who you’ll meet as soon as we find her!”

Mari twists around to look at something behind Luz. “Oh, hey, it’s Lilith.”

Luz dives underneath a nearby table before Lilith can notice her. It’s a really, really terrible hiding spot, and her phone ends up crushed against her ribs, but look, so yes she trusts Eda with her entire life and knows probably somewhere that Eda wouldn’t let Lilith stay if she was going to hurt them, but also Luz doesn’t trust Lilith.

Thankfully, Lilith passes by without noticing them. Luz fumbles for her phone to record her while Mari speaks.

“That’s Lilith,” Mari says, poking her head out from under the table. And, at Luz’s nudging because Mari’s way better at being quiet than she is, “her palisman is Burkit. It’s, uh, normal here. For palismen to be introduced at the same time.”

Right now, Lilith has stopped in front of the window, Burkit flapping down to sit on the windowsill. It’s a bit easier to watch Burkit than Lilith, if only because Lilith’s palisman wasn’t the one who, you know, threw Luz off a bridge. Like, he still watched, but again. Marginally better.

“They’re Eda’s sister,” Luz continues, when Mari’s quiet. Ohhh, she hopes she’s quiet enough. “They used to be bad, and worked under Belos, and cursed Eda, but they ended up changing.”

Hopefully. Luz really wants to think Lilith is better now. She just also doesn’t like being alone in a room with her. Thankfully Eda seems to be okay with that and doesn’t make them.

Luz zooms in on Lilith, who’s talking to her palisman. Burkit’s turned to face Lilith, and pressed into the bare patch devoid of feathers on his chest Luz catches sight of his and Lilith’s coven symbol: a golden sword with two sets of griffin-wings coming out of it, set on a paler triangle that vaguely looks like the Emperor’s castle if you sort of squint. It makes Luz flinch, even now, even with Lilith and Burkit, technically, having betrayed it. The fact that it’s still there sort of makes Luz feel like there’s ants crawling into her skin. The fact that Burkit just has no feathers there makes her bury her hand in Mari’s fur, just to prove it’s still there.

Scaredy-cat, Mari huffs, but not roughly, and she doesn’t shake Luz’s hand off.

“Okay, Burkit,” Lilith’s saying, pushing open the window. “It’s a beautiful day out. It’s not raining. It’s not windy. Eda’s not outside. Or, it’s the perfect time to test how the curse has extended our range. Again. Without any distractions this time.”

Burkit ruffles his gray-slate wings, flaps once, and then spreads them, like he’s preparing to take off.

“He’s a peregrine falcon,” Mari whispers into the phone for Mom. “Palismen Settle normal, like daemons.”

“But you should see our friends!” Luz grins. “Clover’s always the coolest insects, they’ve got really neat animals over here! And then we got Bailey super into chameleons. They have Demon-Realm chameleons! But they go, like, super-visible. It’s weird. And Alma! Though she Settled already…”

It makes her heart ache, a tad, thinking of her friends. She hasn’t been able to see any of them for a while. Eda’s keeping them all close to home to make sure Belos doesn’t try coming after them again. So far it’s good and Luz is pretty sure she’ll be able to convince Eda to let her go back to Hexside if she asks, but…

She has her reasons for not asking. At least, not yet.

“Lilith and Burkit used to have like, 20 feet of range,” Mari’s telling Mom, “but when they took on half of Eda’s curse, it sort of messed with that. But I don’t know what their range actually is now.” She creeps to the edge of the underside of the table, her ears pricked as Luz stays where she is, tucked right underneath with her back pressed against the wall. Still. Look, she can leave at any time, really, it’s just…Lilith is sort of blocking the path to the stairs.

Burkit flaps hard, and takes off into the air, and right at that second Hooty slams his head in through the open window, yelling, “HELLO!”

“Gah!” Lilith yells, tripping away from the window and Hooty, trying to spin a spell-circle, but it fizzles and dies. Burkit shrieks and dives at Hooty, but he’s already unsteady in the air and only manages to knock into the side of the house.

“New best friend, I’ll save you!” Hooty says, catching Burkit in his beak before he can fall all the way to the ground. Luz shudders, instinctively, though Lilith doesn’t, and neither does Burkit. Mari accidentally brushing against Hooty doesn’t feel bad, just weird, but witches never notice it, which Luz doesn’t get and Mari super doesn’t get, but Mari’s had to have several conversations with her friends about how daemons are not actually all that much like palismen, so. At least with Hooty it’s really just like he’s yelling at her but its inside her brain now. Next to her Mari tenses up, and Luz feels the string of her thoughts: and who knows how much worse it would be with someone more like a human.

But despite all that Hooty is enough that Lilith and Burkit are distracted, and so Luz creeps past them, and downstairs, Mari whispering, “it’s fine. Hooty’s more like a palisman than anything. He’s just also sort of an eldritch horror. But a friendly one! Sometimes too friendly...I think he’s traumatized like, at least twenty coven scouts.”

Luz jumps the final two steps, landing heavy on the ground floor, where—

“Eda!” Luz yells, charging into the living room to greet Eda, struggling to close the door when Hooty’s got his—neck? tube?—twisted around, blocking it from closing, probably still trying to make friends with Lilith and Burkit. Luz bounces a circle around her mentor, Mari skidding to a stop before she crashes into the older woman. “I thought you were gonna be in town like all day! Oh, wait, one second, Mari’s making us make a video for our mom so MAMI this is Eda! My mentor! She’s so cool, she’s the most powerful witch in the Boiling Isles and she taught-slash-is-teaching me magic and she’s EDA!”

Luz stops her bouncing when Eda ruffles her hair, wobbling back-and-forth as Mari pads up alongside her, prodding her muzzle to Luz’s leg. Way to seem normal, she says, but without much bite, and Luz giggles. Who cares!!! It’s EDA!!!!!!!

“Aww, thanks, kid, I am pretty great,” Eda says, taking a step back. Luz lifts up her phone, zooms out so all of Eda is actually in frame. “That’s right, I’m Eda the Owl Lady, most powerful—” she pauses, pivots, “—okay, previous most powerful witch on the Boiling Isles, but the second I get my magic back I’m taking that spot again! I earned it, and—”

Something screams from outside. Not a person! Like a very, very mad animal.

“Um, Eda?” Luz asks, lowering her phone. “Is that—”

“Well, shit,” Eda says. “I forgot I had a reason for trying to close the door.”

It at that exact moment that the door is slammed open by the Owl Beast barreling inside. She pauses, staggering from hitting the door with such force, her dark gray wings dragging on the ground, just a bit shorter than Eda. But then Lilith says something upstairs, too faint for Luz to pick up on, but the Owl Beast’s head shoots up, and her eyes narrow, and she lunges for the stairs.

“Stop trying to kill Lily, you monster!” Eda yells, and charges after the Owl Beast before she can get upstairs, tackling her into the wall. The Owl Beast flails her wings wide, nearly knocking one into Luz, but she manages to duck and grab Mari so she’s not sent flying, either.

“…so that’s the Owl Beast,” Luz says, as she rushes outside to not get caught in any crossfire. “We mentioned that Lilith cursed Eda? So…yeah. The Owl Beast sort of…”

The words die in Luz’s throat. All that she tried to do, getting them all into this situation, and she still couldn’t…

“Eda used to have a palisman,” Mari says. Luz slumps down against the side of the house, pretends like she can’t hear the fighting from inside. “We never met him; his name was Owlbert. But when Eda was cursed, it made Owlbert…go away. And now Eda has the Owl Beast.”

“I call her Beastie,” Luz says, trying to put some cheer into her voice. “She’s not that bad! She doesn’t hurt us or anything, sometimes she sits on us but I think that’s not to be mean? It’s just…”

Ever since Lilith started living with them, the Owl Beast has been worse. Like, it wasn’t perfect before, either. Beastie obviously doesn’t like being stuck around the Owl House, but she and Eda have a range just like Luz and Mari do, except obviously it’s way longer than Luz’s own three feet—Eda said it’s something closer to 100. But it still means the Owl Beast can’t really go where she wants to, and Eda isn’t just gonna ditch them so the Owl Beast can go do Owl-Beast things again. But before the Owl Beast seemed to do okay: would chase after scouts that came too close with Hooty, and probably only killed some of them; would bring Luz dead rats which, like, Luz couldn’t do anything with but she thinks it’s sort of a similar scenario to cats doing it; and King liked clambering up between her wings when she was sleeping and she never seemed to mind.

But now Lilith lives with them, and since Lilith is sort of the one that got her into this situation…

“It’s fine!” Luz says, turning her phone around so the camera is on her. “So, things are a little hard here, and it’s sort of my fault because I’m the one that, uh—and then Mari—but it’s fine! We’ll be fine.”

Mari pulses you promised you wouldn’t be annoying down their bond. Luz ignores it, because she said after a nightmare, and they haven’t slept yet.

For a while she just sits there in silence, not really sure what to say. There’s so much she can’t tell her Mom, not with Mari’s teeth bared in a half-snarl, so much she can’t tell her mom because it means things won’t ever be good again, and Luz can’t put that worry on her mom, not here, not now, and maybe that’s a little bit of Mari bleeding into her, but. She’s really only ever made her mom worry.

And this was supposed to be the ‘we’re okay, Mom!’ video.

Luz grumbles, this is your fault.

Mari gnaws at her nails. Yeah. You keep saying that.

Luz does perk up when King comes by, François shoved between his horns, the little plush rabbit’s ears waving as King runs over to them.

“Luz! Mari!” King calls, panting, “Beastie got free, I was supposed to be distracting her for Eda, did you see…?”

Mari points to the house. King stares at it for a minute. The Owl Beast cries out, hits a wall, and the entire house shakes. Burkit dives out the upstairs hallway window, calling, “Edalyn, hurry up! It’s trapped Lilith in the bathroom and I can’t fly farther from her!”

Luz can’t hear Eda’s response.

“…oh,” King says. “This isn’t my fault. It’s Beastie’s for not being scared of the most fearsome King of demons!” He puffs out his chest, and reaches up to nudge François away from falling.

“King of cuddles, more like,” Luz says, making grabby hands for King. He crosses his arms as Luz uncurls from herself, flipping her phone back to record him. “C’mon, King, you know you wanna!”

“No I don’t! Weh!” King flails as Luz grabs for him, hugging him close. “Don’t crush François!”

“I won’t, don’t worry,” Luz says, taking care not to accidentally smush the rabbit. Mari wags her tail, her ears pricked, as King tries and fails to free himself from Luz’s grip. Luz kisses his skull. “Mwah.”

“You’re disgusting,” King tells her, flatly, and Luz giggles, and even Mari grins a dog’s grin, tongue lolling. “What are you doing? With this.” He pokes her phone, twisting around so he’s sitting in her lap.

Luz lets him take it. “Recording a video for my mom,” she says. Mari stretches out alongside her, lifts a paw when King twists to drop François in her grip. “Mari wants to show her that we were okay.”

“Oh, cool,” King says, holding out the phone. Luz reaches over him to flip the camera around, so he’s actually being recorded. “Hi, Luz and Mari’s mom! I’m King! And this is my palisman François!” He grabs his stuffed rabbit and holds him against his chest. King looks back to Luz, and asks, “okay, she knows you’re okay, can we go play or something now? ‘Cause Eda’s going to be busy for a while.”

“Yeah, okay, let me wrap this up,” Luz says, taking her phone back from King. While she does that, Mari finishes, “and that’s King! He was the last person I wanted you to meet, so…yeah, I guess this is it. I’m safe here, Mom, I swear it. And I’m gonna work every single day to fix the portal and get back to you, so don’t worry. I’ll be back in the Human Realm before you know it!”

“Wait, back?” King grabs for her phone again. “No! Never! I’m never letting you go back to the Human Realm!”

He tries to grab her phone and so Luz stands, but that doesn’t deter King any, and he starts climbing up her leg. Luz staggers, one-handed, trying not to drop her phone, but thinks one of the bad thoughts Mari digs her teeth into, and so Luz trips over her daemon, her phone skittering out of her grip.

“He doesn’t mean that!” Mari yelps, scrambling after it. “He’s just—”

“I mean every word of it!” King’s all the way up her leg and now grabbing at the collar of her hoodie, tying to yank Luz down. “François, attack!” He throws his rabbit, who he’d picked up when Luz fell, at Mari, and François bounces off her side.

“King!” Luz surges backwards and hope she doesn’t step on Mari’s paw by accident, but mostly from Mari’s she’s getting annoyance, and her bond aches but not so much they’re pushing their range. “I’m gonna tell Eda you nearly broke my phone!”

“I’m gonna bite your phone!” King shrieks.

Mari, who dodges their flailing play-fight, presses her nose to their phone’s screen, her face smushed against it. “Mami, I’m sorry, I’m fine, I swear I’ll get back to you, te quiero mucho!”

Mari fumbles ending the video, and in the end it’s Luz who has to do it, finally shaking King off of her and sending it to her mom when Mari refuses to be helpful and do it herself. It comes back as not delivered, but that’s Mari’s problem, and Luz drops her phone at her daemon’s paws, and turns to lunge at King and tackle him to the ground.

“King!” Luz says, even as he kicks at her, trying to get free, his tail waving up dirt. Luz sneezes and lets him up, retreating backwards the direction that lessens the ache in her bond, asks you good? to Mari. “You need to be careful, you know me and Mari have a really small range!”

He waves a paw. “I’m not a baby, I woulda stopped if it was stretching. Gimme François!” He pushes past her to grab his plushie. Luz sits back next to her daemon as King hugs François, tucking him back between his horns.

Anything? Luz asks, prodding Mari with a finger.

No, Mari huffs, but you knew that. She drops her head down on their phone. “You could’ve broke our phone.”

Luz glances at it, sticking out from Mari’s chin. It’s covered in dirt and drool but otherwise seems fine. “It’s okay.”

“Says you,” grumbles Mari, but she doesn’t push.

Luz scoots back to lean up against the house. Above them the Owl Beast shrieks and rages and wails as she’s finally forced out a window, going to roost on the roof. Burkit grumbles angrily, perched on a windowsill, ignoring Hooty who’s stuck his head back in the house. King wanders off, after a bit, bored, goes to join Eda inside.

Underneath Mari’s chin pokes out their phone, the bright red letters burning into Luz’s eyes: unsent message.

Mari’s growling low about it. But somewhere tucked close to her own chest, where Mari maybe can’t hear her, ignoring her daemon’s nails against her skin, Luz is thinking I’m glad.

The next day Luz goes to the market with Eda. Apparently the Emperor really has given up on arresting them, though Luz is pretty sure if they like, did more crime or something he probably wouldn’t waste a second. Maybe they’re only scraping by ‘cause like, the entire town saw him let Eda go after they managed to escape and going back on that would make it pretty clear he’s evil.

Not that he wasn’t already. Maybe he’s just waiting for there not to be a crowd.

It’s just the three of them today—her and Eda and King, with Lilith left back at the house with Hooty, mostly just because nobody wants to deal with Beastie trying to kill her again. Though Beastie isn’t actually with them—she’s flown off closer to the edge of her and Eda’s range, ‘cause she really doesn’t like being in crowded spaces like the market. Usually she just follows them from the rooftops and is smart enough to not get caught.

Luz hangs back while Eda goes to negotiate their bounties for snails. They’re bounty hunters today! It’s…

Something. It’s something, even if they’ve been doing a lot of job-hopping, ‘cause of the whole…everything. Eda losing her magic, and everyone knowing that, and also the whole Emperor Belos thing, and Lilith splitting the curse with Eda, not that Luz is sure what good that’s done if the Owl Beast is still around instead of Owlbert—

She’s broken out of her spiral when she runs right into a wall, flinching backwards as pain spikes up her nose. Downtown Bonesborough smells like grit and dust and as she comes back to herself she can hear the loud clattering of passers-by, people shouting about their wares, palismen darting to-and-fro through gaps in the crowd, their witches following along. Backing away from the wall Luz is eye-to-eye with Emperor’s Coven propaganda plastered everywhere, join now! all in bright happy letters.

“I’d be cool if you’d stop panicking,” Mari comments, winding her way between Luz’s legs.

“What else do you want me to do?” Luz asks, low enough that King trailing behind them shouldn’t pick it up. What is there for either of them to do? Now she’s the only one with magic, magic she can’t even get right half the time, with Mari a discomfort numbing her arms, and that’s why they’re even in this mess to begin with. Before Eda could sell human-stuff, but the door is gone, blasted to bits, and Luz doesn’t regret it—can’t, can’t, can’t, and Mari growls low—and beyond that she had potions, and sure, she can make them without magic technically, but it takes way longer, and also who is going to buy from her, ‘cause Luz has learned the answer is not many people anymore.

And so Luz is left standing, staring at Emperor propaganda, a man who could come in and try to kill them all again whenever he wants, and she keeps having nightmares, and Mari’s nails are too-sharp, and Luz’s entire self twists with something squirming in her gut, some need for something, like the crack-splinter of wood, falling to ash and fire and never to be what it was again.

She just wanted to help Eda. Steal a healing hat, bring back her palisman, and she can’t even do that right. Her fingernails dig into the skin of her palms.

It’s Mari who breaks her out of it, a sharp bark that grates against Luz’s ears. “Didn’t Lilith use to be on these things?”

Luz starts. Mari’s sitting by her feet, ears pricked, as she studies the posters.

“She did!” King scampers over to them, a poster gripped in his hand. “This one flew into my face! Some guy was putting them up over there.” He waves, vaguely, back the way they came, over near where Eda is arguing with the guy paying them for their bounties. “Get a load of this guy. Golden Guard, psh.” King rolls his eyes and balls up the poster, throwing it off to the side. “Whoever drew him did a real bad job. He looks dead!”

“It’s not that bad,” Luz comments, squinting at one of the posters on the wall. The person on it is, indeed, someone called the Golden Guard—some guy in fancy armor, his face shrouded by a golden mask, wielding a yellow-and-gold staff tipped with a red crystal. The witch takes up most of the picture, but his palisman is at his side, four-legged but also wearing armor, and Luz can’t tell what sort of animal might be underneath.

Mari crinkles her muzzle, poking her flat face to Luz’s leg, and Luz starts. Bounties? Mari thinks at her.

“Right.” Luz gestures for King to follow her. “C’mon, let’s find something worth a lot of money.”

They wander over to the board of bounties. Behind them, Luz can hear an owlish shriek, the fizzling, dying crackle of a failed spell circle, and yet another owl shriek, this one pained.

King, scrambling up onto her shoulder, frowns. “I think they’re not paying Eda again.”

“Yeah,” Luz says, quietly. “Probably.”

When Eda comes over to join them, with significantly less snails then they were due, Luz says nothing and just leans into her mentor’s side. The Owl Beast lands on the bounty board, and it creaks ominously under her weight.

“Gah, shoo,” Eda says, waving a hand at Beastie, but she just clicks her beak and starts chewing at the wood. Eda rolls her eyes. “Or break it, you’re the one who’s gonna start crying when that happens.”

“What happened?” King asks, scampering from Luz over to Eda, perching on her head as he peers down at them. “Did you fight someone? Did you win?”

“Well,” Eda says, picking King up and holding him in one arm, “the guy only gave us half a snail, I still can’t cast magic, and somebody threw an axe at the Owl Beast.”

There is a new cut on Beastie’s leg, oozing a sort of thick brackish blood onto the board. Luz pets the massive owl down the small feathers lining her beak, and she croons low, nudging at Luz’s face.

At her side, Mari stiffens, but Luz ignores her. On this Mari has no grounds to stand. Whatever the Owl Beast is, she’s not a palisman, and she’s certainly not a daemon.

“You should’ve let me fight!” King tells Eda, twisting out of her arms and dropping down onto the ground, his fur fluffing up down his spine. “I could take them.”

“They’d absolutely beat you, squirt,” Eda tells King, and starts looking through the bounty board. “We’ll just have to keep doing these things. Sucks but so do all our other options.” She plucks out one of the posters, shoves Beastie’s head away when she tries to eat it, and hands the paper to Luz. Luz takes it, angled downwards so Mari can see. The Sweets Swindler, it reads, reward 50 snails.

“Fifty?” Luz asks, frowning.

“You kids go nab this one,” Eda says, “I’ll see if I can’t convince the Owl Beast to go after someone else.”

“But—fifty?” Luz repeats, shaking her head. Mari looks away, hackles bristled, and Luz ignores the prickling down her bond. “Eda, we can do something bigger! Something worth a lot more!”

I have to, Luz is thinking, and it ends up somewhere down their bond, because their bond is just their mind and where all their thoughts end up eventually. It mingles with Mari’s discomfort, prickling more, and when Luz balls up her fists she’s not sure if she’s mad at Eda not thinking she’s good enough to go after something stronger or if it’s Mari’s bared teeth bleeding over. But Luz grabs onto her own anger, of watching Eda at market, the things she buys, the things she doesn’t. Things like griffin eggs, because they’re one of the few Demon-Realm foods Luz can eat. Things that are a bit more expensive, all for her.

Eda snorts. “Yeah, no,” she says, going to shove the Owl Beast off the board. Beastie shrieks and flails her wings.

“But I can handle it!” Luz hurries after Eda, and her bond aches when Mari stays sat, but she pushes through the pain watering at the edge of her eyes. “Eda, we have glyphs, and we know what we’re doing! I know what I’m doing! And it won’t be just be me and Mari, it’ll be King, too, and—”

“No,” Eda repeats, with more force. The bounty poster crinkles in Luz’s hands. “You’re just going to get yourself killed. All it takes is one palisman dragging Mari a bit too far away, and you’re done. I don’t have any powers save for an Owl Beast who hates me like, 75% of the time, and the other 25% she’s trying to eat voles. We’ve got to lie low. Like, for example, not going after the biggest bounties.”

“But that isn’t fair!” Luz yells, and oh, that makes Mari growl, the real-sort that Luz can taste in the back of her throat, acidic, but she ignores it even when Mari stands and lunges for her. “We only have three feet of range, sure, but we aren’t going to get separated! We haven’t yet, have we? And we’re strong! We can take whatever the Emperor throws at us! Eda, c’mon. Please.”

She wants to be something big enough to prove their point, like the Owl Beast, something that could growl and snap and everyone would have to leave them alone, then, because they’re clever and tricky and smart. She wants to tell Eda everything, wants to grab onto her please, wants to scream look at me! But she doesn’t do any of that. Instead Mari smashes into her side, and Luz is sent stumbling, caught only by a squawking Owl Beast grabbing the hood of her hoodie and yanking Luz upright, and there, dazed, Luz can only listen to Mari speak.

Mari’s voice is light and cheerful despite her growling don’t-you-dare down their bond, raised hackles and flashing teeth. “No, that’s fair, I get it! We’ll go after this sweets guy and you can deal with the Owl Beast and everything will be good! Okay! King, c’mon, you wanna help?”

Mari darts away before Eda can say another word, and Luz has no choice but to follow the ache of her bond, a knife in her chest, until she catches up with Mari, leaping up into an empty bench. When Luz slumps next to her Mari just pricks one ear, tilts her head.

“You didn’t have to run,” Luz mutters.

“Yes,” Mari said, “I did. Before you ruined everything again.”

“I didn’t—”

Mari presses hard on her stomach when King approaches, and Luz’s jaw snaps shut as the little demon climbs up to sit at her other side.

“What are you fighting about?” he asks.

“Nothing,” Luz says, as Mari asks, “why do you think we’re fighting?”

“You’re all.” King waves a paw. “Twisted.”

“We aren’t.” Mari’s voice is matter-of-fact, as she takes the crumpled poster in her jaws and flattens it out on the bench. Luz itches. Like, this isn’t over, but Mari doesn’t respond to her, and that makes Luz grit her teeth. Like she can just ignore it, like running off is going to fix anything, like there’s anything they can do to make this okay, like pretending makes it okay.

Mari reacts to none of this. Luz doesn’t know what to say.

It’s King who breaks the silence, squinting between them before he shrugs and sprawls out across Luz’s lap, his tail flicking back-and-forth. “So,” he says, tugging François out from between his ears and gesturing with the stuffed rabbit towards the bounty board. “We’re going after one of the big bounties, right? Eda’s not around to say no.”

“What? No!” Mari gives herself a shake, tapping the poster. “We’re getting Sweets kid. Who is…” she scans the area. “Oh. Right there.” Near a statue of the Emperor is the boy from the poster, a little kid maybe King’s age holding a lollipop half his size, both him and his black-and-purple frog-shaped palisman licking it.

King stares at the kid. At Mari. Then at Luz. “So, big bounty?”

“Big bounty,” Luz confirms, standing as King hops down next to her. “I saw one on there for a million snails! All we have to do is capture something called the Selkidomus! How hard can that be?”

“Luz,” Mari says, “we aren’t doing that.”

“Uh, yes we are.” Luz narrows her eyes. “We got everyone into this situation. We’re going to go out and fix it.”

“Oh, because you’ve been so helpful before?” Mari raises her hackles. She’s always been on the lean side, for a pug, and under her fur Luz can see the muscles, all the ways dogs can run, attack, bite. But she’s still so small. Luz glares right back. “All this is going to do is make Eda hate us more than she already does!”

“Sweets kid barely covers two eggs and you know it,” Luz snaps, turning away from her daemon. Thinks, there in that space they share, of everything Mari won’t: of trying and failing to steal the healing hat, of watching Eda and Lilith battle trapped in a bubble and unable to do anything, of how when Luz finally got herself free, Lilith threw her off the bridge and Luz very nearly didn’t grab Mari in time, and how she did, in the end, but how Eda gave herself up to save Luz and her and the Owl Beast not separate anymore but all the same and shrieking and terrible.

Mari’s voice is low. “I don’t know what you’re trying to prove, Luz. Look where your attempts to help got us.”

And yes, Luz thinks, yeah, sure, it’s just the nightmares all over again. And so yes it’s my fault, and so yes I know what you mean.

Mari means, this is your fault, so I have to fix it, and we do that by doing everything good and right.

But maybe Luz doesn’t want to be good. Maybe Luz knows this is all her fault, and maybe she wants Mari to stop pretending like she can fix it, like a bandage will ever be enough. Maybe somewhere Luz internalized a lot more from the Good Witch Azura than she ever thought she would, maybe like Azura this is digging in her talons and never letting go, not until they make you.

Luz hates the nightmares. Hates all the thoughts it brings, hates everything that happened After The Door. Knows, knows, how it all rests on her shoulders.

Mari thinks they can fix this. Mari thinks they were ever something good.

Luz thinks, we had a chance to be good. And I chose the Demon Realm over camp. And when I had to choose between Mami and Eda, I picked—

So maybe Luz has never really helped Eda. So maybe nothing she did ended up mattering, not even after it all. Because maybe Luz wanted to hope, okay. It was all terrible. But now we’re back at the Owl House, and Lilith tried to kill us but she’s splitting the curse with her sister, and all I wanted to do was help Eda with her curse so she could get her palisman back.

And then none of that happened.

And then Luz opened her eyes, and knew she’d never be something good again.

And then Mari splayed her paws as if the Bad Thing was nothing but nightmare.

Which is to say all these thoughts swimming up and down their bond, all these things that are hers, her daemon’s, all mesh and clash together, and through it Luz says, to Mari, to the other half of her, we’re been doing what you want for two weeks now, and it hasn’t changed a thing. So now it’s my turn.

She wants it to be a fight. She wants Mari to lunge and growl and snarl, to be big and looming and so scary Luz tastes the fear in her throat.

But instead Mari adverts her gaze, bearing the thin skin of her throat, and says, you’re the human.

Luz’s hands ball up into fists.

There is so much, that Mari keeps tamped-down and locked-away, until it only shows up in their nightmares. There is so much, that is there only between the two of them, somewhere Eda won’t ever see. Somewhere King won’t ever see. Somewhere nobody will ever see, as if the After was just a bad dream.

Luz thinks, you’re a coward, Mari.

Mari says, you’re the human.

Luz takes a breath. Offers a hand to King, who bounces up to grab it, shoving François back into his usual spot between his horns.

“Are we in business?” he asks, tail wagging.

“We are,” Luz says, forcing her voice to be light. “King, we’re catching that Selkidomus or my name isn’t Luz Noceda!”

“Just Luz?” King asks. “What about Mari? Where’s her name in there?”

“Er.” Luz stumbles. “Well, that’s my middle name. But you usually don’t go around saying your middle name, right?”

King crinkles his shout. “That’s weird,” he says, “we’re doing this, all of us! Me, François, you, and Mari!”

“I’m not getting involved,” Mari mutters, though she stands and hops off the bench. “It’s Luz’s fault if something goes wrong.”

“Ignore her,” Luz says, swallows down everything sloshing about in her gut, because she’s going to do this, going to do it right, this time, despite Mari’s bitterness, anger, whatever! She’s Luz Noceda, and she can do this, no matter how stupid her daemon might be. “We have adventure to think about! Glory! Earning our keep!”

“Yeah!” King cheers, and then, “where are we going?”

“That,” says Luz, “is a great question. Let’s go check the board again.”

Chapter Text

It turns out there’s a whole expedition in search of the Selkidomus, and Luz is able to charm-slash-demand that they’re allowed on, decking herself out in pirate-adjacent garb, including a blue bandana printed with a fish-pattern she ties around Mari’s neck, even if her daemon refuses to look her in the eyes the entire time, and Luz maybe tugs her fur a bit harder than she needs to. Not counting them there’s four other crewmembers, including the captain, some sort of lobster-esque witch with a white and black-flecked dog-palisman, probably some sort of setter if Luz had to guess, but not any breed she can immediately identify. He explains to all of them that once they catch the big sea monster the reward money will be split evenly between all of them, and then it’s out to sea.

They have to prove their worth to the rest of the crew, which actually ends up working out really well? Need to keep the ship’s engine running? Boom, fire glyph! Someone’s fallen overboard? Boom, plant glyph! Barnacles that have to be scraped off the side of the ship? Boom, ice glyph to freeze and shatter them off. Mostly it’s Luz doing this, Mari trailing along after her, right at the edges of their three-foot range. Luz’s skin prickles but Mari’s ice-cold down their bond, numbing any pointed thoughts Luz wants to think her way about the After.

Leaning on the railing and staring out at the Boiling Sea all sprawled before them, Luz tastes the salty air, feels the wind as it buffets her hair. Mari sits by her feet, too short to see over the railing. Beyond them the sea roils, the wind’s gusts carrying a flock of small, white, ravenlike birds, who croak and caw to each other.

Luz says, not taking her eyes off the birds, “you should come up and see this, Mari.”

“How?” Mari’s voice is dry. “We’re a pug, Luz. We can’t fly.”

One of the birds twists through the wind, comes soaring down and lands right near Luz at the railing, pecking around for crumbs of food. It makes something catch in Luz’s chest, the way the wind moves pale feathers, Mari’s fur that scratches against her legs.

“Bet we’d get better eyes on the Selkidomus.”

Mari huffs.

Luz continues, “Eda’s not going to be mad at us ever if we do this.” The bird flutters off, back to its flock, banking back off towards the Titan, back to the Boiling Isles. “We’re fixing things. We have to actually go do things to fix them.”

“Yeah,” says Mari, standing, and her nails tap against the rough wood of the ship. “Because that worked so well last time.”

Luz stays at the railing until a knife starts to burn in her chest.

She’s not so sure where King’s wandered off to, which probably isn’t a great sign, and as she catches up with her daemon Mari’s ears are pinned back, a frown drawing its way across her flat muzzle. He’s clearly not in this part of the ship, and if Luz were a bird like those she just saw she could fly up, high, high, catch sight of King, but Mari presses hard on their bond, don’t-dare.

Aloud, Mari says, “he probably just fell asleep somewhere, Luz. Off in a corner or something.”

“Right,” says Luz, and she is going to go look more, really! But it’s then the Captain yells Selkidomus! and the entire ship shakes as something big crashes up against it, and the water’s sloshing all around them, and Luz springs into action. It’s here, and this was her plan, and she’s not failing again, and so in the moment even Mari’s there, alight at her side, as Luz digs for her glyphs and throws herself into the fight, because this time, this time, it’s going to work.

Ice to throw down and grow out of the ocean to block off its escape routes. The Selkidomus is big, like, sea-monster big, sorta reminds her of a seal but it’s got seaweed maybe either growing or draped over it? Either way, it smashes into one of Luz’s ice-blocks and shrieks, shaking itself, and does avoid the others so that’s good, she can—uh—

Stumble at the jerking in her heart, like a line drawn taut, and throws out plants like some sort of desperate rope, a magical slurry. “Mari!” she yelps. “I can’t—”

“I’m a pug!” Mari snarls back, “I can’t throw myself around like you do!” She skids by Luz, smashes into the side of the boat, and Luz feels it as a spin in her head, her balance momentarily off-kilter.

“Well, don’t be one!” Right at the edge of the boat Luz throws another glyph, the Selkidomus in the water roaring, slamming its tail into the waves, and Luz flails fire and melts most of it to steam. The world rocks. Mari pants at her side.

“I don’t think you know how being Settled works,” Mari snarls, her pelt thick with seawater, as Luz stoops to scoop her up and let her daemon get a view of the situation. “I didn’t even want to come out here! How was I supposed to know which one of your crazy plans you were going for?”

But still Mari digs her teeth into plant tucked into her bandana, and Luz does too, following her lead. It’s off-kilter and makes something in Luz burn brighter, some blinding point of the After, her and Mari here, together, and Luz second to Mari’s first, and plant-rope after plant-rope twist around the beast, flailing in their net.

Luz grabs tight for their plant ropes, holding them steady, braced against the railing. Mari is smushed between her and the wood, eyes narrowed, twist of a tail stuck in the crook of Luz’s arm, and it’s Mari who fires off the ice-glyph and Luz who twists the net just-so, beaching the Selkidomus which rolls up onto the floe of ice, stuck.

“Haha!” Luz crows, punching a fist in the air. “We got it! We—”

Luz’s leg slips. Mari falls out of her arms, and onto the floor, where she lies for a moment, stunned, and Luz’s own head spins as she hits the edge of the railing and the world goes all sharp-edges and ringing-echoes. The plant ropes snap, one-two-three, and the Selkidomus smashes its tail into the ice, shattering that and falling right back into the ocean, where it bolts away from them.

“Maritza,” Luz hisses.

“Your dumb idea!” Mari snaps, stumbling to her paws. Beyond them the Selkidomus is escaping into the sea. “Maybe this time you’ll actually listen, when I tell you to cool it! That this was never going to work!”

Luz’s nails grind into her fists. Her teeth grind against each other. The Selkidomus is getting away, and Mari is still talking, all growl growl growl, the cold iciness of their bond, and they could’ve gotten it, if Mari had just—

Mari doesn’t want to help her. Mari doesn’t want to help, is just a coward, and so fine, Luz will take this and dig her teeth into it even if it’s the castle all over again, even if it leads to another After, because maybe this time everything will go wrong again but Mari will be forced to look at it same as Luz, look at how we messed up, look at how we never fix anything, look at the proof, Mari, LOOK AT IT!

Luz throws herself right over the edge of the ship.

“LUZ!” Mari yowls, launching herself right after. Together they slam into the ice-boat Luz throws out, a few ice-glyphs in quick succession, and Luz’s nose stings and Mari’s fur is on-edge but Luz grabs her around the middle before she slides off into the ocean. “Do you want to kill us?”

Luz says, tasting the words on her tongue, “you didn’t have to jump.”

Mari’s hackles go up. Luz plucks a fire-glyph from her pocket.

“Look,” Luz says, “let’s just catch this dumb thing again so we can get our money, and give it to Eda, and then you can be stupid and stubborn all you want.”

“Stupid and stubborn?” Mari barks out a laugh as Luz presses fire, an explosion of energy to propel their makeshift boat forwards. “Funny, coming from you. Who left King behind on that boat? Because it wasn’t me.”

“You said it yourself,” Luz mutters, navigating them after the Selkidomus, “he’s probably just sleeping somewhere.”

It’s a tense, quick race across the Boiling Sea, the stinging bite of water searing itself across the bridge of Luz’s nose, but she presses on through it, because it’s not her fault she ended up here, no matter how much Mari turns away from her, ears pinned back. Because if Mari just did it, just looked at the After and stopped pretending it never happened, because the nightmares and Eda worse-off because of them and Lilith living at their house, and Mari closing her eyes to all of that, to them, to—

The land comes into view all-and-once and Luz isn’t quick enough to slow their approach, so they crash into the rocky beach instead, and just in time, too, because their ice-boat is more water than boat, and even here she can feel the sharp heat of the Boiling Sea. Snagging Mari by the scruff she drags them further up the beach, collapsing into the sand, and just manages to catch a glimpse of the Selkidomus’s tail as it vanishes into a cave. That’s all this island is, beach-sand area and then rocky cave.

Mari stands first, giving herself a shake. It leaves quite a few of her hairs drifting through the air, and Luz grabs one as she pulls herself sitting, watching as it fizzes to Dust in her hands: thick and golden for a brief moment, before it vanishes and just becomes magic or whatever it was Eda said when she explained things to them.

“If we die,” Mari says, beginning further down the island, “it’s your fault.”

Luz shrugs, shoving her hands in her pockets to count off the premade glyphs they have left. Not a whole lot, and so with a glance to the cave—there’s no way the Selkidomus leaves without them noticing—she sits and digs the extra paper out of her other pocket to start replenishing their stock of glyphs.

Or, that’s her plan, because it’s about at that moment that a hand emerges from the sea.

Not a hand like a hand-hand, like Luz’s hand as she yelps, scrambling backwards, Mari’s fur all on-edge and a snarl building in her chest, but a hand like a water hand, and Luz and Mari just manage to scramble back far enough as the hand comes right down for her, and through the fog and the chaos she thinks is there a GUY in there and Mari yells Luz move you idiot, and the water splashes down and falls apart in the sand.

And there is, indeed, a guy inside of it.

He’s wearing a lot of armor, all golden, with a regal white cloak somehow not tattered and torn by the Boiling Sea, and a staff, the first witch-staff Luz has seen since Belos, actually, and somewhat similar too, gold-with-white like his outfit and a red gem at a top. He’s holding a birdcage with a cloth over it, so Luz can’t see inside.

His palisman beside him is wearing similar-colored armor, some sort of big canine, much bigger than Mari. She’s covered almost entirely, save for her lower legs and her tail, which make Luz think dog probably, ‘cause she’s got wiry pale cream-red fur, and her tail’s got flecks of gray in it, too. She’s even got a custom helmet like the guy, though hers leaves her muzzle uncovered, and she’s got her teeth bared and her hackles up.

Luz takes another step back. Mari puffs out her chest.

She’s got no clue who this guy is but oh god he’s looking up at her and she can guess it’s not for a good reason and—

“Hello, human,” he says. His voice isn’t as deep as she was kinda expecting it to be. His armor is dripping still from the water. His palisman has her tail curled high over her back, crouched with her gaze boring into Luz.

Luz shoves her hand in her pocket, brushes against her glyphs—Mari’s chewed the very edges of the pages, and she finds three-chews-means-fire. At her side Mari’s fur is stiff but it’s not so bad right now, staring down some new foreboding threat, and…

And…

Luz squints. “Wait a second. I recognize you! You’re the one they’re putting on all the Emperor’s Coven propaganda instead of Lilith! The, uh…” she frowns. “Gold Guard? Something dumb like that?”

“Golden Guard,” he bites out. His palisman snarls. “You have a lot of nerve, trying to steal from the Emperor’s Coven after what you did.”

“Trying to—what? I didn’t steal anything!” Luz glares right back at the guy, wishing big, wanting something to tower over the Golden…Dog’s? form and strike terror, in a way a pug never, ever could. But even through the confused baffled terror down their bond Mari grabs that thought in her teeth and snaps it right in two, severs it apart, like Settled, and so Luz’s daemon growls right back at the Golden Dog like a songbird facing down a raptor. “We came here after the Selkidomus!”

“And you will be going after it again, don’t get me wrong,” the Golden Guard says. He straightens, holds out the birdcage. “But you won’t be doing it for the reward. You’ll be doing it to get your little rat back alive.”

He pulls the cloth off the birdcage, and,

“KING!” Luz and Mari yell, because that’s King in there, blinking, confused, going weh? with François halfway fallen from between his horns. “King!” Luz repeats, trying to try and make a grab for him.

“Luz? Mari! They’re funded by the Emperor’s Coven, I saw and then this guy captured me, I was gonna—”

The Golden Guard drops the cloth back over the birdcage, and King goes quiet, right as the Golden Dog lunges for Luz and like for Luz, like not for Mari but for Luz and those are sharp teeth and Luz stops and just barely manages to dodge, the palisman skidding across the sand and coming to a stop just a little bit away and huh what WHAT??

“What?” Mari says, aloud, for good measure, throwing herself into the dog-palisman and knocking her off-kilter. “Idiot, what are you doing? I’m right here!”

“Not my problem,” the Golden Guard says, and he doesn’t even sound a little bit freaked, not one bit, when his palisman was gonna bite Luz and he acted like that’s nothing??

The very first thing Mari ever asked Eda was under the cover of a pouring rain, tucked into the corner of Eda’s room, and there on that day where they first realized the Owl Beast was something other-than-palisman Mari whispered, her voice scratchy with disuse, back home, where we’re from, daemons don’t touch humans who are not their own. It’s overpowering, and it hurts, and it’s not done. Can you make sure people know that when it comes to me?

And Eda had said, don’t worry, kid, people don’t exactly run around poking random palismen if they aren’t palismen themselves. But for people you grow closer to—I don’t mind being there when you give them the heads-up. And thanks for telling me. The Owl Beast is just…weird.

So all of that is to say: LITERALLY WHAT??? In all the fights Luz has been in even with Belos nobody’s palisman has just tried to bite her because that’s bad! For both of them! Either they go after Mari or they go after the Owl Beast, when Eda’s around, ‘cause the Owl Beast is more aggressive anyways, and Eda’s already told them Beastie works differently, which Luz didn’t understand so much at the start but did once she learned curse, even more-so once she learned Owlbert. And besides, witches have magic, which can hit anybody!

Luz doesn’t want to hurt some random guy even if he is accusing her of stealing when that isn’t happening! Like yes she stole but that was before and she thinks this is about something new which isn’t! Real! But even with that she cannot comprehend why the Golden Dog might bite her, both from the whole being-a-human thing where that isn’t done and even here, it’s like Eda said: they’re strangers to each other! Witches and palismen still have to know each other before wrestling is on the table!

It’s such a mess of bad confusing that Luz isn’t able to react in time when the Golden Guard grabs his staff and charges her, and oh no they’re fighting now and Luz fumbles for fire but isn’t fast enough. The staff nearly catches her in her stomach, Mari racing for their glyphs, but Luz is pulling one out when Mari is leaping and sorta just hits Mari and knocks her to the ground and the Golden Dog pins her and Luz can’t do anything and Mari’s neck is stuck between dog-claws and Luz feels it like a catch in her throat and the Golden Guard is still pressing her and Mari is there and not here and Luz doesn’t want to die—

(—like the After where she stretched I need to live and something cracked inside of her—)

—and Luz is on her back trying to crawl to Mari when a shadow falls over them. The Golden Guard doesn’t spare it a glance, but Luz does, and that’s!

The Owl Beast lands heavy in the sand and shrieks, and in her shadow falling over Luz she can see her wings spread wide and Eda—EDA!—hopping off her back, and the Owl Beast goes for the dog-palisman and Eda goes for the Golden Guard, and Luz is able to get up in the distraction, and Mari twists her way out from between the Golden Dog’s claws, and they meet together somewhere in the middle, where Luz hugs her daemon tightly, crushed against her heart.

Eda doesn’t actually last super long and ends up in the sand next to Luz, the Owl Beast still screaming even though the Golden Dog has taken a pretty big bite out of her wing that’s been left trailing.

“Hi, Eda,” Luz says, meekly.

“Kid, I told you to go after the low-level ones.” Eda says.

“…we need the money,” Luz says, as Mari slides down to sit in the sand next to her. “Why are you here?”

“Stealing the money,” Eda says, “but then that golden punk scared the Owl Beast and she dropped it into the sea. Heard you so we came to help, but…”

The Owl Beast is finally defeated and comes retreating over to them, wings folding in, dripping dark blood. She mantles her one good wing over Luz, like some sort of protector, but Luz is pretty sure that’s not gonna last long, and plus the Golden Guard still has King so.

This is all your fault, Mari growls down the bond to her, this is just like before. You messed everything up, and got the people you love in trouble, and now I’m left having to save them and we won’t even get the stupid snails you wanted!

Oh, that’s rich, Luz snaps back, because I think there was something you could’ve done to get free. You could’ve beaten the Golden Dog. But you were too scared. But you’re just a coward, Mari, and you won’t admit that After—

Their bond goes frosty-cold and any thoughts of Mari’s Luz might pick up freeze with it. Dimly, she’s aware of the Golden Guard talking at them, his palisman sitting tall, her teeth still bared, like he’s some big bad beast and he knows they won’t ever make it past them, and Luz hates that he’s right, that Beastie is too hurt to fly away, that he has King, that she got them stuck here, again, again, that she’s wrong and she can’t even use it, because Mari’s pretending like it never happened.

But Luz knows how this goes. They’re going to have to kill the Selkidomus or else they won’t get King, and Luz knows, like she knew in the brief final moments of the Before, that she can’t leave these people behind. So she stands, and Mari glares at her, and Luz rests a hand on the Owl Beast’s beak, and says, softly, “make sure the Golden Guard doesn’t run off with King, okay?”

She’s not really sure how much the Owl Beast understands of her, but she answers all the same, a sort of rumbling chirp Luz hopes is agreement, ruffling out her feathers. It’ll have to be enough, so Luz heads over to the entrance of the cave, Mari trailing after her.

“Human, are you even listening to me?!” the Golden Guard demands. His palisman is back at his side, watching them with narrowed eyes.

“Yeah,” Luz says. Mari’s anger down their bond, but Luz can’t find it in her to care. Not in the face of King’s safety. “You want us to kill the Selkidomus. In exchange for King. So I’m doing that.”

“Kill the—why do you even want to kill it?” Eda’s looking between Luz and the Golden Guard, so Luz stops, gives her a minute. “The Selkidomus is peaceful.”

“It’s attacking ships,” says the Golden Guard.

“Because I bet you Emperor freaks are antagonizing it,” Eda snaps, and then, to Luz, “Luz, Mari, are you going in there alone?”

“Yeah,” Luz says. She’s got…some glyphs left. Probably enough. Most of the plant ones are gone. “I got us all into this situation. So. I’m gonna fix it. This time.”

The Golden Guard says something about a sword, and his palisman brings it to her. Luz takes it. Sharp. Kinda curved a bit. She has no idea how to use a sword.

Eda’s talking, and the thing is when Luz ignores Eda—like on purpose ignores Eda, not the ignoring that isn’t really ignoring but is Luz’s brain working at like seven thousand miles an hour and three days ahead and even Mari isn’t enough to make the words stick—it makes something curdle harsh and sharp in her and it’s like an echo of how she felt in the Before, but the very, very second-second before, when she didn’t even know this was gonna be the point where she always divided her life into two. When Luz hadn’t yet Done The Thing and they didn’t have nightmares all the time, and Luz hadn’t really failed anyone yet, ‘cause all she wanted was magic so vibrant at her fingertips.

Mari probably never agreed to that plan, but Luz only knew that in the After. And it wasn’t then.

But ignoring Eda is like that. Is like I failed and who she failed and all echoes of that worst day of her life where so many people were failed by her. But Luz just lets the feeling sit there. ‘Cause no matter what she’s doing this, because it’s her idea, because even if it’s the wrong thing, well, she’s a wrong-thing, now, all biting at her sides, even if Mari is mad and angry at her side, and not leaving even though she could. But Mari’s like that a lot. Luz is pretty used to it. It’s the normal-state of the After.

Mari says, “if you just listened to me, none of this would’ve ever happened.”

“Right,” Luz says. And steps into the cave.

It’s dark.

Like on the one hand no duh it’s dark, this is a cave, but still. It slopes real steep downwards, enough-so that Luz crouches low to keep from just falling right over, using one hand to tap a light glyph out into existence as a glowing orb and keep it following her and Mari. It settles out somewhere between them, like a firefly perched on Mari’s nose.

The sword makes her balance all weird. Also, why did the Golden Guard just have a sword? Is that a thing you get when you’re really high up in the Emperor’s Coven? Luz pokes it into the rock below her, and that doesn’t really do anything, but it looked sharp outside. Mari nips at her ankle before she can poke it with a finger.

“Do you even have a plan?” Mari’s hackles are up. Luz ignores her. “Also, I’m pretty sure Eda’s followed us in.”

“Okay,” Luz says. She’s staring at Mari as her daemon attempts to scramble her way up and over rocks Luz can just step over. She’s not really sure why Mari is bothering. Why Mari follows her despite the After. Why Mari thinks pugs were ever built for cave-diving.

Eventually she drags her gaze away from her daemon and back to the path before her. Well, path. Mostly slightly easier rocks to get over. Even with her light it’s not really enough to illuminate the entire cave, but it does keep going down, and this one is a sheer drop—there’s no way she’s just going to slide down there.

It would be so much easier if Mari had wings—

“Hey, kid,” Eda calls, and Luz stumbles, nearly tripping over Mari as her pug-daemon twists to face Eda, her claws scraping against rock. Luz nearly knocks her light-glyph right into her mentor’s face. Eda stops and Luz, sheepishly, tugs the light closer to her, cupped in her palms.

“Sorry,” she says, looking down. Mari’s sat up on a rock smoothed flat with time, and sand itches against them both. “I wanted to do this alone.”

Somewhere behind Eda, the Owl Beast squawks, cross, and comes flailing into view, landing hard in sand and loose rock with her injured wing giving out at her side. In the dim light her eyes reflect back at Luz, shiny-sharp.

“And I told you to watch King,” Luz tells Beastie, crossing her arms.

Beastie lifts up her head and huffs. Eda says, “she’s an owl, kid, she doesn’t understand us. Plus there’s no way I wasn’t going after you, and Beastie’s my unfortunate tag-along.” The jab doesn’t make Luz laugh, though Eda says it as if it’s funny. Instead Luz turns away, to stare back out across the sheer darkness before them, the cave sinking deeper into the ground.

Mari thinks, this is a bad idea.

No, says Luz, we just need to fly to get down.

How deep can it really be? Probably not so-deep. Deep enough she can probably make sure she just lands on some plants. Deep enough that a pug wouldn’t want to go down there.

Probably pugs aren’t supposed to be in caves, either.

Luz’s nails dig into her palms. Mari growls low.

“Kid,” Eda says, sighing, and even the Owl Beast croons, a low rumble that echoes in the cramped space, “what’s gotten into you?

“Nothing,” Luz says, which is a lie and she knows it. Because she knows Exactly-Too-Much about what happened, and if she thinks about it she’s not sure she’ll ever be able to look at Mari again and since they can only go three feet from each other that’s not really a life she can live. Down their bond Mari tenses, but she doesn’t want Eda to know about the After, does she? So she can’t say anything.

And you do? Mari hisses.

Luz says nothing at all. Inches a tad closer to the inky darkness, her little light bobbing after her, a speck of a star in an empty sky. Pretty, if she looks at it for long enough.

Eda says, “Luz, did you hear what I was telling that Golden Guard guy? The Selkidomus is usually peaceful. I don’t know what the Emperor wants with hunting it, but I’ll bet it’s not anything good.”

“Okay,” Luz says. “But they have King. And I got him stuck there. So.”

She jumps off the side of the cliff, and okay so wow that’s deep but she’s got her glyphs and she isn’t really scared. Or she is scared but being scared doesn’t matter ‘cause it’s not getting King back so she pushes it to the side, she and Mari both, and it belongs to neither of them now so it isn’t real anymore. She manages to get plants underneath her when she lands, using three vines to slow her fall and another handful of plant glyphs to make a softer pile to land in, and that’s all of those she had prepared, but, you know. She’ll make it.

Mari thuds hard next to her, and Luz feels it in her own chest, the sudden loss of air. Somewhere Beastie cries out and she thinks she can even hear Eda cursing, but Luz pushes herself up, regaining her own lost breath and the echoes from Mari, teeters more than bends to pick up her daemon and hold her close to her chest.

“There was another way down,” Luz says, and her voice hangs there in this cavernous space they’ve leapt into.

“No,” says Mari, and she braces a forepaw against Luz’s arms, her nails splayed, “there wasn’t. What have you dragged us into now?”

This part of the cave, as Luz walks through it slow with a light in her hand, is way wider than it was up at the top, like she’s underneath the ground she was walking on before and it’s all opened out into mostly a big room, though there’s some smaller offshoot caves. She thinks Eda is following her down, so Luz picks up speed despite the aching in her leg. Probably just leftover from Mari, anyways. She ignores it.

And then she sees the Selkidomus.

It’s moving slower on land than it did in water, and it’s nosing around near one of the offshoot caves, near what looks like a massive pile of seaweed and driftwood and torn-up bits of ship’s flags and the like. Luz tenses, rolls behind a rock before it can notice her, keeping her light low.

Mari drops out of her arms, sticking to the long shadows of the rock, pale fur pressed up against the gray. Is your plan for us to die here, then?

You’d like that, Luz responds, not turning to face her daemon, wouldn’t you.

I don’t want—

But Luz is already moving. Because she has a plan, see, a plan of stalking and surprising and sure, she doubts it’ll work, and sure, this is the After all-over again, left to make a choice, and Luz is making the wrong one, probably. But she always makes the wrong choice. Mari’s a coward for not admitting that.

You make the choice, Mari growls, low, a background rumbling of Luz’s bond, and when Luz hits three feet the burning ache of a knife in her chest doesn’t come, so she assumes Mari is following. In her pocket she digs out enough for a distraction—all that’s left of her light, and she brushes against fire, considers, leaves it be.

And it works! The lights all go off in a brilliant flash and the Selkidomus roars, and—okay, yup! It sure did see Luz! She dodges its lunge for her and throws off a few blasts of fire, but mostly those miss and hit rock. Usually Mari’s the one who keeps an eye on their target for aiming, and she’s not doing that, now, but whatever, because Luz is here, and doing it, and wrong but oh, she won’t mess up this time, how do you like THAT, Mari? How does this stand up to you, you liar?

Not that the Selkidomus cares about that. She got its attention! She kinda just didn’t really think past what then. So Luz runs the last direction she remembers Mari going and thankfully she’s not dead so she’s doing good on that front. Ice to send the Selkidomus slipping and off in the wrong direction! Light Mari scratched out so its attention is split! More fire and this time Luz doesn’t miss, panting, half-near collapsing next to Mari, who pricks her ears and says, “someone is coming. Eda?”

Luz straightens, nods. If there’s anything she agrees with her daemon on it’s we’ve ruined Eda’s life enough, so that means this ends here.

Light! And the Selkidomus roars and comes for them. Ice! Which sends it crashing into the cave wall. Fire! But its scales absorb the most of it and it doesn’t seem hurt, which Mari says makes sense if it lives in the Boiling Sea, and Luz holds out the sword the Golden Guard gave her, and responds, do you know how to use this?

Mari shakes her head. Luz says, me neither! and tries her best.

Her hands are shaking. That’s weird! Because she and Mari both shoved all their fear away and Luz sure isn’t the one feeling that. Probably Mari being terrible. The Selkidomus is thrashing and it turns to them and it’s got this look in its eyes that’s.

That’s sort of like anger, but not like wild-animal anger. Like Owl Beast anger, which Luz has seen A Lot, and never-ever has it been directed to her. Usually it was directed towards whoever hurt her. Like, you stay back, I’ve got this.

She’s not so sure how much the Owl Beast understands. Is she okay? She got real banged up by the Golden Guard and his palisman. Is King okay? Luz brought him with her and so that means you keep him safe, and she didn’t even do that.

The Selkidomus rears up to its full height. Luz holds out her sword. Probably that’s what you do? It’s sharp. So.

She’s not so sure where Mari is. Probably she should’ve noticed that before.

The Selkidomus drops down, and four things happen at once.

One, Luz stabs it! Not super deep, but the sword does stick into its scales, and is pretty much immediately yanked out of her hands because two, it slams its neck against her and sends her flying halfway across the cave, where she lands hard, tangled up with a groaning Mari. But all that pales under, three, the Owl Beast, who crash-lands into the room, shrieking, at the Selkidomus or Eda Luz can’t tell, because four, Eda, who must’ve ridden the Owl Beast down the cliff, and also—maybe was in the fight too? Luz maybe remembers flashes of her a bit. Ooh, that’s probably why it took this long for her to get hit!

Wait. Wait, no, that’s a bad thing, ‘cause she’s doing this for Eda, not for Eda to come almost die saving her again, and Eda’s staring down the raging Selkidomus with a sword in its side and no backup but an Owl Beast with a torn wing and oh. Oh no.

“Eda!” Luz yells, trying to scramble up, but literally every single part of her aches and one of her legs buckles underneath her, because apparently they do that when you keep trying to stand on them after jumping off cliffs. Mari pants in front of Luz, dizzy on her side, her fur all smudged with rock-dust and ash.

Behind them both, something breathes. Mari’s eyes, peering right over Luz’s shoulder, blow wide. Luz follows her gaze to…

To…

To a baby. Like, a little round Selkidomus baby, that’s looking at her with big wide eyes, and baby-soft scales, and a little tiny bit of green plant-something growing out top its head.

Luz blinks. The baby blinks back at her.

Luz says, “oh.”

Somewhere off in the distance, but is probably actually really close, Eda calls, “Luz, get out of the nest. Slowly. Show the Selkidomus you’re not a threat anymore.”

“Mmm-hmm.” Luz picks up Mari and does her best to get out of the nest—so that’s what the massive pile of stuff was—without touching the baby. Thankfully the baby doesn’t follow her, and double thankfully the Selkidomus doesn’t bite her in two right then, but instead just growls until she’s out, and far away from the nest, and then it curls around the nest and keeps an eye on her.

Luz stumbles against Eda and just sort of lets herself be held up. Her leg’s burning still, and Mari’s somehow still in her arms. In front of them the Owl Beast has mantled out her wings, the injured one best-she-can, and doesn’t look away from the Selkidomus, who has retreated to its baby and watches the Owl Beast right back.

“I’m sorry,” Luz manages. She says it while Eda is helping her over to a far wall of the cave, and the second she’s there Luz slumps down against it sitting, her hurt leg sticking out. “I’m sorry,” she repeats, and she doesn’t even know what she’s apologizing for. Probably everything. So much every she can’t grab for one thing. This? Today?

She continues, “I wanted to help. I know money’s tight, and I know you’re—you’re giving stuff up because we can’t eat stuff, and you shouldn’t have to do that! And so… I thought okay, I’ll go after the biggest bounty. And then we’ll be okay. But all that did is get King caught and you here too and, and—” Luz cuts herself off when Eda kneels down in front of her, and it’s just, it’s been a day, okay? And Mari’s fur is scratchy and she wants it gone but she doesn’t know how to move, and at least half of that is a Mari-thought because this is After, but also she’s not so sure which of them thinks, Eda can’t know. Not Eda. Please not Eda.

Luz rubs at her eyes. She says, staring down at the ground because she can’t look at Eda, “I just make everything worse and this is just doing that all over again.” She thinks Eda is going to talk, but no no no she doesn’t get it so Luz adds, “I’m the reason we’re in this situation to start with! That you lost your magic and your sister lost her magic and it’s my fault and—”

“Luz,” Eda says, and Luz swallows her words. Mari hasn’t torn her gaze from Eda yet. “All that’s on Belos. And Lilith, some, for cursing me in the first place. But not you and Mari.”

“But yes me!” Luz protests. “You were…it’s ‘cause…”

“We broke into the castle to try and get that hat to help you,” Mari says. Her voice is smaller than Luz has maybe ever heard it before. “And because of that, Lilith caught us, and you had to give yourself up to save us.”

“Belos nearly killed you,” Luz whimpers, “he nearly killed you, and—and—”

And this is all too close to After and Luz can’t talk about that. Instead she says, “and it was for nothing. It wasn’t even like it was bad but something good came. It was like it was bad, and then it stopped, and it was still bad.”

“Still bad?” Eda asks. She comes to sit next to Luz. Mari shrinks back in Luz’s lap. Luz leans her head against Eda. The Owl Beast roosts in front of them, keeping a careful eye on the Selkidomus. “Luz-Mari, because of you, I’m actually talking to my sister again.”

“Yeah. But you found out she’s the one who cursed you,” Mari says. “And she still did all that terrible stuff. So. Bad.”

“Not bad, just…complicated,” Eda says, after a minute. “Knowing the stuff she did is the sort of foundation we’d need to actually fix things between us, and getting to a place where we can do that is because of you, and you do not know how glad I am for it.” Luz sniffs. Eda says, “but I know that’s not the thing you’re actually stuck on. Out with it.”

Mari’s saying don’t tell her. And Luz knows! Because wrong as she is she doesn’t want Eda to know either! Because After is bad and terrible and if Eda knows she’s not gonna do this again! She’s gonna kick them out because Luz Noceda and her daemon Maritza are just lying, and awful and horrible and only make things worse and somehow Eda hasn’t thrown them out yet and Luz doesn’t—

Mari digs her claws sharp into Luz’s skin. Don’t you dare.

But it’s all sort of building up in Luz. Like a really big storm that keeps spinning and getting bigger and bigger and bigger and has people evacuating. Except she literally can’t physically say the After and so instead she says, “you’re too nice to me even though I almost got you killed and you were only in that situation ‘cause of me and I didn’t even do the thing I wanted to do!”

“Stealing the hat wasn’t going to heal my curse,” Eda says, and it’s not that either, and—ugh!

“No but even after,” Luz says, and she pushes herself up, and her leg is aching and Eda’s like Luz, your leg, but it can take the pain and Luz is saying this, and Mari’s like what but she is, she is, she doesn’t know why but everything is awful and it’s her fault and she’s already the worst and Mari’s been saying that since the start so why are you trying to stop this. “Even when Lilith and Burkit took half your curse I still didn’t do anything! You still lost your magic and you still have the curse and you still don’t have Owlbert!”

Her shout echoes in the cave. Eda’s standing with her, too. Luz is panting. She grips Mari tight against her chest and for once her daemon doesn’t try to flinch away.

“We wanted to get you your palisman back,” Luz says. Her voice is hoarse. “That’s all. And I didn’t. And so I did all of that and hurt so many people and for what.”

It’s very, very quiet for a moment. Luz sort of wants to curl up in a ball and stay like that for the rest of her life. And then Eda says, her voice soft, “Luz, Mari, I need you to listen to me, okay?”

Luz nods. It’s a really jerky motion. She’s not sure what Mari does. But down their bond she’s stiff. Like giving-up. Like Luz you won.

“One,” Eda says, and as she speaks Luz is staring at the floor of the cave, and the Selkidomus with its baby trying to climb up its scales, and her faint orb of light that’s somehow stuck around this far, and basically everywhere but Eda because she can’t, not now, “I don’t blame you for anything that happened. Not a single part of it! And I know you aren’t able to accept that, but at the very least, know that I’m saying it, and that it’s true. You didn’t force me to do anything. I made the choice to save you, and I’d make it every single time, even knowing what happens.”

Luz’s breath catches. Eda’s too—why is she doing this? Why? Why after everything? Like Luz deserves it. Like Luz and Mari didn’t do The Worst Thing and are living in After, and Eda doesn’t even know and she wouldn’t be saying this if she knew. She wouldn’t. Couldn’t. Like Luz is Good and deserves this sort of kindness. Like Luz didn’t—like Mari didn’t—

Mari thinks, I made the choice. And it’s like walls-up. All around her and leaving Luz out. And against her fur Luz’s fingers twitch, like trying-to-grab. Like something. But she doesn’t know how to get past those walls. She doesn’t know how to say, I did too.

“Two,” Eda continues, “Owlbert is…oh boy. Not your fault, for one, that’s on Lily and believe me, we have had some conversations while you were asleep. About a lot of things. That’s one of them. Honestly more conversations about how she very nearly killed you, if I’m being honest. But I know you’re stuck on Owlbert, and the thing is—kid, you did help.”

“But he’s not here,” Luz says.

“No. He’s not. He hasn’t been here for a long time. But—you know what splitting the curse did do?”

“What?” Luz’s voice cracks. She chances a look up at Eda and nope bad idea because it means Luz can’t stop the tears in her eyes from falling but she does see that Eda is letting her choose if she comes closer and Luz knows she doesn’t deserve it but Mari isn’t stopping her so she just. Presses herself against Eda’s side. Tries to pretend like she’s totally fine and normal and doing great. Eda for sure doesn’t buy it.

“It brought me back,” Eda says. “When I’m gone like that—well, it’s not fun, and I’m a lot…it’s a lot harder for me to keep a grasp on who I am, when I’m not actually around in the world. In the early stages of the curse, I lost a lot of time, but the elixirs helped with that. The Owl Beast followed me around, sure, but you know, I’m still alive. So something of Owlbert had to be too. Elixirs helped until they didn’t, and then, well, I started to go away a lot more: you were around for a lot of that. You know how it went.

“But then Lily split the curse with me. And you know what started helping again?”

Luz whispers, “the elixirs?” and tries to keep herself from getting too excited.

“Yup.” Eda ruffles her hair. “You’re helping, kid. It’s not perfect, but I’ve had this curse for longer than you’ve been alive, and I can tell you this is the best it’s been. So don’t go blaming yourself for all of this, okay? I don’t, and you’re not allowed to. It’d make Owlbert sad.”

“It will?” Luz looks up at Eda. “You really hear him saying that?”

Eda’s quiet for a moment. But then she says, “no. Not how you want me to. But, hell, me and him had each other for a good 16 years. I know he’d adore you.”

Luz giggles wetly, rubbing at her eyes. “Thanks, Eda. And, um, Owlbert.”

She’s not really sure how much better it makes her feel. It’s…

She can’t imagine it. If Mari was just stuck in her head and she couldn’t ever see her again. Even with the walls and the fighting she’s Mari. And Luz doesn’t really know how Eda does it.

And it’s still her fault. A lot. And there’s still the After. And.

“I still have to kill the Selkidomus,” Luz realizes, and she looks over where its playing with its baby, and, “but I don’t want to anymore! I never did!”

“This entire adventure says otherwise,” Mari says, rolling her eyes, though there’s a lightness to her tone Luz swallows and grabs onto, setting her daemon down. “Aren’t you the one who wants the money?”

“Not if I have to kill someone!”

“Luz, Mari, c’mon,” Eda says, “I know you can figure this one out. I’m the Owl Lady! You’re my apprentice! You really think we can’t piece together some sort of way to fool the Golden Guard up there?”

So Mari’s still mad. Luz still thinks maybe Eda is lying. Or maybe Eda won’t be saying this when she finds out the truth. Or maybe even if Eda’s right and Owlbert is sort of alive somewhere it’s not like that’s fair and Luz still failed and she thinks vague feelings aren’t worth Eda nearly dying to save her. Or maybe—

You think too much, Mari says, which is a lie, ‘cause Mari’s thinking this stuff too. But Mari points out not nightmare time, and Luz says okay. Because this won’t make the nightmares go away.

But maybe right now she can do this. So she grins up at Eda, and says, “I think we have a plan.”

Their plan works! Luz was like, pretty sure it would, especially after Eda thought it was a good idea and even helped them by using! Glyphs! Which was really exciting, ‘cause Luz has been doing her best to at least show Eda them but mostly Eda said no time now and Mari thinks it maybe has something to do with losing her magic, and how glyphs aren’t really the same, but Luz thinks no, they’re magic too! And so Luz and Mari scribble up more plant glyphs on the paper they have left and some smaller bits of wood the Owl Beast somehow convinces the Selkidomus to let them take without trying to eat them, and the little baby gets in the way a bit but that’s okay. It only eats one of their plant glyphs.

And all of that is to say that Luz makes a fake Selkidomus out of plants, and Eda uses light to make its shadow cast real big when they go back up up up closer to the mouth of the cave, so the Golden Guard can see Luz and Mari’s epic shadow fight with the Selkidomus, but can’t see that the Selkidomus is plants and the sword is a branch with some seaweed around it ‘cause turns out that broke when the Selkidomus slammed its side into a wall to get it off of its scales.

And it works! Luz comes out all panting and sees the Golden Guard boredly watching King, still stuck in the birdcage, lifting and dropping the sheet like it’s some fun game. His palisman the Golden Dog—that’s a dumb name, thinks Mari, and Luz responds, yeah sure but we don’t like this guy so it fits—has her eyes half-closed in the sand next to the Golden Guard, but she jerks to standing as they approach.

“That took you long enough,” the Golden Guard comments. “I was starting to think it killed you.”

“We’re unkillable,” Luz says, and it’s more a joke than anything ‘cause there’s a lot of times that Luz has felt plenty killable. But the Golden Guard doesn’t need to know that! “Give us King back.”

“Yeah, yeah, here’s your dumb rat.” He throws the birdcage their direction, and Luz fumbles to catch it, hugging it to her chest. She’d feel a lot better if Eda was out here with her but she has to work the light to keep the shadow up until the Golden Guard leaves and also knock him out if he decides to get the Selkidomus now. But Beastie does come creeping out of the cave and that makes her feel a bit less alone. “The Emperor won’t kill you this time, blah blah.”

He drops his staff and it hovers there, while he sits atop it and clicks his tongue. With him sitting on the hovering staff his palisman is nearly his height, and she rears up to rest her forepaws on the staff.

For the next two minutes Luz watches as the Golden Dog tries and fails to balance herself on the staff. A few times she yells out advice, from her own can you change into something else (answered by the Golden Guard with an, I’m in a COVEN, human, I’m SETTLED, are you stupid?) to Mari’s what if you lie flat and your palisman sits on your back?

(They try that one. It doesn’t work. Luz winces when they both fall to the ground.)

Mari whispers to her, “isn’t this guy supposed to be like, super high-ranking?”

Luz responds, “I mean, unless they’re the one who designed the staff, it’s kind of not their fault.”

Finally, finally, they manage it, and the Golden Guard calls, “if you tell anyone about this, human, I’m personally going to kill you, got it?” Luz nods. That’s fair. “Okay, bye!” He waves, and his staff flickers red, and then jerks red, like static glitching, as he vanishes somewhere up into the air.

“He can teleport!?” Luz yells. “I want to teleport! That’s not fair!”

Mari tilts her head sideways, indicating King’s birdcage, and Luz flails to free him. “Oh! King! Sorry.”

“Weh!” King cries, falling out of the cage and onto his face in the sand. “The world kept vanishing! It was so dead in there and I didn’t like it!” He scrambles up to his paws, grabbing François where he fell and hugging him close. When he peeks up at them he brightens. “Oh! Luz, Mari, I was trying to steal crackers and I found out that the—”

“Mission was funded by the Emperor’s Coven? Yeah. We figured that out.” Luz pats his head. “You’re okay now?”

“Uh…I think,” King says, and it’s about then that the Owl Beast comes bounding over, sniffing at King with a low-toned warbling cry. King tries shoving her away but to no avail. “No! Avenge me!” and the Owl Beast picks him up by the scruff of his neck and sits back looking very proud of herself.

“You’re in this one alone,” Luz tells King, because she’s not about to have a repeat of the one time she tried to help King that just led to the Owl Beast grabbing Luz instead, and she was stuck in Eda’s room with the Owl Beast sitting on her for like hours and not even Eda could get her to move.

Mari laughs, and calls, “Eda! The Golden Guard went away!”

“Great,” Eda yells back from the cave, and the shadow of the fake-Selkidomus vanishes as she exits, the real Selkidomus poking its head out after her. “Ugh, Beastie, what have I told you about grabbing the kids like they’re owlets! Drop him.”

The Owl Beast does not drop him. King crosses his arms, François tucked between them.

“Yeesh. Sorry, King, you’re on your own for a bit,” Eda tells him, turning back to the Selkidomus. “You should hurry and get you and your baby out of here. Pretty sure the Emperor’s Coven will kill you for real if they find you here when they’re looking for a body.”

The Owl Beast croons something, dropping King between her talons as she trills at the Selkidomus. The Selkidomus watches her for a long moment, its baby tumbling out to play around its flippers, before it warbles a sound of its own back, like the creaking of ice.

“Are they…talking?” Luz asks, as the Owl Beast hroughs back, resting her head atop King’s. “Did they understand what you said?”

Eda wobbles her hand. “Gonna be real, kid, I have no idea. Maybe? Probably more tone and body language from me, but Titan knows what Beastie’s trying to do. I like to think I’m getting something across, though. I deal with the Owl Beast on a daily basis so I’m pretty good at this.”

“Right,” Luz says, looking down. Because she still didn’t manage to fix that one.

“Luz…” says Eda, but she doesn’t say anything more, or, if she does, Luz doesn’t catch any of it. She wants something, even if it makes Mari tense next to her. It drags them closer to nightmare-territory. One of those things she doesn’t know how to talk about.

She looks at the Selkidomus instead, and it…vomits…in front of them. Okay? The vomit’s kind of gold-ish and sparkly and why is Eda touching it that’s GROSS Eda!

“It’s Selkigris!” Eda says, like it’s the best thing in the world, “this stuff can sell for a fortune! You know what this means, kid?”

“…it worked?” Luz asks, her voice hushed. “I actually…or, we actually found a way to get a lot of snails?”

“You sure did!” Eda says, dragging Luz in to rub Selkigris on her cheeks, which, gross! But a fun sort of gross, that has Luz laughing and trying to shove Eda off of her, and King running and jumping in because he must’ve broken free from the Owl Beast himself, and then Beastie circling the pile before she roosts in a corner of it, hollowing out a small little nest.

It’s—

The Selkidomus and its baby have vanished back into the ocean, hopefully where they won’t be found. Luz kind of wishes she could do that, too, but Mari’s a weight at her side and grounding her here, keeping her stuck in this shape.

She knows this won’t last forever. It already isn’t. Even as Eda and King are excited she can’t be, not with nightmare-things and I want you to admit it’s real and everything she can’t make go away forever. Just for a little bit.

Mari says, isn’t it easier not to think about it?

No, is all Luz can say. Maybe it’s true for Mari, but it’s not true for Luz. The thoughts always come back. The night always comes. Mari’s nails always poke into her skin. There’s no getting rid of it.

She just has this pit in her chest and it’s been there since the After. Or maybe the After just made it bigger, and it’s been with her since she was born, since she opened her eyes and everybody knew something was off with her. But all she knows is there is a moment that will always split her life in two, and she has to live with it. Through all the nightmares, though hoping hoping nobody hears and comes to check on her, and it’s worked so far but every night she wakes and is terrified it’ll be the time. Where someone comes in and sees what she did. How she messed up. How she’s never done anything but.

Mari shakes her head and pins back her ears like it was all a bad-dream and the nightmares never-ever tell the truth. Mari’s limbs stretch underneath fur and skin and sometimes Luz watches her cross-eyed, because then she’s not so much a pug anymore. Then Mari is some blob that hasn’t yet solidified into its one true shape. Then it’s like they’re in that terrible inbetween, forever and ever and ever.

Mari thinks things like we’re a terrible daughter and Luz agrees, but when she thinks it it’s not about the same thing. Same-but-to-the-left. It’s all part of the moment that became the After.

Next to her Mari wishes not now.

And Luz gets it. It’s not night yet. They have time to not think about it.

They have time. She just hopes it can last.

Chapter Text

Luz’s nightmares always start with a memory.

(They Settled two days before they found the Demon Realm and the Boiling Isles within, before their life changed so drastically, but Luz always thought we’ll come out the same on the other side, because that’s what Mari said, and Mari knew better. She never wanted to disappoint her daemon. She never wanted to disappoint her mother.

She always has, she thinks, despite that.)

In the nightmare, Luz is watching her memories through her own eyes, but she can’t do anything to change things, just say words that have been ingrained into the very fabric of her soul. Mari is there, as they dream together, but they cannot reach each other: there is some gap, and neither of them know how to bridge it.

She knows what this is and what it’s leading to, but there’s nothing she can do to stop it.

She and Mari had just come back after being suspended from school—again—and Luz had been pacing around their room, going back, forth, back, forth, like a tiger around the concrete enclosure of their cage, never knowing how to do anything else. There was a growl building up in her chest she didn’t know how to express, never knew how to express. Mari was watching her from their bed.

On that day Mari was none of their favorite comfort forms. Luz saw them all in her head: the Barreras fanged snake, soft and tan-scaled and how she liked the press of scales against her neck; the funnel-eared bat, with wing-claws that hooked into Luz’s shirt; a jerboa, poking her head out of Luz’s shirt pocket. Instead Mari was a dark-furred golden retriever, and her tail wasn’t wagging, and Luz wanted to growl but her daemon wasn’t growling with her. Her daemon sat and watched and didn’t move as Luz’s chest caved in on itself.

“Mom can’t do this,” is what Luz had said.

Mari watched. She was on the bottom bunk, and Luz could feel the way their range ached, as she kept pacing. As a kid they usually wavered anywhere between seven or ten feet, depending on the day, but on that particular day it was closer to five, and Luz felt the knife hanging over her heart.

(A sign, probably. Not one that Luz really noticed at the time. She tended to ignore her range beyond when something deep in her ached for her to return to Mari.)

“She can,” Mari had said. This was Reality Check camp, which their principal had recommended and Mom had gone along with, and—this isn’t part of the memory, but it is part of the dream—the shudder of distaste Luz feels, still, thinking about that camp, isn’t something she can shake off.

(Mari’s called them a bad daughter since the After. Luz sometimes wonders if it all started here. When Luz’s chest ached, and she didn’t slow down.)

“Well, she shouldn’t.” Luz bared her teeth as if she were the snake and Mari were the human, flat-toothed, and the thought made something burn down their bond, like it did the very first time Luz read The Good Witch Azura, hidden underneath her covers with the only light the faint light of Mari’s firefly form, and traced her hands over the very first words, there once was a daemon named Azura. “We’re fine just as we are and she doesn’t have any right to go trying to change us!” She curled her lips in a snarl. “It’s not our fault some kids think daemons can’t be snakes. That’s their problem! It’s not like we bite people!”

“I think Mom’s just tired,” Mari had said, and she said it with that matter-of-fact tone of hers, the one that made Luz’s blood boil in her veins, like if she dug at it hard enough she’d uncover something rotten in the core of her, flake herself apart into Dust—or Rusakov particles, as she called them, back then—the sort of self-harm teachers always stressed parents to be on the lookout for. It was the tone that made Luz’s brain spin off into a hundred thousand different things, like spite, like hatred, like I don’t know how to be anything else, how her Mom never knew what to do with her, and she knew it then even if Mari liked to pretend she didn’t. Luz itched all-over to run, to roll laughing into things they didn’t know, and figure them out that way, and as they grew Mari learned to stop indulging her.

(Luz thinks, watching this all—do I regret it?)

“So?” Luz had snapped. Mari didn’t move. She was perfect, her fur, not a hair out of place, her eyes brown and intelligent, the sort of forms their classmates always got praised for. Luz continued her pacing and her heart ached. “It’s our life. Not hers. I say we don’t go.”

“Mom wants us to.”

Luz spun on her heel and wrenched herself over to her door, pushing right up at the edge of their range, and wanted, like an anchor inside of her, for Mari to follow: to be a bat and fly quick and swift to close the distance, a snake, twisting her way across their carpet, anything, anything, but the golden retriever with her stupid perfect fur and her dark russet paws and dog hung around Luz’s neck like a collar. Her chest heaved. Her heart spasmed. Her vision went blurry and for a moment Luz was sure she’d throw up, pass out, something, anything, anything—

Mari had said, standing from their bed and leaping down, her form shrinking, russet fur fading into pale, her muzzle pressing in and darkening, as she padded up to lean against Luz’s legs, as Luz sunk down and grabbed her daemon and sobbed, “we love her. We have to.”

(Mari does. Luz knows that because it’s not a thing Mari tries to hide from her—through the nightmares and the After, Mari rages and burns and wishes that events played out in any other way than the one they did. That there was something she could do, something Maritza, daemon of Luz Noceda, could do, that would fix everything. That Mari could do it all herself, and stop this from happening. That she could make them anything but the daughter who left their mother behind.)

“I don’t want to go,” Luz had managed. She’d wrapped herself around Mari and sobbed into her fawn-flecked fur, her hands digging into the folds of Mari’s skin. “She just wants to change us. She just thinks we’re not good like we are.”

Mari said, “maybe.” And there between them her words hung, and she touched her wet nose to Luz’s cheek.

(I don’t want to live this, Luz screams, I hate what Mari did, I hate it, I hate that she’s right, I hate that she won’t just admit we weren’t ever anything good, I wish I didn’t hate it because if I do—)

“Mom’s trying really hard,” Mari said, nuzzling Luz, “and we keep messing things up for her. Making her life a whole lot harder. This is just one summer camp, and then we’ll be better. We’ll stop breaking things she has to pay for.”

Luz had said, her voice cracking, “are you sure?”

Mari wasn’t. Luz knew that. But despite it all Luz heaved in a breath, and when she exhaled, she looked at her daemon, really looked, at her dark muzzle, her fawn body, her little ears, her dark, intelligent eyes, and knew what this meant. Knew that they were a pug, knew Settled, knew Mari could no longer change her form, and she and Luz would be in this shape for the rest of their lives.

They told their mom, who congratulated them and made them a cake, even when Luz protested but you work tomorrow, and she’d just laughed and said this was more important. She was crying. Luz was crying, too. She snuck her leftover cake to Mari when Mom wasn’t looking.

That night they’d curled into their mom’s side and read all they could about pugs, Mari sat in Luz’s lap, Mami’s daemon with his head resting atop the couch, watching over the back.

(That was when Luz agreed to go to camp. Not aloud. Never aloud. In the memory Luz can’t actually hear it. But the way their bond has pulsed heavy with resignation is scorched into the very core of her, and through flashes of form they’d never take again, Luz had said, okay. We’ll do it.)

And then of course came the Demon Realm, came following a really, really weird-looking owl into the door, came magic and witches and palismen and can I be your witch apprentice?!

Came Mari and Luz looking at each other, and Mari saying it’s just for the summer. And Luz saying, obviously.

(I want out of this memory, Luz pleads, because she still hates it, and—)

 She opens her eyes and she’s standing dwarfed by Belos. Mari’s nowhere to be seen, so it’s just Luz, staring, shaking, terrified. Belos’s palisman is three times the size of Luz, a griffin but sleeker and stronger than any of the ones Luz has seen, mostly feline-shaped with large, pale-tawny paws and metal-encrusted wings that stretch wide and brush the ceiling.

(Luz thinks probably Belos isn’t actually this big, but it’s very, very dim.)

(Just because she has the same nightmare every night doesn’t mean she can make them any smaller.)

Belos booms, choose. And Luz is standing in a doorway. One foot on either side.

On one side is Eda, just-as-she-was when Belos captured her Before, no Eda-and-Owl-Beast but both of them rolled into one, the Owl Beast with Eda’s eyes, the lower half of her body already stone that’s creeping up to finish off the job, and Luz knows, knows, knows if she does nothing then Eda will be petrified, dead and trapped forever, and it will all be Luz’s fault.

On the other side is her mother. Human and deer-daemon. Camila and Sabas. The mother Luz abandoned for a magical world that feels more like home than the Human Realm ever, ever did. For the summer, Mari told her, and now summer is drawing to a close, and Luz is there, watching her mother, and her mother is saying come home, mija. I miss you.

Luz can’t move. She’s stuck between her mom and Eda. Eda and her mom.

Either-or.

The stone covers Eda’s wings and they thud dully to the floor, and Eda’s voice is cut off by the fearful cry of the Owl Beast, trying to tug herself somehow free. Her mom is saying I miss you, in her voice Luz hasn’t heard for a month. Belos watches the entire time, his staff leveled at her, and his palisman has her claws out, gouging lines in the rock that are as deep as Luz herself, and still, and still, Luz can’t get herself to move. Eda, mom; mom, Eda. She wants to tear herself in two. She wants to be back in her Connecticut house having never even entertained thoughts of running away; she wants to be back at the Owl House having never even heard of the healing hat.

(She cannot move, stuck as she is. But internally she’s screaming, hoping, and she’s lived this nightmare long enough that she knows where she is moving to, that camp, pug, school, humans—that it all presses around her, rubs raw the skin of her neck, and she hates, in a way she never has before, hates the weight of it all, hates the form pressed into her daemon, into her heart, and wants to reach out and take everything and pick something better, pick here, pick home, and for the rest of her life she knows that she will always, always, always choose—)

And then appears Maritza, forgotten, overlooked, trailing the fire that aches in Luz’s own chest, and Luz stumbles forwards, in front of Belos, not through either side of the door but instead right across the border that separated it from the rest of the world, and somewhere right before it slams shut on her mom and explodes into a brilliant burning blast of flame, she meets Mari’s eyes.

Her daemon is taller than she ever should be, with deep russet, wild-blown fur, with a dark ruff of a mane, with legs made not for scampering after but for looking over tall grass, for keeping an eye out, for surviving, in a world chaos-torn. She’s panting, heaving. Her paws splay and brace as she readies herself to fight Belos.

(She’s a dog in the same way Luz is a human. Just one look and it’s impossible to think they could be anything right.)

Her bulk leans into Luz’s side. She’s still got a handful of glyphs in her mouth, all the fire she didn’t use to blow up the door. Luz’s hands are shaking. Mari touches her nose to one of them. It’s cold. Too cold. Luz can’t stop shivering.

(Mari, for the first time in their life, made the choice Luz would make; Mari, for the first time in her life, chose to be wrong.)

Luz says—

(She doesn’t know what she says. She can’t hear her own words. Not over the roar of the fire. Not over running to Eda. Not over Belos’s eyes that bore into her back.)

(The worst part about the After is that she knows exactly what she would’ve done, if she had to make the choice.)

(And that makes it harder. Because Mari did.)

Maritza’s staring out the window again.

It’s where she always goes after they have a nightmare. Luz thrashes herself awake all wrapped up in her blankets with her pillow halfway across the room and thankful beyond belief that she managed to convince King to sleep somewhere else another night, while Mari goes to the window. And then they ignore each other.

Luz doesn’t know what time it is but it’s still dark in her room so she knows it’s late, and even if she strains she can’t hear any noise from downstairs, which means even later because she knows Eda and Lilith stay up after she’s already gone to bed.

Sometimes when Eda is awake Luz creeps downstairs and Eda makes her hot chocolate. Usually not because Lilith is also awake, but sometimes.

Luz takes a shuddery breath. Mari is a pug silhouetted by the moon, and for a moment it’s like the After isn’t real, like there’s still a way to get back to the Human Realm when human-summer ends for real in a few weeks. Like she can go back and be good and right and Mami won’t realize she’s been missing.

Her heart is racing. Luz fumbles for some paper and a pen. Begins carving out glyphs so deep into her paper that she tears more than she makes. But that’s okay. It’s something for her hands to do. It’s something to keep her gaze away from the window. From wanting to go creeping across the room and stare at Mari the same way a rodent might try to inch around the cat hunting it. Like trying will mean it doesn’t exist and it can get away safe.

Luz knows where Mari is like a dog never forgets the weight of its collar.

The three feet between them is like a chasm.

“I know you hate me.”

Luz’s voice is loud in the silence of their room, and it’s the first thing to get a motion out of Mari, jerking sideways as her paws skid across the windowsill, her hind legs faltering, momentarily. Out of the corner of her eye Mari’s form flickers, for a moment, like TV-static, struggling not to fall apart.

“Luz, I…” Mari’s voice is small but she doesn’t look away from the window, the dark, unfamiliar stars that fill up the night, patterns Luz wants to etch into her heart, replace all those she knew Before.

“I know you wish you didn’t blow up the door.” Luz jabs her pen into her blanket, where the ink leaves a dark blot, lines that won’t ever become something so wondrous as magic. “That you just let Belos kill Eda. That you just stood there frozen until Belos killed us.”

“Luz—”

Luz laughs. It’s loud and sharp and hurts her chest like the cry of a dying animal, but she can’t get herself to stop, not through the tears bubbling up at her eyes, the thudding wrench of her heart trying to beat. She curls herself up in her blankets and sobs, and laughs, and Mari finally drops down from the windowsill, approaches, with her stupid flat face and her stupid loud breathing because pugs aren’t supposed to breathe easily, because it hurts, because Luz feels the lack of air in her own chest, because she’s supposed to always feel that lack of air, to be good.

“Admit it!” she cries, as Mari jerks back. “You hate me! You can’t even look at me! I traded Mom for Eda and I can’t even feel bad about it!”

“Shut up!” Mari snarls, and somewhere Luz can hear her, dimly, shrieking, and feel her nails against Luz’s skin, and when she blinks she’s staring at her daemon, at this little tiny scrap of a pug, and Luz can’t stop laughing. “This is all your fault, Luz, you’ve never known just how to act, you can’t just be happy, you have to push everything to me, everything is my fault—”

“Look at us!” Luz throws up her hands and shoves Mari off of her, off their blankets and back onto the cold floor, and it’s so easy! She’s so small! And she won’t do anything to change that! “Look at us, Mari! Look at what I did! Look at what you did! You chose to listen to me, Mari, and you know you’d do it again! And again and again and again, because it means we never go back, and you know how I felt? You know how I know?”

Mari’s snarling at her and she’s pathetic and too-small and she could change that so easily, and Luz digs in her nails and keeps pushing, and she’s never been like Mari, she’s never been something so good, but here and now they’re the same, they both did it, Luz and Mari together, and Luz doesn’t close her eyes. She’s not going to keep turning away, not going to keep pretending, like Mari wants, like if they just close their eyes and keep being a pug it’s like they’re good, they’re right, somehow possible to be right. She grabs for her daemon. Grabs until bits of Dust spill out from the cuts Luz puts there.

“Admit it!” Luz demands, and she keeps cutting, wrong wrong wrong, but when has she ever been anything else? And with the After, oh, there’s nothing else she can be! Down their bond Luz is shrieking look at me, drowning out Mari, LOOK AT ME, and it’s flames and pain and the After was, too, but here they are, in the After, and it won’t ever go away. “We wanted to stay! We’re a terrible daughter! We always have been and we always will and this just proves it!”

“No!” Mari cries, but her words catch and choke in her throat. Luz can hardly breathe which means Mari can hardly breathe with means Luz can hardly breathe, an eternal cycle, Luz to Mari back to Luz, and Luz chose Eda, and Mari chose her, and Mari is saying, “you never make the hard choices, Luz! It’s all up to me, because you’ve never been good, and you’re the reason I’m like this, and you’re the reason I—can’t—breathe—”

“You’re a liar!” Luz cries, and she means the After, and the moments before the After, and all of it and all together, and Mari is spasming in her grip but not changing, because they Settled as a pug, because you can’t ever change what you Settle as no matter how much it claws at your skin like something trying to burst out. “You chose! You picked me! You picked Eda—”

She falls forwards as her hands slam against each other, grasping nothing, nothing but golden stands of Dust crushed into nothingness under her weight. The world spins. Above her Mari’s wingbeats falter, once, twice, and it’s a nightmare that isn’t a nightmare, it’s everything wrong about them, the After and this is the After, this is them, and Mari couldn’t ever fix them.

Mari falls to the ground with a thud.

Behind them the door swings open, catching them both in its illumination. Luz, her hands stained with golden Dust slowly dissolving, and Mari, with her russet fur and black mane and overlong legs, nothing at all like a pug.

“No,” Mari says, and her voice cracks as she struggles to her paws, one of them giving out underneath her. The edges of her twist in golden dazzling bits of light. It’s Eda, in the doorway, because it was always going to be Eda, and Luz sways as Mari backs away, to the window, her paws scrabbling against the ground, off-kilter. Hackles raised. Her ears are pressed flat against her head. Still not a pug.

Luz stumble-sways and Eda catches her before she hits the ground. She’s talking, Luz thinks. Like Luz, Mari, all heartbroken. 

Mari, a maned wolf, says, again, “no.” And then, shaking, “you weren’t supposed to see.”

The world snaps together too-bright and too-loud and Luz presses her face into Eda’s side and keens like she’s dying and this is the end, because it is. Because Luz Noceda and her daemon Maritza Settled as a pug, and now Mari is a maned wolf and so she doesn’t exist anymore. Mari blew up the door back to the Human Realm because Luz wanted her to, and Mari yells terrible daughter, and yearns Mom, but Luz is folded into Eda’s arms and can’t bring herself to move.

Mari says I wanted to go home, and that’s wrong because it means Luz would’ve left Eda to die, but Mari says it like this-is-right, because Luz’s choice brought them here and she was supposed to leave Eda to die to get her mom back, to be right, to be Settled. They should’ve left her to die, Eda who’s rubbing Luz’s back and sitting right there on the floor of their room and Mari’s not moving and she’s still wrong-all-over and Eda isn’t saying get out, isn’t saying you aren’t the Luz I let live here. She’s just letting Luz cry onto her. It’s late late late and she’s just letting Luz cry.

Mari is right. (Luz has never been good enough.)

And doesn’t that make her the worst daughter in the world?

Somewhere down their bond Luz is saying I’m sorry. I’m sorry we’re so broken. But we can’t fix it. There’s no fixing this. We’re just too broken.

Mari doesn’t respond. But she’s thinking, and Luz can hear it in some echoed half-form, it’s easier when it’s all just a nightmare.