kaisou | Recentering Priorities

Recentering Priorities

WHO: Luz & You
WHERE: Owlery and outside in Kaisou
WHEN: August 22
WHAT: Luz is doing various things!
WARNINGS: none

[Closed to Eda/Amity]

I. The Owlery

Between the dinosaur attacks, the fights she had with people ABOUT said dinosaurs, her injury and then people's reactions to all of that, Luz's feelings were already taking a turn. She felt the guilt of knowing people were hurt or killed because of the experimentation Varian had done taking a turn. She was frustrated that people thought Varian meant harm and was told in full ferocity how bad things had gotten. Luz had done her best to help, lost contact with people, was then injured and told after said injury that she needed to not get herself involved in dangerous situations.

And then? Amity Blight, her girlfriend, arrives, and all of that takes a backseat.

Because Amity has some stories of her own, and now? Luz knew exactly how bad things got back home. The spell Phillip casts almost kills everyone, narrowly stopped by the actual Collector, but now all of them were locked out of the Boiling Isles, stick on Earth.

Devastating to her? Certainly. But Amity, a witch who had lived her entire life on the isles? That had to be a blow she was doing her best to recover from. Right now Luz is watching her hermosa sleep, deep in thought. She barely looks up when Eda enters the room.

II. Undertown [Open to those affiliated with the paranormal]

The setback with the dinosaur and then with Fern had cemented something into her head: she had to get better. She had her full abilities now, but even still there was a chance that things that could hurt her. So Luz was now in deep reading, looking at ways to perfect her glyphs, ideas for protections with the glyphs she could use. She still couldn't used combined glyphs, she knew that well enough. But what about what she could do with the powers she had?

She was scanning books she could get her hands on right now, carefully leafing through what she could to get ideas on how she was going to give herself added protection. You could see around Luz there were scribbling of plan foliage protecting her, or pictures of her with fire surrounding her.

The time for Luz being idle was over. She had to start making plans for what happened the next time things got really bad.

III. Shopping Street

Luz may have been determined to get better at her magic and whatever spiritual craziness might happen, but she also knew something else: August was almost over. She was, against her better judgement, going to have to BE a kid: she was going to have to go to school again, and that meant preparing for all of the things that came with it. If you were a student (or teacher), she was going to say hi and probably pump you full of questions about what she can expect!

IV. Cemetery (Closed to Amity)

She hadn't told anyone about this, and she honestly wouldn't know how to anyway. Then here comes her girlfriend in tow, changing just about everything, and then comes the day she didn't expect would be creeping up on her, but here it is. So Luz leaves Amity a message, just a single one.

Be at the cemetery. Please? Need you.

And Luz is here already, with as big a bouquet of flowers she could make.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Oh geez, you were blinded? Was it one of those dinos with the frilly collar that spits stuff at you?"

Moana had a close run in with one, though she'd been pretty lucky to get away relatively unharmed.

She does notice that Luz seemed particularly cheerful today, and she couldn't help a curious smile of her own. "Yeah? I take it something good happened then?"

"It was that, yeah! I didn't even know they could do that, did you?!"

Luz was still pretty grouchy about that encounter. It seemed like a cute, friendly dinosaur, how was she to know that it was going to go all frilled lizard but with POISON SPIT?

"Despite that being awful, someone from my world arrived! It's my girlfriend Amity!"

"I mean, I'd seen it a couple times in movies, but it's hard to tell how much of that is real or not, y'know? But geez, are you okay?"

The other girl looked okay now, but something like that really must have hurt. And the damage wasn't necessarily all physical either.

Moana couldn't help blinking a little. "Amity? The girl with purple hair? She's your girlfriend? That's great! I mean, not great that she had to go through a maze and everything, and being stuck here and all, but that you guys get to see each other again."

"Oh, sure. I can see again, so that's good! It was just...unexpected, and I'm kinda mad at myself for not knowing they could do that. Losing my eyesight because of poison was a totally new experience for me."

She didn't love it and she had almost died, but she couldn't be TOO mad, not when it had been counterbalanced by Amity appearing!

"Yeah, so you've met! No, of course not, but I'm really happy to see her! I'm trying to be upset about everything that's happened, and I am, but I didn't realize how badly I missed her until the moment I saw she was here. I would have fought ten dinosaurs if they'd come between us!"

Luz was NOT joking.

"I can't really blame you. That definitely sounds like a made up thing, and I mean c'mon! Why spit acid, really? I probably would've been pretty freaked out myself."

Dealing with the bigger dinosaurs had been bad enough. She couldn't imagine having to do that while also blinded.

"Yeah, I met her when she first got here. It was...a bit of bad timing, with all the dinos roaming around, but she didn't seem hurt when I found her. I'm glad she at least has someone here that she knows."

And all the more fortunate that it was her girlfriend.

"Right?! I've had classes that talked about dinosaurs and I never heard of ones that acted like collared lizards, let alone were able to spit venom that made you blind!"

She'd been lucky Mal the jedi had been there. She might have been able to squeak away from the dinosaur, but with so many others lurking around, it would have only been a matter of time before she dealt with a new problem.

"Right, the worst timing! I didn't have a great time when I first arrived either, but at least it was ONLY the labyrinth and not dinosaurs too!"

She was smiling a little though. Clearly someone was glad she was here.

"I really missed her though."

"Who knew that that was something from a movie that was actually realistic. I'm glad you're all right though."

Moana can't help a smile of her own, seeing the look on Luz's face. "Well, I'm glad you two were able to reunite and find her, then. I'm guessing you've been showing her the ropes."

"Yeah. I swear, you never know what to believe when you look at movies anymore. That's why my generation tends to stick to the internet."

Which had its own host of problems, really.

"Not only that, now I actually feel like I'm not losing my mind, with Hunter only being mostly here and Eda being in her situation. In fact, Amity was able to fill me in on some things that I didn't even know was happening!"

That had alleviated some fears, only to host some new ones she was preferring not to think about right now.

Moana can't help a laugh. "Yeah, same. Though you still have to be careful about that too." There's definitely a lot of nonsense on the internet, for sure.

"Oh yeah? So she came from an even later point of time than you did?"

"Oh no, you're totally right about that! If anything, the internet is your first step into checking and rechecking all of the facts you've gathered, so you don't look stupid when you're trying to prove something."

Which was apropos to nothing, really.

"Yeah. A few weeks later. A LOT of things happen in a few weeks.

"Yeah, too bad a lot of people don't think to do that."

The internet is still rife with that, after all.

"Really? Were they good things or...not-so-good things?"

"According to my mom, you apparently need to do a LOT of that in college."

Proving your work might not mean a lot to some people, but that was not the case with her.

"Both, but it looks like it kinda went in the not-so-great direction."

That was really an understatement.

"Yeah, that's what I've heard too." Yet somehow, that doesn't help a lot of people.

"Oh no. Was it really bad?"

"Probably get a better idea of how to do that in school!"

Was it ever.

"Honestly, it's kind of like this situation, only worse since we have no way of finding out if the people in her world are safe, and some of them are like family to me. So in a way, it's sort of just...this again, but with heightened stakes."

And a guilty conscience Luz was still toiling with.

Moana frowns, a concerned expression on her face. She knows that being here was bad enough for those from other worlds, so she couldn't imagine having to deal with that but worse. And they had talked a bit about how Luz could get sometimes, even though Moana knows that she doesn't know the full extent of it. But she can't help still help worry about the other girl.

"Do you...maybe wanna talk about it?"

Luz looked at the ground a minute. Should she get into it, with everything that's happened? It sure didn't help to feel like she had to keep everything to herself, because things just started feeling worse and worse, and just kind of snowballed into worse feelings.

"Ok well. Imagine you were dealing with a guy that was going to just hurt everyone, and I meant EVERYONE, and you find out you mistakenly gave him the tools to get him there. And so you keep thinking of that, and you're scared he might actually succeed in doing the awful things he wanted to do. Then, imagine you get told events happened, even though you haven't DONE them, yet, where he was sort of stopped but now NEW bad things are happening, and the only way at the time to escape was to get you and you friends trapped in another world, like this one, away from everything they know and love."

Luz licked her lips. "Uh. Hypothetically."

Oh wow, that was a lot of information. Moana was glad that Luz was willing to open up about it at least, but it still took her a moment to process through everything.

"Well, um...hypothetically, I would probably feel a bit guilty for any kind of part I might have played in what happened. But I also imagine that my friends would point out that I'm not responsible for this guy's actions, and even if it seemed like I had helped him, I didn't make him do anything. And I imagine that if I had known what he'd been up to from the beginning, I never would have helped him in the first place.

"I also imagine that if new bad things were happening, and going to another world had been the only way of escaping, then I still would have done what I could to save them. And unless I forcefully shoved them into the portal to that other world, then I imagine that they would have trusted me to lead them someplace safe. Especially in such a tense moment where I doubt any of us were really thinking straight, so no one is really to blame for that."

Pausing a moment, Moana then shrugs. "Hypothetically, of course."

It WAS a lot. Normally Luz was not the type so willing to talk about things like this, she'd smile and keep going, but she knew the more she did this, the worse things were likely going to get for her until she actually took steps to fix things, even if it meant felt like she was making herself look worse in someone else's eyes.

Luckily, Moana was at least not seeming to feel that way.

"I..." Luz trailed off, looking glum. "I wish I could tell myself that and feel like that was enough. Instead, I just feel like every time I'm getting comfortable here, I'm letting myself off the hook. I have no idea if things are OK in the place we were, and if they're not, that IS my fault. I'm here and not there, and I COULD be there."

But she wasn't, and there was no telling if anyone was going to be able to make a portal where they could go back.

"What if...all I'm good for is taking the experiences I've had and making mistakes? I just handed the one good gift I was given to a maniac who wanted to destroy everything? My answer to why I did that can't just be 'I didn't know' when so many people could be hurt or dying!...Hypothetically."

With a concerned frown, Moana placed a hand on Luz's shoulder. "But it's not like you asked to be here, or came here to get away from everything happening over there. We still have no idea what brought you guys here, let alone how to get you guys back. That's not your fault.

"And it's not your fault that some creep took the gift you gave him and turned it into something terrible. I know it might sound dismissive, but there really was no way to know. Unless he was already spouting off how he was going to destroy everything when you gave him those things, which I really doubt."

She leaned forward a bit, trying to get a better look at Luz's face. "And everyone makes mistakes. That's just part of being alive. But I doubt the people who care about you think that's all you can do. I, for one, am grateful that I've gotten to know you. I'm just sorry that it came at the expense of you being stuck here."

"That..."

That was all RIGHT. Luz knew she was harboring guilt, quite a bit of it, and a lot of it was undeserved. Granted, Luz knew a part of her was still going to feel a little guilty that Philip was able to do so much harm to people because he learned the light glyph. She'd already tried out some of his spells: she KNEW that he was able to do so much more with learning that glyph.

Of course, Moana was also right in that Luz hadn't known who Philip was, or even that he had such warped intentions. That was a fact that she couldn't really ignore, that she thought she was helping a fellow human trying to find his way back home, like she was.

"He wasn't," Luz admitted, smiling a little. "In fact, he's a pretty good liar."

One of the best, which really made him the worst.

"Thanks, Moana. I'm glad I met you too. It's so weird, I want to save the people I care about, and that requires me leaving here. A part of me...kind of doesn't want to."

And that was a feeling Luz knew she couldn't really deny, and did feel guilty about.

Somehow Moana had a feeling that would be the case. Even from the little Luz just told her, she didn't think the other girl was the type to help someone hurt others on purpose, so he must have found some way to conceal that until it was too late.

Moana offers a sympathetic smile. "I mean, I can kinda get that. It sounds like everything going on there is really stressful, and it's kind of natural to not want to go back into things like that. But there's a difference between not wanting to, and actually doing it. So even if you don't want to, I have a feeling that you'd still jump at the chance to go if someone manages to find a way to send all you guys back home."

That was honestly Bellos' whole THING: manipulation and lying for when it suited his purposes. Sadly, the other thing he did was tell you in the absolutely worst way, so you properly felt his betrayal and he laughed while you were there, agonizing about it.

It sure said a lot about him and his Puritan past.

"It isn't just that. I HAVE to go. I don't have any idea how long things have been going bad in the realm, and now I know that things have got to be worse. The really bad thing is not knowing the extent of how bad everything is. And then there's wanting to enjoy yourself here so you don't feel miserable and feeling guilt about THAT."

She shook her head. "Ever get the feeling you're probably too young to be dealing with all of these feelings?"

Luz felt that all the time, even though she knew in the long run that it didn't matter, that she had to do SOMETHING.

"Well, that's kind of what I mean. Even if you think sometimes that you'd wanna stay, you'd go back anyway because you know it's the right thing to do. But I don't think it's wrong to enjoy the time that you're here while you can, so you don't get overwhelmed by everything else."

There was only so much they could do, so it really wouldn't help for Luz to drive herself crazy over things she couldn't change.

"I think I'm starting to, yeah." There was so much now that she definitely hadn't had to deal with before, and with how complicated things are getting she wonders if she's really equipped for all this.

"You have a point. Since I got here, all I've been thinking about is going back home, and that hasn't gone well with some of the people I talk to. I just wind up saying something dumb and insensitive by mistake, and I have to apologize and think about what I said later. Maybe it's not a bad thing, to want to stay here a little bit."

It would be a lesson Luz would have to continue to learn though. She had a bad tendency to dwell on things she can't change.

"It might be too late to even try and opt out of those feelings. Sometimes we don't get to ask why they happen, just know that they do and try to fix things. That's what I keep telling myself anyway: I've gone through a lot already. I've got this."

Edited 2022-10-27 16:56 (UTC)

"I don't think it is. Might as well make the most of things, right?"

It's a work in progress, but Moana would be around to help out.

"Yeah, sometimes things just happen suddenly. There's nothing we can really do to change that, we just have to do our best and work with what we've got." With a small smile, she gently nudged Luz with her elbow. "But I think we'll be okay. We've got this."

Recentering Priorities

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Luz at the end of season 2. Yes, a LOT happens in a few weeks.

Seriously

Re: Seriously

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