Chapter Text
“I felt as a bird,
Sent aflutter underneath commanding sun,
Oppressive heat staining tired wings,
My grove burning below
Not a cleansing fire,
One which clears swaths of old stagnation for chance at new growth,
But one of malice and pain,
And most of all—one of fear.
The forest constricts,
What is ours changed by desires of unseeing outsiders,
Creaks of wood and shrieks of us filling the air.
I fly,
Sun beating against my back,
A small fragment of what is wild and free carried on through my hand,
And I fear I may never land.”
—Translated excerpt from Bird Aflame by the Absconded Seer, real name unknown, a Master of Illusions and prolific treasonous writer. The poem was written shortly after the fall of the Left Shoulder Alliance; a rebel force aligned against Emperor Belos during the Second Unification.
Distribution of both English and Runic copies banned under imperial decree.
♪♪♪♪♪
“-need you to understand, mija, your actions are incredibly serious. You brought wild, if admittedly nonvenomous, snakes to your school, along with what basically amounts to a homemade bomb. We’re lucky your English teacher sent you away before any damage could be done-”
Luz Noceda struggled to pay attention to her mama, Camila, awash in shame and guilt as she was. Luz had meant for her book presentation to be a crowning project, something for her mom to be proud of, not the disaster it turned out to be. Sure, it hadn’t occurred to her that the fireworks could be dangerous indoors, but the snakes were docile enough when she handled them. That assignment was supposed to be a walk in the park with how much preparation she had put into it!
Yet, despite impassioned preparation, everything went wrong, starting when the snake chosen to represent the horrid Gildersnake! had taken its role a bit too seriously, jumping out of Luz’s hold to land straight on one of her classmates, Daniel. The crybaby had leapt straight to panic, throwing the poor snake away with all his flailing. The English teacher caught Luz by her arm, unjustly preventing her from checking on the unfortunate creature (the snake - not Daniel, his wailing being completely unwarranted in Luz’s opinion), instead marching Luz straight to principal Hal’s office, being sat down to wait for her mom to drive over.
Eventually, Camila Noceda had arrived fresh from the veterinary clinic, still dressed in her work clothes, a set of light blue scrubs covering the Dominican-American woman’s tan skin, with her dyed brown hair tied back into a ponytail. A heavy dose of disappointment radiated off her.
Upon seeing her mama’s countenance, any words Luz might have said froze in her throat. She could only dejectedly plod after her mom, unable to so much as look at her for fear of facing a storm of fury. Evidently, Camila felt something similar, for she too made no effort to communicate with Luz, though Luz speculated her mama’s heart held much more judgement and much less guilt than Luz’s own.
Now, a week later, Luz understood that what her mama felt was not anger. No, it was a terrible weariness, only worsened as it simmered day by day, her mom spending hours on the phone each night. Luz herself had no choice but to stew as well, suspended from school until further notice. At this point, Luz would do anything for the terrible feelings to end, for someone to help her fix what she had broken-
“Luz!” Camila had a frustrated look on her face. The two of them had gone through this song and dance before, Luz spacing out while her mama tried to catch her attention. Usually, she was light-hearted regarding Luz’s distracted nature, but with the past week...Luz pointedly ignored the massive lump of guilt pressing at her throat as she refocused on her mom.
“You didn’t hear a word I said, did you mija?” The tired dullness in her mama’s brown eyes made it hard for Luz to keep eye contact without flinching. Camila began speaking again, not slower, but with more enunciation to her words, watching Luz to check that she heard every one of them. “As no one was harmed, and as your creative tendencies are well known to the school, your principal has chosen not to involve authorities or press charges. He is extending us a tremendous amount of leniency here, Luz, at a cost to his own legitimacy among his colleagues, but at the end of the day this is all contingent on you. He is willing to extend you the benefit of the doubt if, and only if, you attend a special summer camp, get your head down from out the clouds. You could have seriously injured someone, mija, and no one wants that for you.”
Luz vacantly nodded, head spinning as she processed what her mama said. Her hands automatically grasped the pamphlet handed to her and after a few more seconds of thinking, Luz looked down at the flyer advertising her new summer plans. To her dread, in blocky colorless font, read ‘Reality Check Summer Camp.’ Below was an image of a smiling kid contorting themselves to the cartoon walls pressing down around them, with a caption reading ‘Think Inside The Box.’
It was as if someone had gone through the trouble of finding and distilling everything antithetical to the idea of Luz, solely to present the resulting mess to her in the form of this faded, unimaginative pamphlet. Compelled by her mom’s watchful gaze, Luz began flipping through the pages, hoping against hope that the cover was simply a fluke, a joke someone made to laugh about later with their friends or a mistake where whatever used printer got its wires crossed and dispensed the incorrect cover.
To Luz’s horror, her burgeoning dread only found itself increased tenfold as she slowly flipped through pages upon pages describing ‘paperwork workshops’ and the carefully worded ‘regulated art exercises.’ Worse, most personal devices, including phones such as Luz’s, were heavily regulated, only allowed during a ‘rotating daily access period,’ a single radio and calculator set for each cabin being the only regularly available electronics allowed to camp participants, and and and-
Camila’s voice broke Luz out of her panic spiral, some sympathy showing through the lethargy inherent in taking the long nights as her mom had. “Now Luz, mija, I know it’s not exactly what you had planned for your summer but...just, think about it. This Reality Check camp is a chance to reinvent yourself, maybe make a few friends? Not be so lonely all the time? This could be good for you!”
Luz couldn’t think, she could barely be. The first allegory that came to mind was a discarded shell, a shed snakeskin, but even those held warmth of meaning if not active functionality, a protective layer having served its purpose faithfully until its destined time of departure from its parent snake. Luz reached again and found a fitting comparison beyond her. Not knowing how to feel about that, a gaping hollowness leaving crumbling foundations at her core, Luz abruptly stood and fled to her room. The first tears began making themselves known as she slammed the door.
Whether by indifference or care, her mama made no move to follow.
♪♪♪♪♪
The return to Gravesfield High, proud high school of an aged town with an even more outdated local tradition of executing anything even moderately past normal, had been harrowing for Luz. Her classmates, having already singled her out as the weird, overdramatic kid who liked fantasy and anime, had taken their exclusion a step further ever since the disaster of a presentation. Where kids had once silently avoided Luz, communicating disdain through cold shoulders and disregard for her actions, their treatments had now become harsher in character.
It wasn’t unexpected that they would start back at the bullying. The monsters usually did, in response to Luz’s mess-ups, before they inevitably forgot and went back to leaving her alone (which itself mostly consisted of ignoring and belittling her whenever she tried to ‘step out of line’). No, what surprised her this time is how swift it all was, how quickly they jumped to making her life hell. Almost as if it’s the natural order of things for them, Luz thought morosely.
They didn’t bother with anything overt enough to draw attention from the teachers, of course, but all that meant was that the torment was partitioned, not lessened. Unseeing eyes had been replaced with hard glares, other students looking at Luz as an ant beneath their boot rather than the distanced oddity she preferred to be. Something to push away, something to hurt, something to hate as part of a twisted pack activity for all the rest.
Daniel didn’t help matters, milking the ‘Terrifying Snake Attack!’ to attract sympathizers and transient friends, the tale growing more and more embellished each retelling. By the week, fewer students were inclined to believe Luz’s side of the story, drawn instead into the boy’s orbit. In their eyes he, at least, had not meant for others to come to harm.
Students saw the suspension, Luz missing days of class. They knew the story, Daniel’s efforts ensuring its spread. Luz came to know, from painful act after painful act, that where once she was the insignificant weirdo, she had been given a different title, that of the defenseless target.
Her social isolation morphed into an active shunning. The name-calling, defiling of her locker, destruction of her homework, books, art. It was terrible, burning like a brand against her chest, a constant mark warning others to stay away, or worse, inviting new tormentors to join in.
Acts performed with plausible deniability, perpetrators covering for each other with alibis and defenses, casual disregard from teachers towards the known troublemaker, the small school’s absence of security cameras...Luz felt like she was swiping at smoke every time she tried to stand up for herself, curling wisps and empty hands the only reward for her efforts. Even the imagined recourse of summer lost its luster as the dreaded Reality Check Summer Camp loomed on the horizon.
Her mom was kept warded by ignorance. She didn’t know about the horror show that school had become, and Luz had no intention of telling her—Camila had enough on her plate, and Luz would feel even worse about herself if her mama lost more sleep over her distracted, idiotic daughter.
Shaking away the thoughts, Luz shouldered her backpack and went out the door, calling out a goodbye to her mama. A couple of weeks left, and of that one more day to go. One more day, again. And again...
♪♪♪♪♪
Kind brown eyes met dejected golden-brown ones as Luz was once again struck by how similar she and her mama were in appearance. Luz had slightly lighter eyes and darker hair, arranged into a pixie cut instead of left long, as well as a shorter and slighter frame (though Luz grudgingly admitted to herself that she had a lot of growing to do), but apart from that they really did look like mother and daughter.
Her mom let out a crow of affection. “Oh, my baby is going to camp. I need to go to work now, but know that I’ll always love you, that I’ll always have faith in you. This summer camp will just be three months; I just know that it is well within your capabilities to make friends and improve yourself there! The bus arrives in thirty minutes, it’s only a two-hour drive to camp.”
What kind of mother sentences her child to months of misery?
Luz tried to ignore the traitorous thoughts infesting her head. She knew her mom had no more choice in this than Luz, and surely the bright façade was just that, right? Her mom couldn’t truly want Luz gone.
Luz’s flimsy composure cracked further as her mama aimed a pointed glance at the book currently cradled by Luz’s shaking arms. A copy of The Good Witch Azura, Luz’s greatest and most cherished reminder of her deceased father.
“I know this will be a big change, mija, but you need to get over this obsession of yours if you want to do well at camp. You’ll only make friends, learn to...balance checkbooks and appreciate public radio and all that, if you actually try. Can you do that for me, Luz? Try?”
Luz remained as still as she could, though she was unable to force the trembling to an end, her body’s reaction to distress and fear far too strong for her to control. Voice unsteady, Luz spoke, “But mama, I don’t like an-y of that stuff. I li-ke editing together anime clips to mus-ic videos and-and reading long f-fantasy stories with con-voluted backstories. Please, mama. Don’t ask m-me to giv-e that up!”
An alarm went off on Camila’s phone and Luz’s mama crouched down slightly, placing an unmoving hand on Luz’s shoulder. Luz dimly recognized the gesture as one meant to be reassuring. Between the restraining hand and her mom’s now determined expression, it felt much closer to stifling instead.
“Mija, I truly wish I could do that for you...but, do you have any friends?” Camila’s voice gained a harder edge. “Real ones, not imagined or drawn or reptilian? If you don’t move on with your life, I’m worried everyone will leave you in the dust, alone. I can’t let that happen to you, Luz. Now, come on. The first step to trying?”
Steady hands led Luz to the open trash can, steady eyes scrutinized her as she reverently placed the Azura book into the pile of garbage. Luz carefully adjusted the book’s position as she lowered it, keeping the precious hardcover away from anything wet or sticky, balancing it on dry cans and garbage bags. Luz would never abandon the book for a new start as her mom had been encouraging her to do, and first in preserving the story was keeping it clean.
Camila, unaware of Luz’s plans, nodded in approval at the gesture. “Thank you, Luz. I really need to go now, but your bus comes soon. Text me when you get there. Cuídate mucho, mi hija. ¡Qué te vaya bien!” After kissing Luz on the forehead a few times, Camila then quickly walked to the garage, got in her car, and drove away, waving to Luz all the while.
♪♪♪♪♪
As soon as her mama vanished from sight, Luz dove for the trash can, frantically reaching for her Azura book. Alarm rapidly replaced relief as she found the book missing, no longer laying among the garbage.
Somehow, when Luz had taken her eyes off the book to watch her mom leave, the prized possession had been taken!
Carding metaphorical fingers through her memories, Luz could not recall when the book disappeared. Her mama had never gotten close enough to snatch the book, Luz would have noticed! Luz would have heard footsteps if some thief had approached and stolen the book for some nefarious plot...
A thought struck Luz. What if it wasn’t taken at all! Then...it must have shifted deeper into the garbage can when the car passed by and shook it! Luz urgently returned to the container of garbage, readying herself for what must be done. If I find it now, I can still salvage it. The staining won’t be too bad.
Thankfully, before Luz could plunge her hands into the stinking mass, a hooting noise caught her attention. Looking up, she saw a short brown owl with golden eyes flying in the direction of the woods. Upon closer inspection, what really drew Luz’s eye, however, was the large sack the owl hauled behind it, and the corner of a familiar cover peeking out over the top of the sack’s coarse fabric.
“Little trash thief!” Luz was so angry she took off there and then. Absent were worries over summer camp or disappointing her mom, mind focused solely on retrieving her book.
Fortunately for her, the owl’s cargo slowed it significantly and kept it low to the ground, granting Luz ample opportunity to close ground in her chase. The owl, however, seemed to know its strengths, often choosing hard to traverse paths over rocks or underbrush, flying over most obstacles in its path as Luz fought to keep up. Indeed, Luz almost lost the small creature a few times. She certainly would have had to give up the pursuit had the owl not left an easily followed trail of overturned and crushed debris in its wake.
Eventually, the owl rushed into a dilapidated shack deep within the woods, the apparent destination of the beast and its haul. Despite no light coming from the windows, the doorway emitted a bright glow, forcing Luz to squint her eyes and barring her from taking a better look inside. It didn’t help that Luz had missed the descent of evening as her quest of the day wore on, the sudden switch from dim to light nearly blinding her.
Undeterred by the occasional creepy locale hidden within ancient woods, Luz was unrelenting in her charge. Tumbling through the doorway, Luz found not the run down, decayed interior she had expected to find, but a tent of fabric filled with wooden and cardboard boxes walling her in, packed dirt rustling under time-worn sneakers.
Thrown off by the abrupt change in ambience, Luz took a moment to consider her surroundings. Strangely enough, she found by looking back that the doorway itself was glowing, simultaneously illuminating the tent and preventing her from looking back into the woods. Hand raising automatically to run a finger along the edge of this strange, potentially dangerous occurrence (Her sense of caution routinely found itself ignored in favor of curiosity, after all!), Luz stared in amazement. The light was just floating there, almost-but-not-quite some sort of solid aether suspended in a wooden frame. She began to reach forward, idle thoughts, the kind that begged to be satisfied, wondering at what sensation running her hand through the material would produce-
The attached door slammed shut, abruptly locking away the mysterious radiance and very nearly taking off the tips of Luz’s fingers with it. The near dismemberment (Fingertips counted just as much as limbs, in her opinion) left Luz reeling, barely able to keep herself from knocking over the tightly packed box towers which surrounded her. The door held a beautiful sheen, a large yellow eye with a black vertical pupil taking up most of its top half while swooping carvings of waves and geometric curves filled the rest. A single doorknob with associated keyhole—one of those old-timey sort Luz often saw on Gravesfield’s older houses, large enough to peer through—sat right at the center, a peculiar design choice (Though Luz couldn’t exactly judge, given some of her own past decisions).
Despite trying as hard as she could, yanking and tugging at the doorknob, Luz’s stubborn nature eventually gave way to acceptance that she could not pry the door open again. Sitting across from it to catch her breath, she felt vaguely—in her heart of hearts—that the door’s continued pristine coating was mocking her. This, of course, led to a lengthy display where the wooden menace showcased its remarkable ability to withstand rage-fueled mutterings on its functional uselessness and dubious parentage.
Still, though the outpouring of frustration may not have cracked the door’s hard, wooden shell, it did give Luz a chance to recenter herself. Anger swiftly became guilt. Shame burned at her face as she recalled why she originally entered the tent, before she allowed herself to become distracted. The retrieval of her Azura book leapt to top priority once more, and Luz decided to start her renewed quest by looking around the tent.
The door still emitted enough light to see by, though it was faint enough that Luz could barely make out anything not immediately in its path. What little she could see, however, told her that the tent’s interiors erred on the side of eclectic. The surrounding shelves and boxes filled with random pieces from what had to be Halloween costumes—being both garishly colored and strangely shaped—warred for space with splayed open books and old-timey telephones and a great many other things Luz could not readily identify or name under such poor lighting.
Having had her fill of the tent, fairly confident that no sack of strange owl loot sat within, Luz slowly creeped towards the tent flap, and cautiously peeked out, doing her best to suppress the soft pants that fought their way out (Her weak nerd limbs could only comfortably handle so much exertion in a day!). She found that a woman stood just past the tent’s entrance, easy to make out under the evening sky.
The woman was digging through the sack, sorting out the varieties of junk brought by the owl, which itself was no longer in sight. Some of her decisions puzzled Luz. Deft hands recklessly tossed necklaces and rings away (Why waste such potentially pricey jewelry? Could the woman really discern their value so quickly?) while laying items of more worth, namely what had to be cheap plastic toys and common household waste, into a mess of cardboard boxes through what was either randomness or some arcane system beyond Luz’s understanding. It was rather fascinating, seeing her laugh with delight at a snake-in-a-can that barely jumped and slotting it into a container to their right. Seeing her take a pack of googly eyes, sticking a few into her enormous mane of hair before tossing the rest into a box resting behind her feet...
Luz was abruptly jolted out of the trance she had unconsciously fallen into when the woman pulled out a rectangular object, giving it a brief glance and even briefer grunt of disgust before holding a corner of it to a nearby candle.
Luz tore out of the tent, running faster than her exhausted limbs felt ready to move. Though she stumbled a few times on the assorted debris, Luz still managed to blow past the woman with ease, grabbing her Azura book as she did so. Luz continued her dash, yelling back at the stunned figure, “Sorry! But this book’s mine! Really hoping you understand, thanks-”
Luz’s rush of words abruptly cut off as she actually looked at the world outside the tent. Attention no longer caught by the woman and her hoardings, Luz could see one simple truth, and therein lay a world of confusion: She was in the woods no longer.
The twilight hours of an expansive market bustled around Luz as her muscles froze.
It looked very much like a regular market (though Luz had only been to such locales a scant few times in her life). There were the patrons, actively thinning out as they fled the day’s end. There were the stallholders, stationed at a wide variety of booths, the scattered range of unique designs suggesting most were of personal make. There were roads of packed dirt or paved stone—wider roads generally being better built. There was even a town looming in the distance, undoubtedly the source of all the shoppers to the hill the market stood on.
The differences largely ended at that, however. Instead of regular people, the marketgoers were differing shades of grotesque—ranging from the mild (such as the extra limbs or green skin of one couple) to the severe (exemplified in individuals like the strangely dapper fly-rat-thing wearing what loosely resembled a neat three-piece suit and top hat). The stalls, too, lost any semblance of normalcy when looking past the first impression, whether festooned with pulsating eyeballs or advertising cursed paintings or selling teeth of gargantuan size or a hundred other oddities.
Struck by the unexplainable visa, Luz could do naught but stare at the surreal sight, a dull buzzing diffusing itself throughout her body.