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Amity felt like screaming into the unending void. Sadly it was closed for maintenance so she had to settle for her pillow instead. Why did she have to have a crush on the most perfectly clueless creature on the Boiling Isles? That absolutely wonderful, caring, compassionate, driven, forgiving, optimistic, boundless font of positive energy idiot? Oh sure she tried playing it cool at first. After keeping it together through Grom and the Grudgeby match nobody had a clue with how cool and detached she'd managed to appear. But as time went on and it became more obvious that playing coy or hard to get wouldn't work if you weren't being actively pursued (which is something those dating advice magazines forgot to mention) she had switched tactics.
At first Amity had tried complimenting the human on her good work, her successes, fashion choices, that sort of thing. Sadly Luz had taken it as basic friendly compliments and dialog and Amity realized that what was high praise from her counted as casual conversation for somebody as nice as Luz. Getting a little more desperate she'd actually dropped a couple of pickup lines, including the classic "are you a diviner" one. Luz seemed a lot more confused than flattered and only later did Amity realize that she had taken them as jokes she didn't get the punchline to, being too new to the Isles and magic. So Amity upped the stakes with a little gift to show her affection: a quality pen for all the glyphs Luz needed to write to do her magic. Luz had reciprocated with a gift of her own, a matching pair of pieces of jewelry for the two girls. Before Amity's hopes could grow too high though Luz had happily clarified that they were what human's called "friendship bracelets" which signified that they were truly great and caring friends.
With the revelation that Luz would be going back to the Human Realm eventually, Amity was getting desperate. So desperate that today had happened.
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"Luz, would you like to go out with me, on the weekend, which is three days from now?" Amity tried her best to stay clam, but she could feel her cheeks heating up with a luminous flush.
Luz, for her part, looked up from her textbook with a mild bit of shock. "Oh? Uh, where would we be going exactly?"
Amity smirked, having taken the time to pick the perfect place for the perfect first date. "The Museum of Magical History. There's a new display about ancient witch society from the seventh century and I know how much you're into ancient magic and stuff." Nice and public, low pressure, and something she would be interested in. Perfect first date material.
Luz perked up at that, like she had just realized something. "Oh okay, go to the museum for a new thing. Yeah, okay, I got it. Sure, that exhibit sounds neat, I'd love to go!" Before Amity could properly celebrate however Luz continued "I'll invite Willow and Gus, they'd probably get a kick out of it too! Oh crud it's getting late. I gotta go, Eda's expecting me to help sort stuff out. See you tomorrow and looking forward to the museum trip buddy!" and ran off in a hurry with a jaunty wave.
Amity stood there for the next five minutes, not moving. Just screaming internally.
********
She had flat out asked her out and nothing. Nadda. Zip. Zilch. Less than that she'd decided to invite other people to the date without a second thought! How could the human not get it?
Amity bolted upright as a sudden thought occurred to her. {Right, Luz isn't a witch, training to be one or no. She's a human, and I've been trying to get her attention the way witches do. Do humans even do it that way? Like she does a lot of things that seem weird and off or that she only does because she doesn't get what is going on. Like, she didn't get what the weapons at Grom would be for and had to have something as basic as that explained to her. She had to have something as basic as covens explained to her just because she didn't grow up with the idea at all. Who knows what sort of stuff humans do for romance?}
As in most cases where Amity wished to consider if Luz had any equivalent touchstone she turned to her Azura books. Surely there would be some romance there? Something to show Luz at least knew how the idea existed in witch form? Except no, there wasn't. Oh sure there was a lot of shipping material, especially with the subtle flirting Hecate had been doing, but nothing explicit. In fact Azura seemed oblivious to it all, almost like Luz. In fact, if it wasn't for the fact that Azura was a witch the relationship of Hecate trying to seduce her unsuccessfully would feel eerily similar to her own experience with Luz. Actually, didn't they also have this book series in the Human Realm? Amity had always assumed it was written by a witch and leaked its way over from the Boiling Isles, but as Luz herself proved it goes both ways. If you worked off of the idea that it was a human work and that Azura and Hecate were acting, like Luz, according to human ideas of relationships... that would mean that what witches saw as flirting humans saw as just friendly compliments. It fit way too well.
Back to screaming in the pillow.
********
After that disaster of a revelation last night Amity was finding it hard to focus in class. The fact that she hadn't gotten enough sleep, distracted by questions and anxiety well into the night, didn't help either. {Okay so Luz has human ideas of relationships and dating and stuff. So what can you do about it in the next two days to salvage the date? How can I get it through to her in just a day when I don't know how humans do it? What, I should just ask her? Oh yeah, that's romantic and shows I took the time to learn and care! But it's not like there is an expert on human stuff I... could... ask...} It took all of Amity's willpower not to slap her face in frustrated realization. Of course there was an expert on humans she could ask. That Augustus kid, Gus, whatever. He used to be the president of that human club thing until some drama happened and he got kicked out after detention broke or whatever. She hadn't really been paying too much attention to those rumors at the time. But still this was perfect! A human studies expert who hangs out with an actual human he could make further observations of, let alone the human she was interested in personally? It was perfect. So perfect in fact she was now wondering how she had missed it in the first place. She couldn't even blame sleep deprivation, this had been going on for weeks. Then again she hadn't realized that Luz being human could cause any real problems for their relationship until last night so she hadn't really been trying to think of a solution until then. Once she had realized the problem she had figured out the solution in a matter of hours. Much more impressive time scale, she was going with that one.
Now this just left her with one problem. How to get the information out of Gus. She couldn't tell him the real reason after all. Nobody had figured out her crush; she was way too good at hiding it and she wasn't going to blow it now. She just had to figure out some way of getting him to share what he knows about human romance without tipping off the reason she wanted to know. Luckily, she was a genius. Surely she could think of a perfect solution with only a bit of effort.
********
"You want to learn about human culture?" Gus asked, still surprised that Amity had sought him out. "Why are you curious all of a sudden? And why wouldn't you just ask Luz?"
"Well I'm interested because I'm friends, yep just friends, with a human now and so I want to know. For friendship reasons. Because we are friends." Amity explained, cool as ice. "And I don't want to ask Luz because I don't want her to feel self conscious or weird about it or like I'm judging her or that she doesn't belong or that I haven't been paying attention because I don't care about her... as a friend!"
Gus nods. "I get it. You don't want Luz to feel like some study or specimen you want info out of. I've been avoiding asking her like a million questions about humans because of the same sort of thing. Luckily I was already an expert, so I already knew how a lot of it worked even before I got to see Luz do stuff. I guess a lot of stuff she does would be confusing if you don't know how humans work."
"Yeah like, for example, oh I don't know," Amity said while doing a visual scan of everywhere in the room but Gus's eyes, "how humans do romance stuff? Like, would they even get how our romance novels work and stuff?"
"Actually that's a really fascinating subject." Gus pulled up an illusion of a board with images of various sorts connected with different colored strings. "I knew a good bit before meeting Luz but since then I've actually done a lot more research on the subject."
"Really? Why?" Amity pondered if she'd need to hide a body as part of clearing a route to Luz.
Gus, oblivious to his mortal peril, continued "Oh with a real human around as a friend I didn't want to send the wrong signals and break her heart by doing something like a human mating dance on accident for example."
"Humans have a mating dance?" Amity asks, all thoughts of homicide replaced with curiosity if Grom counted for any of that.
"No they don't. But the fact that they might and I wouldn't know is what prompted me to do the research!" Gus illusions up a pointer a taps the first image, a couple of human men engaged in a sword duel with a human woman in the background. "The first thing I found is that humans seem to be monogamous in the extreme. Like half their drama is about who people choose to be with between two options. Like, full on rivalries and feuds and duels and stuff over just who gets to be a date."
"Really?" Amity felt slightly alarmed at the thought that she might have to actually literally fight for Luz's affections. "They couldn't just, I don't know, have the person they were fighting over date both of them for a little bit to see who they're more compatible with and work it out that way?"
Gus shook his head. "Nope, from what I've read, dating more than one person is basically taboo. Even dating somebody else too soon after your last relationship broke up has a lot of negative social weight. Like, if you broke up you're expected to go months before starting to see anyone else."
Thinking about the possibility of having to wait literal months for even an opportunity to win Luz over if she dated somebody else even once suddenly gave Amity clarity on why humans might fight over it. "Wow, that sure in monogamous, yeah. Soooo, how do humans go about actually wooing each other to get to the sword part?"
"From what I can tell there are a few things a human needs when trying to court each other." Gus explains, first tapping an image of flowers. "The first is a gift of flowers. I've read that different flowers given as gifts mean different things with humans, so I'm not entirely sure which ones you'd give to show romantic interest. The only I even know that is it was a plot point that somebody sent the wrong sort of flower because they got them mixed up. White carnations are for good luck, yellow for rejections. So when he sent the wrong ones he wound up breaking her heart. Can you believe humans are that complex with flowers?"
"Yeah, that's crazy that even different colors of the same flower can mean very different things. Like, if you don't know what you're doing it could be a total minefield. Defiantly want to avoid giving Luz flowers and sending her the wrong message and making her hate me I mean us forever." Amity started tapping her legs, anxiety only building in response to this new complication when it came to Luz. "So if that's just one thing, what else do humans do to court each other?"
"Well another thing they do is give gifts of chocolate-"
"Chocolate? Seriously?" Amity was slightly aghast. Chocolate was very expensive, high class even. And humans used it casually for courting?
"Yeah, apparently it's really common in the human realm. Like, Luz was actually confused. Apparently it's so common there that she thought I was joking when I said it was rare. Like, a snack sized piece of chocolate costs less than a sandwich over there levels of common. So since it isn't some sort of big investment they use it all the time."
Amity supposed that made sense. But still... "Wait, if it's so common why use it for romance?"
"Ah, that's because it's easy to shape and mold chocolate, so you can make it shaped like a heart!" Gus tapped the next image which somewhat crudely depicted humans in odd animal inspired garb, somewhat like what Luz wears on occasion, having apparently ripped open another humans chest and holding it up to the heavens where a ray of light shown down upon it.
Amity felt like she had been slapped upside the head by her strongest abomination. "What? What is that?"
"I'm glad you asked." Gus cleared his throat a bit. "See humans cut out the hearts of their enemies and offer them up as sacrifices to the various gods they worship. So giving chocolate in the shape of a heart to the person you like symbolically calls back to that act of worship. Humans really like to be dramatic."
"Wow. Humans do that huh? With the whole cutting out hearts things. Wow, I am really glad I'm not enemies with Luz for a whole lot more reasons now." Amity wondered if Luz would expect her to convert if they got married... well if they were enemies Luz considered bad enough to do something like that to they probably had it coming. I mean Luz never even hinted at wanting to do something like that to Boscha so to cross that line was probably a lot harder than Gus was making it sound. "So besides the flower minefield and the super expensive chocolates shaped like godly offerings what else do humans do?"
"Ah I know one other thing they do for sure." Gus actually reached into his bag and pulled out a small book. "I just recently found out after Eda pulled this in from the human realm. Apparently humans find poetry a very romantic thing. See?" He pointed to the cover that clearly read Classical Romantic Poetry.
Amity snatched the book so fast one could almost hear the air displacement. However after spending a couple minutes reading it she was more confused than ever. "This doesn't seem very romantic. It's all descriptions of nature or questions about philosophy. I figured it would be all "your eyes shine like stars" type stuff. Humans really find this romantic?"
"That's what the book says. I'm not sure why but I think it's because you're supposed to just make beautiful works of art to dedicate to the person and they don't have to actually be about the person. Like, you take the time to craft something beautiful for them."
In that light, Amity could actually understand the gesture a bit better. Unfortunately she had never been much of one for poetry. The only serious attempt at writing she had done was last year with that Azura fan fiction. Which must never see the light of day. Ever. "Wow. That sure is a lot of complicated stuff. Like, really complicated and time consuming."
Gus nodded. "Yeah, I was really relieved. Besides the flowers thing there was no chance of me doing anything accidentally with Luz. Not that it would have mattered anyway as it turns out."
That brought Amity's thoughts to a screeching halt. "Wouldn't matter? Why?"
Gus tapped the last image, which proclaimed "Valentine's Day Sale, 15% Off" in bold letters. "It turns out, from what I can tell, humans can only really fall in love on one day out of the entire year. Valentines Day, the "Day of Love", which is a huge deal. It makes or breaks a relationship to see if the person you are dating will actually work out. Like half off all breakups happen then because they just didn't fall in love or the date went so horribly it ruined the relationship."
"So, even if you did start dating a human you have one shot on one day of the year to get it right to get her to fall in love with you or it's over forever. Either because she didn't fall in love with you or you didn't do the date right and it all falls apart." Amity could feel her eye twitch as she processed this new, huge, insane, nonsensical, seemingly out of nowhere obstacle that defied all logic.
"Yep," Gus replied, oblivious to the existential dread and torment he had unleashed unknowingly upon his sort-of-friend.
Amity's internal screaming finally died down enough for her to ask "So, when is this Valentines Day exactly?"
"Oh I have no idea. I don't know how to translate the human calendar to match ours." Gus explained happily. "I've been meaning to ask Luz to help with the translation but there's never been a good time. And anyway it's really low priority. I'm sure if any major human celebrations came up Luz would tell us, and it's not like any of us vitally need to know when this thing is anyway, right?"
********
"What do you mean the Unending Void is still closed for maintenance?"
"Look I'm sorry but a modern art college just had its finals, so the abyss is currently filled to capacity with their wails of anguish,"
"It's unending, how can it be full?"
"You don't hang around a lot of modern art students do you?"