Feliz Navidad
Luz’s POV
The snow had started to come down much heavier during her bike ride home from The Owl House. Luz had to be much more careful than normal since the layer of white was getting just thick enough for her tires to slide when she was breaking or turning but thankfully she was able to make it back to her garage without an incident.
Luz had started working back at Eda’s the Monday after finals week had finished and though the few days that she’s been back have mostly been filled by awkward silence, Luz was happy to go back to some form of normalcy after four days of feeling like death incarnate followed by a weekend's worth of coding in between passing out in her desk chair. She knew that Eda felt guilty for what happened since she was one of the chaperones and had tried to get Luz to open up about the events that occurred but Luz still refused to talk about it. They’d tried other topics of conversation but when Luz had visibly clammed up at the mention of Amity stopping by the other day, she and Eda came to a silent agreement that maybe some peace and quiet wasn’t a bad idea. Besides, Eda had way too many last minute Christmas shoppers to swindle anyway.
Luz’s teeth chattered as she locked up the garage behind her and as soon as she made it into her room she threw on the warmest clothes she could find and some fingerless gloves and hung the cold damp clothes she’d ridden home in up in the mudroom. They hadn’t had a scare with the utilities since they got the water turned back on but they were still trying to be conservative with heat to avoid any other issues. Thankfully it wasn’t getting unbearably cold, defined by her breath being visible indoors, quite yet but she still wrapped a blanket around her shoulders and microwaved a cup of water so that she had something warm to hold before dropping herself down into her computer chair.
She froze up just as she was about to open discord and had to remind herself to relax the muscle clenching her jaw. There was a feeling in her chest that she’d almost forgotten about until this moment. Something that seemed to grow as she removed the mouse away from the discord icon on her screen and clicked on the one for the game immediately instead. It felt strange logging into the game without first checking for messages from Salix, Caesar, or Witching or checking to see if any of them are online already, but she would get used to this eventually. No matter how long it took.
Instead, Luz put on an audiobook as background noise and opened up her private server to the project she’d been working on. She would have to say, The Artificer’s Staff was probably some of her best work. The Boiling Isles had a really good system for aspiring programmers and game designers like herself that allowed her to pick items from the main game and link them to what she wanted them to do. All of the youtube videos she’d been watching about coding must have really been paying off as well because after just a few more hours of polishing the design up, she was done. Luz watched her avatar stride into the arena of the private server and, at her command, placed a fire glyph on a practice dummy. Glyphs are usually activated through applying pressure by either stepping on them or pressing a key on the keyboard when nearby for the avatar to press on it, but Luz did neither at this moment. Instead she stepped to the other side of the arena and equipped the Artificer’s Staff.
Luz grinned at the neat little animation that she’d given to her project, the glowing of the red orb and the ‘shing’ audio cue as the wing extended slightly as if it were unsheathing from within itself. It was small, but very satisfying for her to see. Then, Luz pressed two specific keys at the same time and her avatar slammed th butt of the staff to the ground twice and the practice dummy burst into flames, fire from the initial blast also doing additional damage to the two adjacent dummies.
“Yes!” Luz shouted as she spun in her chair in celebration. “It actually worked!” There was a wide grin on her face as she continued to test out the staff on various glyphs, measuring how the distance from the target impacted the overall damage, making sure that it still functioned properly if placed on the ground or the walls, and overall just making sure all of her coding was functional. There was a bit of a glitch when she attempted to stack multiple glyphs on a dummy which she’d designed to multiply both the damage total and radius of blast by an amount calculated based on the number of glyphs. Unfortunately, something wouldn’t allow her to place multiple glyphs within such short range of each other. The main game also had a similar restriction but Luz as well as some of the other, admittedly few, artificers in a chatroom they shared have been chalking it up to being such a new class. She’d thought she’d cracked it with her code though.
Narrowing her eyes, Luz analyzed each line of code, tweaked something then checked to see if it fixed the problem. She must have been at it for longer than she thought because before she knew it, she could hear her mom’s car pulling into the driveway.
A few moments later Camilia walked through the door to see her daughter heating up the pieces of pork roast that she had cooked at Eda’s earlier in the evening. “Hi Mami, how was your day?” Luz called out as she placed a plate down at her mother’s spot and began heating up her own.
“As good as the holidays ever are.” Camilia responded with a chuckle. She walked over to Luz who leaned down to allow her to kiss her on the forehead and placed a hand on her cheek when they pulled away. “You look like you’re doing much better,” she remarked and Luz was about to say something about her lip finally properly scabbing over when her mother specified. “You’re smiling again.”
Luz blinked at that. She hadn’t realized it had been that bad lately, but after the moment passed her shocked expression was once more replaced by the smile. She leaned down to give her mom a proper hug, not caring about the throbbing that reminded her of the fading bruises still present on her ribs. “Yeah, I guess I am.” After a long moment, Luz pulled back to place her own meal on the table. “Now,” she said as she popped a bit of pork into her mouth. “Tell me about your day.”
Her mom was more than happy to go over the stupid injuries that came with the holidays. The people showing up with alcohol poisoning, kids trying pot for the first time who thought they were dying because the weed was hitting harder than they thought it would, the guy who had apparently ‘fallen into the ceramic christmas tree’ while on this way to the shower and that was why it was up his butt.
By the time her mother got to that last story Luz was laughing so hard her stomach ached. It felt good. She still had that feeling in her chest, something cold and hollow that had planted itself there after the… incident. But yeah, this… this felt good.
“You know Luz,” Camilia said once her daughter stopped clutching her stomach from laughing too hard. “It is after midnight, and you do remember what day it is. Don’t you?”
Luz’s smile somehow managed to get even wider as she sprung up from her chair. “Wait right here!” She called as she sprinted towards her room, almost missing her mother’s reply of “Then I wouldn’t be able to get yours!”
Her hand scrambled in the space beneath her bed for a few seconds before her fingers grasped the small box she was searching for. By the time she got back to the kitchen her mom was walking back through the front door with a slightly larger box that she had probably been hiding in her car. The two of them then returned to their seats at the table and each handed each other their respective presents.
“You go first Carino.” Camilia nodded to the box and Luz lifted it up. Just by holding it, Luz could already tell by the weight and the feel that it was a book. Carefully, she peeled at the tape holding the wrapping paper in place and slid out the piece of literature. Luz’s eyes widened as the cover finally revealed itself. “No way. Is this-”
“Open the cover.” Her mom interrupted with a knowing smile.
Without a moment’s hesitation, Luz opened the cover of the sixth, and most recent, addition to the Azura series to reveal the author’s signature. “Oh my god! Oh my god! You actually got one!” Luz used to be obsessed with the Azura books, they helped her take her mind off of what was going on around her before she’d gotten into video games, and she still really enjoyed reading through them occasionally even though she had some additional outlets now as well. Back in October when the book was first released the bookstore had advertised that they had a few signed copies but they were never open when Luz got out of work so she had missed the chance, not that she had the spare cash for it anyway. But somehow her mom had scored a copy. “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!” Luz shouted as she reached over the table to hug her mom again.
“You’re welcome, Mija.” Luz could hear the smile in her mother’s voice.
“Okay, now your turn.” Luz said, nudging the smaller box forward as she released her grip on the older woman.
Camilia gave Luz a curious smile as she took the much smaller box in her hands. It was really light too and Luz was grateful that her mom could tell that she needed to be gentle with this one instead of shaking it like she used to do jokingly when Luz was little.
Luz watched as her mom opened the lid and drew a breath at what was inside. “Do you like it?”
Her mom didn’t answer with words but Luz could tell by the look in her eye as she held up the necklace that it was perfect. The charm was a crucifix, not exactly the same but very similar, to one that Camilia used to own. Neither she nor Luz were particularly religious, hence why they had no plans of going to church in the morning, but the original had been a gift from Camilia’s mother from when she was a young girl. She’d worn it all the time and Luz had a vivid memory of staying in the car as a little kid while her mother sold it so that they’d be able to eat that week and realising just how bad things had gotten.
When she started working for Eda, Luz had spotted the, much cheaper but similarly looking, necklace in a display case. Then, after learning that commissions would give her the ability to make above minimum wage, she’d started saving up nickels and dimes here and there until she had enough, and very awkwardly asked Eda if she could buy it.
The woman had just laughed and given it to her while making a quip about trying to get rid of it for years and that was the moment that Luz had known she was really going to like working at The Owl House. But those memories weren’t what mattered in that moment.
“Luz, I love it.”
They hugged again and Luz helped her place it around her neck. The two of them talked for a little while longer but even though Luz had the following day off because Eda was planning to do something with her sister, her mom still needed to be up at some point in the day.
Luz went back to her computer while her mother used the bathroom to shower. She had one more idea about how to make the program work that she wanted to try. It took a few minutes to make the adjustments in the code and she was just about to try it out when she heard a knock at the door. Her mom popped her head in after receiving the go-ahead from Luz, hair still damp from the shower.
“Feliz Navidad, Carino. Buenas Noches.” She whispered with a warm smile on her face.
“Feliz Navidad, Mami.”
Camilia shut the door behind her and Luz hit enter on her keyboard, the small smile on her face growing just a little bit wider.
It worked.