Chapter Text
CHAPTER 1: FREAK
Luz Noceda had been called many things throughout her 17-year lifetime. At first it was harmless, simply just ‘creative’, ‘weirdo’, ‘different’, ‘silly’. But as she grew older they seemingly became more accurate: ‘crazy’, ‘schizophrenic’, ‘insane’, ‘suicidal’, ‘maniac’, ‘violent’, ‘the girl that sees demons’. After literal years of her freely saying she saw demons she was surprised it had taken this long to actually do something about it.
But at the same time, she was surprised. She guessed it was the fact that her mother was finally doing something about it, and that hurt more than the other people that didn’t know her. It hurt more because Camilla had seen evidence of her being attacked. Sometimes they were bite marks on her arms or legs, other times they were claw marks. No matter what they were or where the injuries occurred, they’d be gone by morning. It was frustrating at first, but eventually Luz saw it for what it was: one hell of a handy trick.
Luz wasn’t suicidal or into that BDSM stuff, but that’s usually what people thought when they caught her cutting herself with anything that could cut. It wasn’t like she liked getting hurt, nobody truly does. No, she was just fascinated by the simple fact that the wound would heal in a few minutes, which also led to her being called ‘an attention seeker’.
Luz had never broken a bone. She’d tried, once, by climbing the tallest tree she could find and jumping from it. In retrospect, that was probably the dumbest thing she’d ever done. But aside from that, at least she found out she had strong legs that instead of breaking had compacted the dirt beneath her feet without pain.
Maybe she should have been smarter about how she presented herself. If she hadn’t appeared so crazy to everyone she might actually be picked more for activities. Luz was probably the best athlete in her school, but there was a stigma in picking her willingly for anything since that time in grade school where the team that had picked her willingly for dodgeball were relentlessly bullied for weeks afterwards.
Eventually Luz said screw it. She didn’t need friends, especially not friends from the kind of people that were in her hometown. So the girl rebelled. Anybody that fought her got a taste of the true crazy that everyone only joked that she had. Luz would usually use her wooden baseball bat she’d gotten for her quinceanera when anybody would insult her mother. Nobody insulted her mother and got away with it.
But at the same time Luz never got away with these fights. Too many bruises or broken bones, but no lawsuits surprisingly. Luz always thought it was because the parents were afraid of her coming after them with the bat, and she was actually correct according to the principal.
Oh yeah, he was talking to her and her mother and the two adults were looking at her expectantly. “Sorry, I spaced out there, what did you say?”
Camilla released a small disappointed sigh as the principal rubbed his eyes, “I asked you where in god’s name you got a sword and how you managed to sneak it into the school?”
Luz mouthed an ‘oh’. She couldn’t prevent the nervous smirk from appearing on her face, “Heh, you and me both.”
The principal slammed his fist into his desk, startling both women. “This is incredibly serious! You cut your calculus teacher’s face with a deadly weapon! You could have killed him! Now you already know we can’t even allow you back to this school, but I am willing to arrange for you to attend a different school away from here as long as you just tell me where and how you got a sword and how you brought it into this building past every camera and metal detector!”
After a few moments of tense silence the principal’s face hardened as he spoke, “If you don’t tell me how you did this, I will have to comply with the regulations and send you to a facility to take care of the several concerns within your student record.”
Luz winced upon the mention of the manilla folder placed on the edge of his desk that had a width of a few inches. Yeah, with a stack of reports about a girl saying she can see demons who also has violent tendencies Luz doubted she’d be simply sent to juvenile detention. But honestly, the truth wasn’t going to help her out of this. Similarly to her father.
She’d have to laugh at her joke later, though, as now was the time to be serious. “I am being one-hundred-percent honest with you when I say I have no idea where that sword came from and can confidently say I have never seen it in my life.”
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Yeah, she doubted that it was going to work. ‘Just tell the truth, mija, it’ll be alright!’ Luz remembered her mother telling her. Bullshit, I’ve always told the truth just nobody would believe me, Luz pouted on the bench seat as she waited for her armed escort to arrive and lock her in the looney-bin. I don’t belong there, you know I don’t, mami.
Luz reached over for her book to pass the time. The Great Witch Azura was a favourite of hers. The descriptions of certain creatures was so accurate of the things she saw, and when she used the same strategies Azura used to defeat them against the demons it surprisingly worked! So since then, Luz had purchased every book immediately as it came out and studied each entry. At one point she’d catalogued the weaknesses and strengths of each demon she’d fought, but in middle school it disappeared. Later she’d found Britney had passed it around to everyone.
Thinking about Britney always brought the memory one minute after Luz discovered her notebook had been passed around, where she had beaten Britney into the ground with a fractured jaw from a single punch.
Luz smiled from that image, Good times. Luz froze when her hand felt the cool metal of the bench instead of the warm cover of her book. Her smile disappeared when she looked around and didn’t find her book. The hairs stood on the back of her neck as she felt the familiar feeling of a demon nearby.
Luz jumped up and spun around as she shouldered her duffle bag of necessities, finding a majestic brown owl with the book between its sharp claws.
Luz pointed in accusation and shouted, “Hey! Get back here!” The bird blinked and took off into the woods. Luz cleared over the bench easily with a flip as she muttered, “Oh no you don’t!”
The owl looked over its shoulder a few times in the chase that followed, each time with a more surprised expression.
The first time was when he heard the footfalls of the human following him. No problem, he could always fly faster. The footsteps became faster and louder, giving cause for another backwards glance. How was a human keeping up with him? She’ll get tired and won’t catch him and possibly lose track of him if he flies up into the trees. So the owl flew upwards, pleased by the initial distancing of the footfalls but unsettled by the sound they produced of feet against forest floors to feet against forest bark. He turned to find the girl covering the distance by jumping from tree to tree with each step she took. The door, Owlbert needed to get to the door.
He saw his exit and dived towards it. ‘That’s that, the girl can’t catch me without hurting herself!’ the owl thought proudly. At least, that was the thought before the owl entered the old wooden shack and got about five feet from the door before the roof caved as the girl caught him as she crashed through the wooden shingles and beams above him. The owl was so stunned he didn’t even register the girl’s “Gotcha!” as her momentum slid her through the portal.
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