Chapter Text
When Luz woke up, her brain felt foggy and her eyes were unfocused. She groaned as she sat up, trying to remember when she’d fallen asleep. She forced her eyes to refocus, rubbing them with both hands. When her vision finally cleared, she took one look at her surroundings and realized that she was definitely not home.
She hastily tried to stand, but felt herself get lightheaded and unsteady after a few seconds of standing, opting to sit back down in fear of passing out again. From her seat, she looked around in stunned surprise, trying to orient herself in her strange, new surroundings, but before she could look too closely, she heard a set of voices moving toward her from another room. Panicking as they got closer, she realized that if she tried to run, she wouldn’t make it very far in her state, but if she stayed where she was, who knew what the people approaching would do. After quickly weighing her options, she decided to go with pretending to still be unconscious, that way she could give herself some time to formulate a plan and her head some time to clear the brain fog she had woken up with.
As the door opened and two sets of footsteps entered the room, Luz heard one of the voices she’d heard say, “I dunno what to tell ya, King. The kid looks so much like her, and Cami was the only person I ever gave that key to, I couldn’t’ve just let the first person to use it in 15 years go when they had it with them.”
Luz tried to remember why the name Cami struck a chord with her, but her head still felt as if it was filled with cotton, and before she could dwell on it further, she heard who she assumed was King speak in a high-pitched, squeaky voice, “I know, but did you really have to bring her here? She smells strange, like…” she heard what sounded like a dog sniffing at the air, “I don’t even know, but I don’t like it,” King huffed.
“It’s just temporary, King, I just need her to wake up so we can ask her some questions. She might know Cami,” the first voice said hopefully, but it deflated quickly as it continued, “or maybe not, but either way she can at least tell me where she got the key from.” Hearing the name again cleared a bit of the fog in Luz’s head, but she still couldn’t think of why the name sounded so familiar. It reminded her of someone close to her, but just as she attempted to follow that train of thought through her muddled brain, King’s voice interrupted her thoughts, snapping her attention back to the conversation going on.
“Fine, I’ll deal with the weird smelling human,” King responded, “but only if you promise you’ll bring me some of those crackers you always get the generic brand of; I expect real Kraken Crisps, Eda, not…” Upon hearing the name, Luz stopped listening, feeling as if she’d just been drenched in ice water, the fog in her brain clearing. How did I not connect the dots? Luz thought to herself, It was right in front of me.
Cami was a nickname her mamá had mentioned going by when she was younger, and the key and portal: Where else would they lead other than the mysterious Eda from the envelope? It felt so obvious now that Luz thought of it, but it also brought new questions to the forefront of her mind. Like, why did it sound like her mamá and Eda hadn’t seen each other in 15 years? Did they have an argument? And why did Mami have the items hidden under a floorboard, unused if she and Eda seemed to be so important to each other? Why not use the portal to see each other? Luz started to spiral, her mind going a thousand miles a minute. Every question she asked herself only brought up more questions and those brought up even more. She kept this up until her thoughts were interrupted by the voice she now knew was Eda sounding a lot closer than it had been before.
“Well, now that you mention it, the kid should be awake by now. The spell I cast wasn’t very strong, it should've worn off a while ago,” she heard Eda say. Luz felt her mouth go dry, feeling, presumably, Eda’s presence near her head. She decided to keep on with her act, but then she felt a cold finger poke her forehead, it startled her eyes open and made her yelp. Eda flinched at the sound and scrambled back a little when she saw Luz open her eyes. Luz knew this was her chance to book it, but just as she was about to make a run for it, she saw what looked like the cutest little dog with a little skull on its head and impulsively decided she just had to pet it.
Before she could think twice, she’d gotten up and ran to him, exclaiming, “¡Ay, que lindo! ” as she scooped him up.
She held out the dog to continue to coo at it, but when her brain caught up with what she had just done, Luz froze, put the little guy down, and apologized to him quietly.
She was taken aback when he responded, her eyes wide like saucers when she realized he was speaking.
“As you should be,” he said. “Does no one in this house realize that I am the fearsome King of Demons? You should be trembling before me, not hugging me like I’m some baby,” letting out a disgruntled huff as he continued, crossing his arms as he looked up at her.
Luz slowly backed away with her hands up, amusement evident on her face as she looked down at his cute little pout and replied, “Woah, woah, woah, you can talk?!”
King just scoffed at her. “Of course I can talk. I’m not a dog,” he answered, rolling his eyes as he turned on his heel to leave the room. Luz stood there, staring after him as he left muttering angrily under his breath, but then someone behind her cleared their throat, reminding Luz that she wasn’t alone.
She hesitantly turned around at the sound, finding Eda looking down at her with those bright, golden-yellow eyes from the photos she’d seen.
“And now, who might you be, human?” Eda asked, her voice sharp and cold like an icicle. Luz gulped audibly as she tried to find her voice in order to answer, but instead found herself staring at the woman.
Eda’s mouth had her golden fang Luz recognized from the photos on display and her hair had gone completely grey now. She looked older than in the photo, but judging from what she’d heard earlier, it made sense considering it’d probably been about 15 years since the picture was taken, but now, as she looked over the woman, she noticed something she hadn’t in the pictures. Eda’s ears. They looked like an elf’s, pointed and a little longer than a regular person’s. She wondered how she’d missed them in the photos, but as she looked at them again and took notice of the mane of hair that surrounded them, she realized they’d probably just been hidden under it. Luz continued staring at the woman until Eda’s voice snapped her out of her stupor.
“I already asked once, and I won’t repeat myself more than once: who are you?” she heard Eda ask menacingly and tried harder to answer this time,
Without the initial shock of seeing the person who had previously only existed in a picture, Luz was able to stutter out, “I’m, uh, I’m Luz, uh, Luz Noceda.”
Upon hearing her last name, the already frighteningly pale woman, paled impossibly further and her face flashed a look somewhere between betrayal, sadness, and hopefulness. She remained like that for a moment before schooling her features back to a neutral expression and asked Luz, “Well, Miss Noceda, and what might a human like yourself be doing on the Boiling Isles?”
Luz took a moment to consider the question. She wanted to answer by asking a few questions of her own, namely, What the heck were the “Boiling Isles?” and Why does she keep referring to me as “human?", but after reconsidering, she decided against it and went for the, probably, more acceptable answer, “Uh, I’m not actually sure, I stumbled upon you guys by accident.”
Eda looked at her skeptically when Luz said this, spurring her on to continue, “I found a weird looking key hidden in my mamá’s room, along with a button and an envelope full of pictures, and one of the pictures showed my Mami in front of an old house with the key around her neck, so I decided to do some investigating and it led me to this closet where I found the weird suitcase/portal/doorway thing and I ended up here.”
Eda looked at her with an indiscernible expression on her face, processing what Luz had said, but when she was quiet for too long, Luz felt the need to fill the silence and continued talking.
“The key was all glowy and it shook when it was in my hand. It sorta, like, pulled me toward the door/portal thing, but I noticed it only did it when my hand was bare.” Luz said, clamoring around her brain to find parts of the story that didn’t require bringing up the fact that the photos showed Eda and her mamá being all gooey and starry eyed over one another. “And, uh, I felt my thumb press something like a button on the handle of the key, and there was a bright light when I walked through, and then there was you knocking me out, and then I woke up here, and boom, here we are, talking about what I’m doing here,” she finished, chuckling awkwardly and rubbing the back of her neck, aware she had been rambling.
At this point, Eda was just staring at Luz as if she were waiting for her to make a mistake, and Luz decided it might be better to just shut up rather than risk screwing up. Once Eda realized Luz wasn’t going to keep talking, she stood up straight and crossed her arms, still observing Luz, and finally said, “Who’s this Mami character you keep talking about? I forgot how confusing you humans and your languages are.”
“Why do you keep saying "humans" as if you aren’t one?” she asks the woman, cocking her head at her. Eda scans her face for a second before laughing with her head thrown back.
“Kid, you’ve got a lot to learn. Seems I also forgot how little you guys know,” she said, snorting as she did so. “I am not a human, I’m a witch, weren’t my eyes and ears a good enough giveaway?”
Luz regarded the woman, hoping to find signs of a joke, but didn’t find any. It seemed as if Eda was serious, so Luz answered her point blank, irritated by the woman’s attitude, “I didn’t even know witches were a thing until just now, so no, sorry to say, but your features were not a dead giveaway.” Feeling a little snarky due to the smug, amused look on Eda’s face, Luz decided to bite the bullet, “And as for the Mami ‘character’ I keep bringing up, she's my mom. I’d’ve thought you’d know at least a couple words in Spanish after having known her. Though, you might know her better as Cami.”
The smug expression on the witch’s face immediately dropped, replaced instead by one of surprise and confusion as she implored, “What did you just say?”
Her tone was sharp, making the satisfied smirk on Luz’s lips waver a bit as she became nervous she might’ve taken it too far, but when Eda continued, the anxiousness quickly dissipated.
“Did you just say Cami’s your mom?” Eda’s face shone with hopefulness as she asked, but as she went on her expression changed once more, this time to a look Luz couldn’t quite place. “Wait, hold on, how did you know she was the Cami I was referring to? How old are you, kid? Cami didn’t have a kid the last time I saw her.”
Luz took a second to process the questions, but soon answered when she finally recognized the emotion on Eda’s face: betrayal . She was a little confused as to why Eda would feel betrayed, but brushed it off, deciding she’d come back to it later since she still needed to answer.
“Yeah, my Mami, she went by Cami when she was younger. It’s short for Camila.” she replied. “I knew she was the one you were talking about when I heard King say your name. The envelope with the pictures I mentioned before had your name on it and pictures of you and Mami together,” she explained, deciding she might as well be honest about the contents of the pictures. “And as for that last question, I’m 14. I was born on July 15, 2006, if that helps you with your timeline.”
The witch stayed quiet for a moment, processing the information she’d just received. It made Luz restless; she’d always hated moments where she couldn’t gauge how a person would react. She stayed still and silent though, using the moment to look around the room she still hadn’t had the chance to look at. The walls were a pale beige and they were covered in trinkets and posters. One of the posters caught her eye and she paused to examine it. It had a drawing of Eda and King under the word “Wanted”, and under the image, it said “Owl Lady” with a reward with a weird looking symbol followed by a one and an obscene amount of zeros. I wonder what she did to deserve a bounty like that, Luz thought to herself, finding it strange someone her mamá had been in a, seemingly, romantic relationship would be capable of anything warranting such a large reward and even, what seemed to be, a moniker. With that in mind, Luz turned back to the witch, remembering she had been waiting for her reply.
Eda looked stricken. “That was eight months after I left,” she said, almost as if speaking to herself.
Luz was surprised to find that her voice sounded hollow and devoid of emotion or feeling as she continued, “That means that, if I’m remembering how long human gestation lasts correctly, either you were born earlier than you were supposed to be, you’re adopted, which I find unlikely, considering you look just like she did when she was younger, or Cami was pregnant with you when the last time I saw her.”
Luz really didn’t want to respond with the truth. The witch in front of her looked desolate and disbelieving, but she felt that lying would only make things worse.
“Um, I’m pretty sure I was actually born, like, almost a month after my due date. They had to induce Mami ‘cause the doctors were worried. I don’t really know much about the time my mamá was pregnant with me, though, or who my dad might be. Mami always gets really weird and sad whenever I ask about it.” This seemed to only deflate Eda even further, but after a moment, she seemed to realize something, the hopefulness from before coming back by tenfold.
“Aha! I dunno how it slipped my mind, kid!,” the witch exclaimed, a mischievous glint in her eyes. “Instead of just asking you, why don’t we just go back to the human realm and ask Cami herself! She’s bound to know more than you seem to.”
Luz sat there stunned at how quickly the witch’s mood had changed, and as the words registered, it occurred to her that she didn’t even know how long she’d been here. She began to panic, looking towards the witch who was now in a frenzy looking around for something, shouting, “Hey King, get down here! We’re going to the human realm to talk to Cami!” as she looked.
Luz heard an annoyed groan coming from somewhere in response, but she was too busy wondering about how long it’d been since she’d come through the portal to register where or who the sound had come from. Before she could ask about either, though, she saw King come in, joining Eda, who had found what she’d been looking for in her hair. Eda then proceeded to grab her arm and pull her toward another room. Luz saw the object Eda had found and realized it was the key she’d used to get here. She noticed it was glowing and shaking in Eda’s hand and discerned what they were getting ready to do. She braced herself for the blinding light by squeezing her eyes shut, and as she felt the now familiar feeling of the portal, she grabbed Eda’s forearm, not wanting to be left lost and disoriented like before.