Chapter 1
For as long as Luz could remember, she’s always witnessed small miracles. Sometimes someone who was carrying way too much stuff would be able to balance it when it seemed sure to fall over. Other times, someone would trip and manage to pull off a seemingly impossible catch.
The first time she witnessed a mini-miracle, she excitedly went to tell her Mami about it. Her mother, a devout Catholic, had explained these seemingly unexplainable occurrences as God helping his most devout followers.
Ever since then, Luz has kept her eye out for miracles. The biggest miracle she had witnessed was during a camp out with her girl scout troop. It had rained all day, and when it came time to start the fire to cook their hot dogs, no one could get the fire started. That is until one girl, Jolene, took a turn to try to light it. Everyone cheered as the kindling went up in flames. Luz was standing behind Jolene as she worked on the fire, and she could swear that the girl lit the fire without ever striking the flint.
Luz tried to talk to Jolene about it later, but every question Luz asked seemed to put the girl more and more on edge. After the fifth question that she awkwardly danced around, Luz gave up on trying to get an answer.
This is why Luz wasn’t that surprised when she saw a girl seemingly magic a plant back to life.
Luz had, once again, missed the bus for school. She would just skip, but the principal had made it very clear, one more mess up and she was expelled. You set one lunch tray on fire (accidentally, she might add) and suddenly you’re being threatened with expulsion.
That is why Luz was walking through the woods behind her house, trying to cut time from her walk so she wouldn’t actually have to rush. She stepped from fallen leaf to leaf on the path in front of her, enjoying the crunch of them beneath her feet, a fall breeze rustling the near barren branches above her head. She shivered against the chill that worked its way under her army green jacket and pulled the maroon beanie farther over her head.
She normally didn’t mind not having a car, but in times like this she really wished she was able to afford one of her own. She was always glad when her Mami let her borrow her car, but she normally had the car with her at work.
She tightened her grip on her backpack strap and sped up her walk. She may not be in a hurry to get to school, but she was in a hurry to get out of this cold. She might need a heavier jacket soon, but she couldn’t bear to think about abandoning her favorite one just because of a little cold, maybe she could just wear a sweatshirt underneath it. At least then it would be harder for the wind to get through to her.
Or maybe she just needed to learn to catch her bus.
Yeah right, like that’ll happen.
Luz was so deep in thought, she didn’t notice the figure standing in the open area in front of her until she was close enough to hear them talking.
“Alright, it’s okay there little friend, the bird is gone now, it’s just you and me.”
The figure was facing away from Luz, so she wasn’t able to see who or what they were talking to. The figure itself was kneeling on the ground in the center of the circular clearing, both hands extended in front of it out of Luz’s view.
Luz approached the clearing apprehensively, walking around the outside ring ducking from tree to tree to hopefully avoid catching the figure’s attention. Luz kept moving around the clearing counter-clockwise until she was able to see what the person was looking at. They were hunched over in front of a dejected-looking flower that had definitely seen better days. Half of its petals were laying on the ground around it, and its stem was nearly completely torn in half.
Now that Luz had moved to the side, she could see the profile of the person in front of her. Their hair was wavy thick and so dark it almost looked black. They had thin-rimmed circular glasses sitting on their rounded nose.
“There we go, I’ll get you fixed up,” the person says to the flower, bringing Luz’s attention to it. Luz felt her eyes widen as the figure extended their left hand over the flower, slowly tracing a circle over it. As their finger moved, a light green circle came to life, glowing lightly over the flower. As the figure finished making the circle, small glowing particles floated down surrounding the flower. Luz watched as the flower itself slowly began to glow and straighten upright. After a minute or so, the floating circle faded in time with the glow of the flower, leaving a fully formed and healthy flower in its place.
“Woah!” Luz thought, staring at the seemingly brand new flower in front of her.
The figure quickly stiffened and turned to face where Luz’s head was sticking out from behind a tree.
“Crap! I said that out loud, didn’t I??” Luz thought in a panic as she slapped a hand over her mouth and ducked fully behind the tree once again.
“Yeah, you did say that out loud. You doing okay over there?” The voice belonging to the figure called over to where Luz was trying to hide in her beanie.
Luz sighed, well she was already caught so she stepped out from behind the tree. Luz took a few steps hesitantly towards the person, who was looking at her bemused, if not a little confused as well.
“H-hi,” Luz spoke, a bit hesitant at first “Sorry, I didn’t mean to spy on you or anything, but I was just passing by on my way to school when I noticed you and I didn’t want to interrupt whatever it was you were doing so I decided to just go around you but then I noticed you were talking to a flower and I thought that was something only I would be weird enough to do, not that I’m calling you weird or anything! But I got curious and decided to see what you were doing and I’m just amazed because I’ve never seen a miracle performed so clearly in front of me and I was just wondering how you did that, or rather how you knew that would happen and what you do to make it possible to do stuff like that because I foll-”
Luz was cut off by the stranger in front of her barking out a laugh. She felt her face heat up in embarrassment when she realized she had been ranting rather quickly and not even stopping to breathe. She chuckled half-heartedly as the person continued to laugh and she subconsciously pulled her jacket tighter around herself as if to try to hide in it.
“Okay well if you’re just gonna laugh at me like a crazy person I’m just gonna leave.” Luz started to walk away from them when she heard them finally reign in their laughter.
“No… no, I’m sorry, it’s just, if you were able to see what I did then you obviously know what it is. I don’t know why you called it a “miracle”, it was just fairly standard plant magic, they taught it to us in elementary before we chose our tracks,” the person said, wiping a tear from their eye and pushing their glasses back up their nose.
Luz stared at them as if they had just grown a second head.
“What do you mean ‘plant magic’, I'm not even crazy enough to believe magic is actually real, it’s just something we made up for fantasy novels and to explain what we didn’t understand in the olden days.”
The stranger stared right back at Luz with one eyebrow raised and their head tilted to the side.
“Not real? You’re kidding, right? You literally just saw me do magic and pointed it out. If you were a human you would have just thought I was talking to a flower the whole time and that the wind made it move or something,” they said, gesturing to the flower as if that would clear up the confusion.
It did not.
“You say I’m not a human as if you’re not one yourself,” Luz stated pointedly.
“Uh, because I’m not?” The figure questioned while sweeping their hair behind their ear and gesturing towards it. It looked like a fairly standard ear to Luz, granted it was in fact more pointed than her own, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. Lots of people had slightly pointed ears.
“I don’t get what you’re trying to say, or what your ears have anything to do with it, but you’re definitely still a human, like me,” Luz said as she lifted the beanie off her head to show off her ears to the other person. Luz watched as their eyes widened and their mouth dropped in shock.
“You, you’re really a human?? And you were able to see what I did??”
“If you mean I was able to see the flower glow along with a weird glowing circle, then yes, yes I was,” Luz stated matter-of-factly, pulling the beanie back over her head with a huff.
They just stared amazedly at Luz as they approached her, examining her face like she was a giraffe at the zoo that had stuck its head out of its enclosure. Luz leaned back awkwardly as they got closer to her, practically sticking their face directly into hers.
After what was probably too long to let a stranger stand that close to her, Luz finally decided she had had enough of this.
“Alright, well if you’re just gonna stare at and lie to me then I’m just gonna go, I’m gonna be late for school,” and she started to turn away.
“Wait!” they quickly grabbed her arm to stop Luz from leaving. “I need to know more about what’s happening.”
They grabbed a pen out of the bag they had flung over their shoulder and began to write on Luz’s hand. Luz felt her face flush and she looked away at the contact.
“That’s my number, text me when you’re done with your classes today and I’ll meet you back here. I need to see what else you can see.”
And with that, the other teen turned and walked back the way that Luz had just come from.
“Well that was weird,” Luz said aloud to herself as she stared after their retreating form. She looked at the hastily scrawled number written on the back of her hand. She had no clue what to make of the strange encounter with the even stranger person, but she knew one thing for certain.
Whatever just happened, she wanted to know more.