Chapter Text
Black, acrid smoke wafted around Eda as soon as she stepped out of the portal door, and she wrinkled her nose, trying not to breathe it in. Her ears flicked under the handkerchief she’d wrapped around her head to keep them hidden as she picked up the faint sound of someone screaming for help.
It was the middle of the night in the human realm, but the bright orange light flickering in the distance past the trees almost made it look like sunrise.
Eda ripped the handkerchief from her head as she ran forward, tying it around her face to block her nose and mouth as the smoke got thicker and the orange light grew brighter, running until she was standing on the back edge of a property and staring at a burning house.
It was obvious the fire was out of control. Neighbors were pulling garden hoses and yelling for help, but the entire first floor of the house was engulfed. In the distance, Eda’s sharp eyes spotted the flashing lights of firetrucks, but they were still too far away. This house was moments away from collapse.
Those same eyes caught fluttering movement in one of the second story windows, a motion that was almost obscured by the heavy smoke. A curtain blew through broken glass, and there was a bloody arm waving desperately. Eda hurried closer, finally able to make out the ash-covered face of a woman.
Seeing Eda, the woman withdrew her arm and vanished from sight for a moment, only for both her arms to extend out the window, holding-
-holding a swaddled baby.
Eda didn’t think, just launched herself forward, Owlbert coming to life on her staff as she flew towards the window, hovering just above the flames that licked at the porch roof. The human woman inside seemed dazed, blinking at her, but her hands were strangely steady holding out the baby.
“Hang on, just hang on!” Eda snapped, trying to think of any spell that could get the mother and child out without immediately collapsing the house.
“Take her! Please!” the woman cried in a thickly accented voice as something inside the house cracked loudly. The woman wobbled forward as the building shook, and the baby let out a startled cry. Eda reached out, grabbing the infant, her knees locked tight around the staff as she balanced herself with the skill that years of Grudgby had given her. The woman let out a relieved sob as her child left her arms, and the sound tugged at something broken in Eda’s chest.
“I’ve got her!” Eda yelled, trying to reassure the woman as the baby began to wail in her arms. The woman leaned out the broken window, calling something in a language Eda didn’t know.
“¡Estás bien, Luz! ¡Todo va a estar bien!”
The house gave another tremor, the sound of the blaze almost drowning out the infant’s cries. The woman screamed at Eda, starting in her strange language and finishing in English, a look of wild desperation on her face. “ ¡Sáquenla de aquí! Go! Go!”
Eda tightened her grip on the bundle of blankets, glancing down at the fire that was licking up the walls from the first floor. “Hang on!” she called. “I’m coming right back!”
She turned her staff, angling for a soft patch of grass just beyond the fence line of the property, and as soon as she felt her feet touch the ground, she heard a sickening crash behind her. She turned to check on the human woman, just in time to throw up a golden shield to protect herself and the baby from the cloud of debris hurtling towards them.
Through the glow of her shield, she watched in horror as the house collapsed, the flames flickering towards the sky with a sense of horrific finality.
———————-
It soon turned into a long night of answering questions, ears safely hidden beneath the handkerchief again. The baby had been whisked away immediately by the paramedics, and it was hours later, as Eda gripped a cup of lukewarm coffee while being interviewed for the fifteenth time, that she even learned the kid’s name.
“Okay, so, we’ve got Luz Noceda, five months old, mother and father were DOA when emergency services arrived. Looks like she’s got a clean bill of health, thanks to you. I just need your signature on your statement here, and you’re free to go.”
Eda sighed, reaching for the pen, when the baby-
“ ¡Estás bien, Luz!”
-when Luz cooed in her sleep from the carrier the social worker had placed her in.
“What’s going to happen to her?” she found herself asking, unable to tear her eyes away from the sleeping baby, the pen gripped in her hand.
The social worker sighed, slowly running her hand through her hair and glancing at the clock on the wall before flipping through the small file on Luz in front of her. “Well, seems we don’t have any next-of-kin that we’ve found, so hopefully we’ll get her placed into a foster home, maybe adopted within a year or two.”
Eda frowned, setting the pen down, finally pulling her eyes from Luz. “You don’t sound sure of that.”
The woman clicked her tongue and gestured towards the pile of folders on her desk, looking at Eda with an expression that, while meant to be sympathetic, didn’t seem to be very sincere. “The Connecticut social services get a lot of cases like this. We do our best to place every child with a family, but our resources are limited. She’ll go to a group home until we can find somewhere for her.”
“Take her! Please!”
Through the plexiglass walls of the woman’s cubicle, Eda could see several other desks identical to the one before her, down to the large stacks of manila folders.
“What if I take her?”
She didn’t even realize what she had said until she registered the woman staring at her as if she’d grown a second head.
“Ma’am, with all due respect, while the actions you took to save the Novera baby are admirable, we can’t just-”
“Noceda,” Eda corrected.
“Sorry?”
“Her last name. It’s Noceda, not Novera. You just said it a second ago.”
The woman glanced down at Luz’s file tiredly. “Oh, you’re right. Noceda.”
Eda had never been particularly adept at Oracle magic, but even she could see what the future being presented was: This baby, whose mother had loved her and given up everything to keep her safe, was just a statistic. An orphan that would be lost in a system with overworked employees and not nearly enough resources.
Eda didn’t hesitate a moment more, didn’t consider the shambles of her own life or the ever-daunting threat of her curse. She reached deep into the tether that linked her to her magic, gripping the power she needed with just a single thought.
I need to get this kid out of here.
Her magic, wild and free and so magnificently warm in her chest, responded immediately.
The Illusion spell circle she subtly drew under her chair conjured a shimmering glaze over the social worker’s eyes, the papers on the desk glowing slightly.
The woman blinked once, twice, as the shimmer dulled before she cleared her throat, looking back down at the papers in her hand with a confused expression. “I’m so sorry, I seem to-”
“That’s alright,” Eda soothed gently, her magic still stretching through the air, tucking into the ether to follow her directions, focusing her energy on the human persona she used in this realm. “It’s late, I’m sure you’re tired. I’m Marilyn Woods. I’m picking up my niece, Luz Noceda? You called me a little while ago.”
The social worker nodded slowly as the Illusion finished snapping into place. “Of course. I’m so sorry about your loss. Were you and your sister close?”
Red curls and clever green eyes sparkling behind glasses, scraped knees and yellow sleeves and a duel-
Eda cleared her own throat, jerking her thoughts away from those memories.
“We used to be.”
The truth behind the statement sat heavily in her chest.
———————-
Eda shifted the carrier in her grip as she reached an arm up, rooting around for the portal key in her hair, the diaper bag hanging from her shoulder stopping her from truly being able to search for the key. Owlbert emerged, the key gripped in his beak, and she sighed, holding out her hand.
“Thanks, Owlbert.”
Her Palisman hooted softly before perching himself on her shoulder, peering down at the sleeping infant as Eda pressed her thumb into the eye of the key.
The door manifested as she levitated the large box of stuff that had been recovered from the Noceda house. There was a shed filled with a few more boxes standing on the back corner of the property, untouched by flames, but she’d managed to fill this box with some of what appeared to be essential in caring for Luz. Everything else could wait in the shed until she had time for another salvage trip.
Before she could second guess the carrier hanging from her arm, she marched through the portal, walking into the familiar, musty-scented living room of the Owl House.
The portal hadn’t even finished folding up behind her when the front door swung open, Hooty opening his mouth to greet her.
“Zip it!” she hissed, letting the box fall to the floor and hoisting the carrier up slightly so she could set it on the coffee table. Sighing, she lifted the strap from the diaper bag, letting it fall onto the floor next to the couch as she walked through to the kitchen.
She opened her fridge and grabbed the jug of apple blood, opting to skip the glass and take a long drink straight from the jug. She corked the jug and shoved it back into the fridge, wiping her mouth on her sleeve as she returned to the living room, where Hooty was looking down into the carrier. She moved to stand next to him, her arms folded over her chest, as they both stared down at the infant.
“Eda?” Hooty was unusually soft spoken. “What are we gonna do now?”
“I don’t know,” Eda replied, and the honesty of that statement frightened her.
—---------------
Eda hadn’t spent much time around babies, but the crying had to stop sometime , right?
Luz had woken up screaming a few hours after Eda herself had fallen asleep, and Eda was at a loss for what the baby wanted.
She’d been changed, taken a bottle, and Eda had even managed to get her to burp, but Luz’s crying had remained constant, and Eda had been pacing back and forth for hours, rocking Luz to no avail. Hooty had appeared once, but the look Eda had given him had sent the house demon straight back outside with not a peep.
“Please, kid,” Eda begged, setting Luz back down in her carrier and sinking down on the floor next to her, leaning back against her nest, the fatigue sitting in as she buried her head in her hands. “Please.”
Luz’s screams intensified.
Eda raised her head, eyes full of frustrated, exhausted tears. “I don’t know what you want!” she cried back. “I don’t know what I’m doing!”
The baby blinked at her before wailing again, her little voice almost hoarse.
Eda ran her fingers through her hair just as Hooty edged her large stained glass window open, stretching through the opening to drop something large into Eda’s lap.
Eda blinked down at the lute, her eyes immediately drawn to the small carving on the face of the instrument. She looked up for an explanation, but Hooty had disappeared again, the window still open to the warm night air.
She glanced back down at Luz, whose sobbing hiccups made it clear that she was just as tired as Eda was.
“Well, I’ve tried everything else,” Eda muttered as she picked up her lute, her fingers chasing the ghost of a touch that eased them into the correct position.
She plucked a nonsensical lullaby, humming softly, feeling her magic sing in response to each note.
She absently played, losing herself for a moment in the soothing calm that had filled the air, before she glanced back up at Luz to see the infant finally, blissfully asleep.
“So, music works, huh, kid?” she asked quietly,before yawning. Luz’s nose scrunched in her sleep, and Eda cracked a tired grin.
“Okay. We can work with that.”