Archive of Our Own ^beta

After everything Hunter finds himself lying out in the grass next to Luz, all that new growth sprouting up that is her doing, he knows, and he’s staring up at the sky and the stars peeking out, at the Titan’s hand, now reaching forever for the sky, because of what—

“You’re sure he’s dead?” Hunter asks.

“Yeah,” Luz says. She nudges her hand against his own, a wild sort of smile on her face. Stringbean has curled up into a little ball on her chest, the tiny palisman rising and falling with each of Luz’s breaths. “I’m sure. You never have to worry about him again.”

There’s a part of Hunter that will always worry about his Uncle—about Belos. That will always be looking back over his shoulder, panic to hide whatever he’s doing from any adult that enters his space. He’s still not sure where he’s going, after this: he finally saw Darius again after everything, and that was—good. It was really good. But the Isles is mostly still in a state of destruction and if he’s remembering right he’s pretty sure Darius’s house was somewhere on the Titan’s arm, that now towers up over them.

But for now he can lie on the earth with Luz and breathe and his chest doesn’t rattle so much. He shivers against the evening breeze. He knows other people are around—he can hear their voices spilling out of the Owl House, see them as they walk around. But for now it’s him and Luz and her skin against his.

Staring up at the sky, he says, “do the stars look different to you?”

“Ha, you probably just got used to the human-realm ones,” Luz says, but follows his finger, and— “oh.”

Most of the stars are the same. But there’s one constellation Hunter remembers better than them all, because it’s one Luz showed him, so long ago, when they met for real, when he first met Flap—

He rests his hand not near Luz’s over his heart. It beats steadily.

The constellation she showed him is gone: those twinkling stars that traced out the light glyph in the sky, that he’d watch rise and fall from his bedroom window, back in the castle, wild magic etched into every night. And now the stars are still there, but they just—aren’t right. They don’t line up.

“When the—Titan died,” Luz says, her voice faltering, and she shoves herself up, sending Stringbean tumbling to the ground with a squeak. “The glyphs were like—language. I—I could see it, it was so clear when I was sort of a Titan, too, like…like I could see the entire universe and it was all made up of glyphs, all the magic that came from…but now the Titan is dead, really dead. So I guess…”

She digs a bit of paper out of her pockets and scrawls out the light glyph. When she touches it, nothing happens. No paper that curls into an orb of light, just…ink on processed tree-pulp.

Stringbean coils around her witch’s arm with a whine.

“It’s—fine,” Luz says, but Hunter can see tears prickling up at the corners of her eyes, and he shoves himself sitting so when she tips over she has his shoulder to lean on, even if it’s a little bit dirt-covered. “I guess, haha, Stringbean really hatched at the right time, huh? Now we’re—the same.”

Hunter traces a pattern on her palm: a circle, the sharp points of the lines within. “The same?”

“Witches without bile-sacs.” She rubs Stringbean’s head, her palisman purring much like a cat, nudging her head to Luz’s chin. “…gotta. Figure out something new. Again.”

Hunter—

Wants to tell her it’ll be okay. That he knows Luz, and knows she won’t ever give up. That she’ll figure out some way to do magic again, no matter what the universe tells her, because if she can die and speak to the Titan themself and come back, come back as a Titan, and see the magic that makes up their entire world—well, he can’t imagine a world where Luz gives up. He refuses to live in it. He’ll—be there for her. Or something.

He wants to tell her he was a magicless witch, and he made it. Through the artificial staff that tasted like sharp metal in his mouth, to the sweetness of wild magic, the glyphs he learned from her, to—to Flapjack. To Flapjack who nested in his hair and made a mess of it, who bit at his unruly curl, who chirped at him when he was lying awake at night, a warm comfort against his neck, who laughed at him whenever he fell on his face, who was there, without whom he would not be here but he’d be dead like all the other Grimwalkers his Uncle made, like—

Hunter stands. Luz starts, jerking up to look at him, and he can see the words starting to form on her lips, the way her eyes go wide, the same way they did when Flapjack first died, when he dissolved into golden light all to save Hunter’s life because he wasn’t enough to avoid his Uncle, couldn’t even kill him properly and now the entire Isles is a wreak, and Luz could’ve died, and Flapjack did die, and that brave little bird survived so much and he never even got to see his home again.

“Hunter,” Luz starts to say, and Stringbean stretches out to him, and it’s—all—

“I’m going inside,” Hunter manages, his voice choking up. “I’m—I—”

Luz whispers, blinking tears out of her eyes, “Hunter, I didn’t…”

“It’s not your fault,” he tells her. He turns sharp on his heel and enters the Owl House, pushes his way past friends that reach out for him, and traces the path all the way upstairs, where he crawls out Luz’s window, onto the roof, and there he can see Luz but she can’t see him: at this brilliant, bright witch, her palisman nuzzling her, and Hunter in that moment wants—

Something. He wants Flapjack back. He wants magic. He wants everything he won’t ever have because if glyphs no longer work and Flapjack is dead that means he gets no magic, nothing beyond the golden shuttering of his flashstep. The last pathetic remnants of his palisman he killed and won’t ever see again, and what use will it be in rebuilding the Isles?

He doesn’t cry, because he can’t. But up on the roof he stares at the changed sky, the missing light glyph, and wonders—what happens to me now?

He watches the Isles try to rebuild.

There’s—a lot. A lot that was destroyed and an entire arm of the isles that once housed countless people and now all those people have to figure out how to rebuild in a place that won’t ever be what it was. Trees grow sideways, up there. Hunter finds the ruins of Darius’s house and isn’t sure how that’s supposed to make him feel, so mostly he just doesn’t think about it.

Willow’s up there a lot, helping plant communities recover. She’s all over, actually: there’s a lot more plants than there used to be, and countless plants that were once thought to be long-extinct, and a lot of work to be done in making sure they’re able to reestablish. She knows more about plants than Hunter could ever really comprehend but he likes listening to her talk about it, watch her work with them, the magic that flows from them to her and back again. It’s something he can do, not the magic, really, but he can help with planting. It’s—something.

Gus hangs around the towns. He’s got a knack for design even if some of his ideas are a little wonky, and he’s constantly bouncing designs off of Hunter, not that Hunter has much to offer. Instead Hunter cleans up rubble by hand, feels his ears go hot at how much more everyone else gets done, when they aren’t stuck just with what they can carry. He can’t even carry as much as he once could. His stares at his scarred face in the puddles after it rains and doesn’t really recognize the face staring back at him. He’s used to having someone on his shoulder.

Darius complains a lot about how much work making a whole new government is. He still doesn’t really have a permanent house, save for a cave Eberwolf has claimed that is actually pretty nice, but he lets Hunter crash with him and offer his own suggestions, things he’s picked up from a lifetime growing up deeply entrenched in a terrible government. He’s not sure how much help he’s being. He goes to see the ruins of the castle with Darius, the gaping hole where the Titan’s heart once beat. Hunter manages five minutes before he has to leave, trying to swallow back bile.

His Uncle did that. His Uncle did that and Hunter can’t even fix it, because he can’t do magic, because he’s useless.

Luz is all over the place. She’s constantly flying this way, that, and she always has someone tagging along with her: King, usually, the two of them laughing up in the air on her staff, him needling her to tell him about Titan magic, Luz retorting that she was a Titian for all of like, an hour, max, and it was all instinct, anyway, the universe written out in glyphs. Sometimes it’s The Collector, who follows her much quieter than King does, hugs King’s stuffed rabbit to his chest. Apparently they’ve been staying at the Owl House. Hunter hasn’t been there since that first day, so he wouldn’t know.

Very, very rarely, he’ll see Amity with her, and on those days Luz doesn’t get a lot done but she seems happier than he’s seen her in a long time, so Hunter makes sure nobody goes and bothers the two of them. It’s the least he can do. He hopes Luz is happy. She deserves to be happy.

He’s—

Trying. He wants to help repair. He wants to fix everything his Uncle broke, and he doesn’t want to believe Darius when the man tells him that there’s some things that just aren’t going to get fixed, but will have to be instead adapted to. He dreams that he sees Flapjack again and wakes up alone.

He can’t even get his flashstep to work.

He keeps waking up every day feeling lost, alone, empty. There’s no place for him to fit into. He’s not Willow, or Gus, or Darius, or Luz. He doesn’t have magic like the former three, and he doesn’t have a staff like the latter. He’s not sure what Luz has managed to do without glyphs. He’s—not sure how to go back to the Owl House.

Sometimes he takes walks and stares at it and in those moments it’s like he’s the Golden Guard again: lying-in-wait, alone.

But the months turn on. People adapt. And one day, three months later, Hunter is woken up by Luz crawling in through the window of his room in Darius’s house, and for the first time in three months he hears her voice directed at him, saying, “Hunter, the first palistrom tree was just planted.”

Hunter manages, “wuh?”

Stringbean shimmies her way up to rest on Hunter’s chest. Luz sits at the foot of his bed, continues, “in the Bat Queen’s forest, where she used to shelter all the lost palismen. It’s the first of many. But Dell, uh, Eda’s Dad? He and the Bat Queen can’t do it alone. They need…younger witches. Who. Want to help.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Luz looks away. “I’ve missed you.”

“Doesn’t answer my question.”

She shrugs. “Doesn’t it?”

He’s—he’s watched her from afar and wanted to ask her, how did you do it? But he knows exactly how she did it. He knows exactly how she managed everything, because she had Stringbean. Because she woke up to a palisman sleeping on her chest. Because she might not have a bile-sac and she might not have glyphs but she has magic, still. Even if it’s something that had to be fought for.

“I miss you, too,” he says. He pets Stringbean’s head and she coos and Hunter remembers, long ago, when they were stuck in the human realm, when Flapjack was alive, and would sit on her egg like he was big enough to keep it safe alone. She’s never met Flapjack. He was there the entire time she was an egg, and she never, ever met him, and she won’t ever get to.

He can’t keep being useless. He can’t keep drifting, can’t keep offering nothing. He had magic with Flapjack. He felt alive with Flapjack. Now he just has a face covered in scars from the time Flapjack had to die to save him. A heart that beats sluggishly. A flashstep that once filled him with such warmth that he can’t reach for anymore, no matter how many times he stretches for it.

“You don’t have to,” Luz whispers, “but I was just thinking. And if you just want to see it and decide then—you know you’ll always have a home with me, right? Whether that be at the Owl House or my mom’s—a lot of people really care about you.”

“Oh,” Hunter says, and then, “is The Collector really staying with you?”

Luz laughs. She laughs so hard she shakes and Hunter scoots over to sit next to her, hug her against his side, and she slots there like a missing piece and Stringbean slithers up to stretch across them both, and Hunter can’t understand her, can’t speak to her, not like he could speak to Flapjack, but she flicks her tongue at him and smiles and he just wants, for one second, to see his palisman again.

But he won’t. Not now, not ever. And he has to help. He’s not—he’s not going to let himself be a burden. Not again. He can’t let anybody else hurt themselves for his sake.

So he says, “okay. I’ll see the palistrom tree.”

He meets Dell. Talks to the man about palismen, and trees, and what it takes to make sure they grow up and thrive.

Three months after everything, Hunter picks up a carving knife.

There’s a lot to learn about carving palismen, about caring for trees. For the first time in his life Hunter knows more about a plant than Willow and whenever she stops by he tells her all about it, learns even more in return from her, because he can’t speak to plants like she can, doesn’t have that connection. But he watches the first of the palistrom trees grow, flourish surrounded by so much wild magic, and there’s—something there, he thinks.

What is it that Belos used to make him? How many palistrom trees were killed, to make the Grimwalkers?

He learns how to use the carving knife, how to shape wood under his hands. Palismen, Dell tells him, are shaped mostly by the dreams of their witches—what does Hunter want, most, out of everything?

He stares at the palistrom wood before him and his mind goes blank. He wants Flapjack. He wants to not be useless. He needs a staff to not be useless, and there’s no world where he sees Flapjack, ever again. He has to move on. He has to start carving.

He walks among the trees instead. One sapling becomes two becomes nearly ten by the end of the first month, the palistrom trees growing faster than, as Willow tells him, any tree she’s ever seen. Hunter sits with the Bat Queen and learns the history of the trees, the way they soak up magic and put even more of it back out into the world, their roots that tangle together, interlocked across the Isles. Various palismen find homes in their branches, their roots, their leaves. More and more of the palismen that Bat Queen once cared for find new homes, new witches.

He shows Willow around, talking for hours about what he’s doing, and everything is great until she goes home and he’s reminded, once again, that at the end of the day he’s alone. He hides away in his room at Darius’s new house until he’s lured out with the promise of food and it is a weird rat Eberwolf caught but cooked it tastes pretty good, actually. Gus takes him on a tour of Bonesborough, tells him that Hexside is finally fixed enough for school to start up, again—does he want to attend?

There will be flyer derby, Gus tells him. Hunter—

Wants. Wants it so badly, but when he sees that palistrom wood, that he’s left on his bedside table, it mocks him. He shaves off a few bits of wood, makes the shape of a pointed ear. Nearly throws it at his wall and curls up instead on his blankets.

He can’t play flyer derby without a staff. He can’t play flyer derby without Flapjack.

He chases Luz up into the branches of the growing palistrom trees whenever she stops by, because it makes her laugh and sometimes he feels like he could almost reach his flashstep, again, if he closes his eyes and pretends. Up hidden in the branches he and Luz stare at the sky, trace new pattern in the stars. None of their attempts to find a new light glyph work. Stringbean turns into her staff form and Luz shows off what she’s learned how to do: a very, very powerful blast of purple magic, that sparks through the sky like a shooting star.

“It’s The Collector’s favorite,” Luz informs him, balancing on a branch just above him. Stringbean purrs and wraps around her neck. “He actually should be around here somewhere, him and King. Eda went out with Raine and Mom’s got something with Vee in human-school so I’m on babysitting duty.”

“Not a very good babysitter,” Hunter teases, “if you’re up here rather than watching them.”

Luz points a finger at him. “You shut up,” she says, but she’s grinning. “How’s carving going?”

Hunter stiffens. “It’s—uh.”

He picks up the carving knife every single day. It’s been a month and he’s barely managed more than an ear.

“…going,” is what he says. “How’d you know what to carve?”

“Oh, I didn’t.” Luz laughs and scratches Stringbean’s cheek. “That’s why I carved an egg! Let her pick.”

But that doesn’t really answer his question. You wanted a palisman, is what he’s trying to ask. How do I do that, when knowing I need one isn’t enough?

More and more palismen leave, even the ones that aren’t adopted: off to explore the world, now that it’s safe for them to do so. Hunter says goodbye to familiar faces: the lion who always liked to eat the dandelions that sprouted up, the turtle that helped protect the smallest saplings during their first rainstorm. He doesn’t know any of their names, but—it’s nice to see them around. He hopes they find somewhere nice, out there.

“How did you know what to carve?” he asks Dell.

Dell looks up, his own palisman dozing on his shoulder. They don’t look that much like Flapjack, really, but something in Hunter seizes up still.

“I didn’t,” Dell says, “I just let my heart guide me.”

Hunter says, “how did your heart know?”

He tries. He tries, and tries, and tries. Willow starts up the flyer derby team again. Luz tells him Stringbean would be happy to fly with Hunter for their games and for a second Hunter wants, more than anything else, to scream—don’t you get it? Flapjack is all I get!

“No,” he says, instead, “I—I’m too busy. That’s all.”

He stays over for a while at the Owl House. He’s woken up every morning by Luz as she rushes to school, crashing in through the portal, its entrance changing slightly every time: the fridge, the cabinets. Once she topples in through the window and right onto Hunter’s chest and as he blinks awake, dazed and crushed, she just groans, “Collector.”

Hunter tries and fails to shove her off of him.

“I’m going to throw him out the window,” Luz declares, and based on the delighted shrieking that prevents him from falling back asleep, he assumes she does just that. He manages to catch a solid three extra minutes before the door is pushed open and a brightly-colored child curls up on Luz’s bed with him, and maybe he really should just go back to Darius’s.

The Collector watches him with wide, unblinking eyes. It makes Hunter’s skin crawl.

“Where’s your little guy?” they ask.

“My.” Hunter blinks. “Huh?”

“Like.” The Collector pulls King’s stuffed rabbit out of the folds of his cloak and waves the pink plush. “Your guy! Luz has one, Eda has one, Lilith has one, King has one ‘cause we share François now. Even a ton’a people who didn’t have one at the start have one now! Like Raine! But I’ve never seen you with one.”

Hunter—

He stands. It knocks The Collector off Luz’s bed and they squawk, pinwheeling their arms to keep floating in the air. “I’m—working on it,” is what he says. “I’m fixing it. Why are you pushing me?”

“I—”

“I’ll—prove it,” Hunter snaps, “I’ll go finish carving right now. And join the flyer derby team. And go to school. And I’ll do all of it without Flapjack because I have to, because he’s dead and I killed him and I’m nothing without him, and—and—”

He doesn’t know when he starts crying. All he knows is that The Collector raises a hand, says, their voice tiny, “does this mean you’re—sad?”

“I’m fine!” Hunter yells, and abandons them.

He spends the entire day trying to carve and gets nowhere, so he hides out in the palistrom woods, instead. Leans heavy against the trees, there, his breathes shaky. Occasionally he catches glimpses of other witches, leaving with their palismen, so he hides up in the trees, lies on his back on a thick branch, staring into the blinding sun.

He’s pretty sure Willow and Gus come looking for him. He’s pretty sure he agreed to go watch their game today, even if he wasn’t playing.

He thinks if he sees another staff he’s going to snap it. Just—like—Belos—

He digs his nails so hard into his palms it draws blood. The sun burns his eyes. The palistrom trees are silent, and he wants to draw blood from them, too, because he’s been doing this for—for over a month, and it isn’t better. Flapjack isn’t coming back. He can’t even fucking carve a new palisman to stop being useless for once.

Above him, a bird chirps, and Hunter rolls onto his side, his cheek and scars cutting into the wood.

“Go away,” he mutters, “leave me alone.”

He doesn’t leave until Darius comes to find him, and even then, he considers, for a very long moment: would it even matter, if I just disappeared?

He goes home. He takes a shower. He watches bits of wood swirl down the drain.

He doesn’t look at the barely-carved palistrom wood.

Time moves on. Hunter continues to not carve a new palisman. You need to, he tells himself, you can’t just wallow forever. Everyone else is helping. What are you even capable of doing?

His hand shakes every time he picks up the knife. He hides the palistrom wood at the bottom of one of his drawers and pretends it doesn’t exist, which doesn’t work too well. He can feel it calling him. It’s a pit in his chest, a thorn stuck in his throat.

He hangs out with Luz. Pretends like he doesn’t notice the ways The Collector’s started to shy away from him, doesn’t come barging into Luz’s room when Hunter’s spending the night, anymore. There’s a terrible part of him that basks in that, in not having to deal with them. No amount of digging can pull it out.

The first palisman he carves isn’t his own: it’s a frog, for one of the younger students at Hexside, who didn’t connect with any of the palismen still hanging around with the Bat Queen. Dell supervises him the entire time, tells him it’s okay if he struggles—but the thing is he doesn’t. It’s so…easy. The kid doesn’t want to be alone. Hunter’s the one to hand the completed palisman off to the kid, and when she comes to life for the first time, pokes the kid in the nose with her tongue…

It’s indescribable. Dell claps him on the back and tells him he’s proud. Hunter doesn’t cry then, but he does cry later, when Darius tells him something similar.

“It’s not even—that impressive,” Hunter says, “I mean, Dell basically helped me the entire time, and I still can’t—”

“It is,” Darius says, “very impressive, little prince,” and he. Hugs. Hunter. And it’s.

Ah. Mmm. Maybe this is why Luz does it so much.

He leaves his window open that night, stares up at the stars, at the skies. At the palismen he can see, living freely, entirely unbothered by those who used to hunt them, crack them open, watch them ooze blood and dissolve into gold and—

A bird lands on his windowsill and Hunter yelps, before realizing—oh, wait. Palisman. And…one he’s seen before, the bluejay that still lives with the Bat Queen, helps out in collecting seeds—what is she doing so far from home?

“Hey,” Hunter greets, and the bluejay tilts her head and chirps at him. “Is, uh—is everything okay back in the palistrom woods? There’s not, like, fires, or anything, are there? Do I need to be there?”

She shakes her head but twitches her wings, hopping backwards.

“No fires,” Hunter guesses, which is—good. He’s been terrified of someone—burning the whole place down. “But I need to come anyways? Even at,” he checks the time, “nearly one in the morning?”

She nods.

“Well.” It’s not like he’s going to ignore her. “Uh, I’ll be there soon.”

The bird nods, and…doesn’t fly off. Instead she lets herself into his room proper as Hunter digs around for something better to wear than his pajamas, his one-and-only wolf shirt, his favorite thing from the human realm. In his rattlings he bumps into the dresser, causes one of the drawers to slide open. When he bends down to push it shut, he sees—

The bluejay clicks.

“Yeah, uh.” Hunter knocks the drawer shut. “It’s—nothing. Seriously.” He pulls on a jacket. “Okay. Let me just go leave a note for Darius and I’ll follow you.”

The problem is bad, but not, like, unfixable, bad: boiling rain has started to eat away at a few of the newest saplings, still too young for their bark to harden up. Hunter’s never been particularly affected by the rain—the only perk of being a Grimwalker, he thinks—so he’s able to help the Bat Queen in making some makeshift umbrellas, try to coax the nearby trees to help out the saplings for the next storm. It would be better if he had magic, could speak to the plants like Willow can—but whatever. It’s fine. They don’t lose any saplings, and that’s.

The bluejay-palisman lands on a low-hanging branch and chirps at him.

“Oh—right. Thanks for getting me.” He pets her head. “I should probably head back soon. It’s Friday, so I’m pretty sure Luz is going to wake me up by like, dumping a bucket of water on me, or something. As tradition goes.”

She tilts her head and churrs, amused.

“Yeah, Luz is—something else.” Hunter grins. “Okay. Find me if the umbrellas don’t hold up.”

Luz doesn’t, actually, wake him up by dumping a bucket of water on him. Instead she jumps on his bed and throws Stringbean in his face.

“This is very rude,” Hunter informs her, shoving her off the bed.

She giggles. “Yeah, yeah.” Louder, she calls, “Darius, I’m staying for breakfast!”

Darius’s voice comes back to them. “I did not agree to feed two teenagers.”

“That’s Darius for okay.” Hunter lets Stringbean curl around his arm with a purr. “What are you doing today?”

“Babysitting.” She sticks out her tongue. “Vee’s touring human colleges. Which is like, wild, because she’s still got like, three years of high school left or whatever. And Eda went with her and Mom for some reason? Something about stealing ideas from them, so. I guess keep your eyes peeled for that.”

“…huh.” Hunter’s pretty sure he understood about half of that. “Wait, babysitting? Where are King and The Collector, then?”

“Around.” Luz goes to stick her head out his window. “GUYS! Hunter’s up!”

Hunter follows her to see that King is dozing in the yard. He yawns at Luz’s yell. “Why do you gotta do this, anyways?”

“Tradition,” Luz says, pulling Hunter in for a hug. He yelps and shoves her off of him when she ruffles up his bedhead. “Anyways. You’d better show up if you want breakfast. Where’s—”

King yawns again, clambering up into Hunter’s window. “Saw a bird. Tried to chase it.”

Hunter starts. “A bird? It wasn’t a bluejay, was it? If it is that might mean there’s something wrong at the palistrom woods, I knew those umbrellas weren’t enough!”

“Huh? Um, I didn’t see what it looked like.” King leaps onto the floor. “So…”

Hunter sighs. “Tell Darius what happened if I don’t come back. I should really go check it out.”

“Eat your share of breakfast, got it.” Luz offers him a thumbs-up. Hunter smacks her in the forehead and leaves her to giggle.

The bird is, indeed, the bluejay from earlier, and he finds both her and The Collector just around the other side of the house, the bluejay perched on The Collector’s arm.

“Uh, hi,” Hunter says, and The Collector jumps at his voice, the bluejay flapping into the air.

“Gah! I didn’t do anything!”

“I—never said you did?”

The Collector takes a breath. “Oh. Right.” They glance to the side. “Where’s Luz and King?”

“Inside. What are you doing out here?”

“Just…” they trail off. The bluejay lands on their shoulder, tilting her head. “Talking to the birdie. But I dunno what she’s saying. Just a lot of bird noises.”

“Palismen tend to do that,” Hunter says, and then, to the bird, “did something happen with the palistrom trees again?”

She shakes her head.

Thank the Titian. Hunter lets out a sigh of relief. If any of the saplings died…he doesn’t know. He’s just—really happy they’re okay. “Then…why are you here?”

She chirps and ruffles her wings.

Yeah, that answers nothing. Deciding it probably isn’t important, Hunter looks instead to The Collector, who is now, for some reason, staring at the bluejay with wide eyes. “Hey, Collector, you…good?”

He hasn’t talked to them one-on-one since that one time in the Owl House.

They jump. “I’m—yes! I’m, uh. I mean.” They lower their voice to a whisper, which is not that much quieter than their normal speaking volume. “This is a palisman?”

“Yes?”

“I didn’t know.” They pet the bluejay’s wings, and she nips at their fingers. “I—I don’t know a lot of palismen. I see a lotta ‘em but. That’s kinda it. Really just Stringbean and Owlbert like me I think.”

“That’s…cool.” Hunter really wants to get back inside. His skin is crawling and he hates it and he just—wants to has his normal Friday. Where he hangs out with Luz and for a day doesn’t have to think about the drawer and what’s in it, but can instead just…see what Luz has been up to. Maybe check out Hexside. Show her the newest saplings, tell her all about the palisman he carved for that kid, and how happy they were.

“I don’t get it,” The Collector says, as Hunter is about to turn to just leave.

He pauses. “Get what?”

“Witches got all…” they wave their hands around, letting out a few sparks of colorful magic. “All the magic in the world! None of them need palismen or whatever. But—now like all of ‘em do. I know it wasn’t like that before. I know.” He glances down. “I saw when Phillip, would, um.”

“Kill them,” Hunter says, and The Collector shrinks into their oversized robes. “Yeah. I saw, too.”

“Oh.” They play with the ends of their sleeves. The bluejay cheeps, but they shake her off of their arm, and she flies there before them for a moment, a frown drawing across her beak. “I guess I just. Wonder what it’s like. To not be alone.”

Hunter swallows.

“Yeah,” he says, “I do, too.”

He spends a lot more time in the palistrom woods.

It’s—nice. It’s nice, which is…weird, still. He checks up on all the trees, can pick each and every one of them out, names and all. Well, he says names, but it’s more—a sensation. Dell tells him he’s always thought palistrom trees were a lot more like witches than anybody ever gave them credit for, and Hunter can see that, sort of. He doesn’t even have to harvest bark: the trees give it to him, unprompted.

The bluejay hangs around him, more and more—they can’t talk, really, but she’s a nice companion, in early dawns, the late nights. She helps him out when he’s planting seeds, is even better than Dell’s palisman at it, which the old cardinal takes with an upturned beak.

One carved palisman becomes two, three, four. The forest continues to grow, until they’ve got more palistrom wood than they do witches seeking palismen, so some of the palismen Hunter carves stay instead in the forest, or go out to explore, or any number of things. They have the options.

“It’s really, really cool,” Luz tells him, on the eve of his 17th birthday, “like—this place,” and she gestures to the woods around them, “you’re like, Willow-levels of plant wiz!”

Hunter flushes. “I really just know palistrom trees,” he says, “I wouldn’t—say that. She’s smart about, like, all plants. Did you see, the—”

“The top of the hand?” Luz nods, practically bouncing. Stringbean spins a circle through the air. “I did! All those plants from the Knee, I can’t believe all the relocation efforts paid off. And the new plants! Gah! It’s so—amazing! All those plants that went extinct, and they’re just…”

“Back.” Hunter nudges her. “Because of you.”

“Huuuuuunter!” Luz wails, her face red as she shoves him over, and Hunter laughs. “You’re embarrassing me! It wasn’t—it’s not like I did it on purpose, I was just—”

“A Titan,” Hunter says, “bringing back all the magic to the Isles.”

Luz crosses her arms and baps him on the head with her staff, though Stringbean returns to her normal form once Luz is done. “You’re worse than King. If Willow and all the other witches who actually know plants weren’t there, then it wouldn’t matter that I brought them back!”

“But you still brought them baaaack!” Hunter teases.

“Gah—well—” She splutters, flapping her hands. “Uno reverse! You’re really great too and you’re the entire reason there’s so many palistrom trees! Take that!”

“What about—”

“Apt! No!” Luz throws herself down next to him. “All you. All Hunter.” She rolls over to hug him. “I love you.”

Hunter’s next words catch in his throat and he instead manages a handful of choked, dying sounds.

“I can’t say you’re my favorite brother,” Luz continues, “because that’d be unfair to King and The Collector. But you’re, like—I dunno. Advanced brother? It’s different with you. I can’t tell them everything but I can tell you everything, you know? I don’t have to be—strong. I can just be…myself. And you’ll…”

She sniffles and that’s what does it for Hunter. His lip wobbles, he turns over to hug Luz back, gripping her like if he let’s go she’ll fade away, and manages, muffled into her shoulder, “I love you, too.”

“No, don’t cry,” she says, through tears of her own, “now you got me going, Hunter, you…”

They cry into each other and Stringbean purrs and wraps around them both, warm and there and not going anywhere, because Hunter won’t ever allow it. Because he loves Luz more than he loves anyone else and he is going to do everything he can to make sure she has the best life possible. Because she’s his little sister, and he’s never, ever had one of those before—but he’s going to do this right.

Luz tugs away first, rubbing at her face. “Haha. You cried first.”

Hunter pokes her forehead. “You were tearing up throughout your entire little speech.”

“But you,” and she leans her head against his chest, right above his heart, “cried first.”

“Oh, fine.” Hunter rests his chin in her hair. “Maybe I did.”

They’re quiet there together save for the creaking of tree branches, the squeaking of Stringbean as she slithers her way up to perch on Hunter’s head, chittering up at whatever palisman stopped by to say hi—Hunter glances up and sees the bluejay, who chirps a greeting at him before hopping down to resume talking with Stringbean.

Finally, Luz says, “happy birthday.”

“What?” She points to her watch, and… “huh. Midnight. You know, I don’t actually think I was born right at midnight. Technically I wasn’t born at all, I was created. I think I dug myself out of the dirt?”

“Shut up, birthday boy.” She hums. “Hey, uh. Willow and Gus wanted me to tell you about this before your party, and you can tell me no and I’ll tell them, but…they were thinking about playing flyer derby. Not—not really a full game. Just the three of you and the rest of the Emerald Entrails. And, uh. You can use Stringbean.”

Hunter…

He misses the sky. He misses Flapjack. He misses the way the wind whistles, the teamwork, the throwing his all into something that, for the first time in forever, was entirely a thing he wanted. He misses hanging out with them.

He really, really misses Flapjack

“I don’t…” Hunter’s voice cracks. “I don’t know if I can, I…”

“It’s okay,” Luz says, and he can feel the rise and fall of her voice where she’s leaned against him. “I—I miss him too, Hunter, I—I wish he was here, I do, but…I mean, you loved flyer derby! I never even—I’ve never gotten to see you play before. And I know Flapjack is in there.” She taps his chest, above his heart. “And he’d want you to play a game you loved, right? Even if it meant—even if it meant doing it without him.”

And she—

Hasn’t, has she? He only ever played the one game, really. He didn’t have time, after that, not with…everything…

He still can’t flashstep. There’s a part of him that’s pretty sure he made it up, that he was ever able to do it on his own.

“Okay.” Hunter takes a breath. “But—tell them just this once. Okay?”

Luz nods into him. “Okay.”

And it’s—

Fun. It’s really, really fun. Stringbean is, like Luz, very goofy, but also like Luz she adores him, and does her best to make sure they win, and they do! It’s a small game, and the teams change sometimes within the game itself, and Hunter—laughs. He laughs, and his chest fills like it hasn’t in a very, very long time. Willow high-fives him midair and Gus shows off his new tricks, and Hunter even survives the round where Amity throws a grudgby ball up in the mix to spice-things-up yells Luz from the crowd. The Collector and King battle it out for who can be the most obnoxious fan, the title of which is claimed by King, and The Collector shoves him off the bleachers, but they’re both laughing, even Luz—who, Hunter notices, has a friend with her—the bluejay who helps him out in the palistrom woods. It’s nice that she stopped by to cheer him on.

He stays out until he’s about to collapse on his feet, sways into Darius because he can’t see straight, and is basically carried back home, texting Willow and Gus on his scroll until he realizes that all of his messages for the past ten minutes have been absolute nonsense and his bluejay friend pecks him in the head and churrs at him.

“S’my birthday,” Hunter giggles, navigating to Luz’s contact to send her what he hopes reads thank you i don’t know what i’d do without you in my life this was the best birthday i’ve ever had, and then dumps his scroll on his bedside table, where he sees—

The. Palistrom wood. He must’ve not…put away.

Coldness settles in his chest at that.

He—played flyer derby again, and it was good. And he had a good birthday, and Flapjack wasn’t there. And if there’s any time he’s going to do this—it has to be now, right? He has to just—pick up the knife. Finish carving. He’s got two pointed ears already, the beginnings of a snout—how hard can it be? How hard…

The bluejay lands atop the wood, tilts her head.

“It’s pathetic.” Hunter hugs his knees to his chest and pulls away. “Nearly a year later, and I can’t even…”

She chirps something that sounds an awful lot like Flapjack.

Hunter’s head jerks. “You—you knew him? Flapjack?”

Looking down, she nods, and he scrambles to the edge of his bed, bracing his hands on his nightstand. “Flapjack, he—you were with the Bat Queen for a long time too, huh? Did he—he—”

Hunter swallows back tears, and finishes, “he was my best friend.”

The bluejay’s feathers droop, and she steps off the palistrom wood and onto Hunter’s arm, pressing the side of her beak to his nose.

“You miss him too?”

She croons.

“How did you…” Hunter rubs at his eyes. Titan, he’s pathetic. Can’t even carve the palistrom wood because he’s too beat-up about a dead bird. He’s… “How did you know him?”

She hops off of him and onto his bed, turns a circle and then sits there, biting at the sheets until they surround her, somewhat, like a nest. She chirps Flapjack again, then pokes herself.

“He…” Hunter frowns. Palismen don’t come from eggs—Stringbean is the exception—but that’s clearly what she’s trying to show, which must mean… “He helped you, didn’t he? When you were—young. And alone. Because your witch…they must’ve been gone, right?”

She nods, sighs. It ruffles the pale feathers of her breast.

“Did Belos…?”

She closes her eyes.

“I’m.” Hunter rests his hand next to her small body. “I’m sorry. Belos, he—he tried to kill me, too. And I only survived, because Flapjack…”

She leans into his hand. Flapjack, she repeats, and smiles, a little, up at him, her golden eyes sparkling. Like Flapjack sparkled, when he…

“I know,” Hunter says, “that I need to—carve my palisman. That I can’t just…not do that. I need a staff, I’m—I’m not a witch without one. But every time I try, it’s like…my hands are too heavy. Or they’re shaking so bad I’d just cut myself. Because carving another palisman, that’s like…”

The bluejay croons low.

“I don’t want to replace him,” Hunter says, “because then he’s…”

Because then he’s gone, and never coming back.

He goes to Hexside. Not as a student, but with Dell, and the Bat Queen, and a whole host of palismen young and old alike, for Hexside’s second-ever palisman adoption day, now, as Hunter knows because he helped, to be an annual event.

“Hunter!” Willow calls, waving to him as she rushes over. “Got out early to help! Where are the ones you carved?”

“Uh.” Hunter’s ears go red, and he scratches his neck. “I mean—there’s a lot of palismen, it’s not like I…did much…”

Clover buzzes off of Willow’s head and over to a praying mantis-palisman. Willow blinks expectantly at him.

“Okay,” he says, “yes. I did carve that one. And, um—actually, it’s, uh, this thing Dell told me, it’s sort of cool, but I have, like, a style? I mean, all palismen carvers have a style, but, um, you can sort of—look at a palismen, and tell who carved it. If you know what to look for. Do you—want? To know?”

“Yes,” Willow says. “Of course I do! There’s…” She counts something off under her breath. “Like, fifteen minutes before everyone else comes running out. Do you think that’s enough time?” She grins. “I am always willing to sneak off if it isn’t.”

“I—don’t do that.” Hunter manages to grin back at her. “I want to see everyone meet their palismen. But—yeah. I think fifteen minutes is good.”

Hunter’s like, pretty sure it must be really, really boring to hear someone ramble on about wood grain and dyes and carving techniques, but—clearly not, because Willow picks it up like that, and then proceeds to embarrass him in front of Gus and Amity by pointing out each and every palisman he carved, with near-flawless accuracy. She only gets one wrong, when the bluejay flutters over, and Willow says, “oh! That one, too!”

“Actually,” Hunter says, scratching the bluejay’s cheek as she lands on his shoulder and nips at his fingers, “she’s the only one I didn’t.”

“Huh? Dang, I thought I had it. She has the same wood pattern, the diamond-y one!”

“She does?” Hunter sticks out his finger and the bluejay hops onto it, and, “wow, I didn’t even notice.”

Willow grins smugly. “Maybe you did carve her, you just forgot.”

He laughs. “Probably not.”

From there, it’s a wild ride of helping kids—so many of them, which, Hunter knew students from the other schools were coming, since the event was open for them, too, but…wow. He didn’t even know there were this many kids on the entire Isles—matching them with palismen, and Hunter will admit it: he does cry a little bit when some of the palismen he carved find homes with kids. It’s.

“Look at you, making a difference,” Willow says, bumping her shoulder to his. “Palismen carving everything you thought it’d be?”

“…yeah,” Hunter breathes, which isn’t really true. Because he didn’t think anything of it, at first. But it’s—it’s the palistrom trees, the ones he knows by heart, the wood they give him, the lessons he’s learned from Dell, the Bat Queen, even the bluejay, who shows him the best ways to get palistrom seeds. “I—I didn’t ever see myself doing this. But now that I’m here. I don’t…know how I would ever do anything else.”

“Aww,” Willow says. Clover’s wing buzz together like a song. “Well, I’ll always be around if you ever want a friend. You still have a lot of palistrom knowledge to share with me!”

Hunter grins, knocking his pinky to hers. “We can trade,” he says. “I want to know more about all those plants you helped rehabilitate.”

“Oh, you’re going to love these new marshlands we found,” Willow says.

As things wind down Hunter finds himself in the bleachers overlooking the field, yawning as the final few stragglers talk to Dell or the Bat Queen about maybe having their palisman carved for them, the remaining palismen finding spots to doze as the sun sets. The bluejay has landed next to him, is watching the scene, too. Hunter smooths down her ruffled feathers; she churrs at him.

“Impressed by any of the kids?” he asks her.

She rolls her eyes and yawns, and Hunter scoops her up and sets her in his lap, so she can have a nicer place to roost than the cold metal of a bench.

“Wow,” he says, “high standards. Well, if you want to keep helping out in the woods, I won’t complain.” He hums, checks his scroll: Willow’s made it back home, asks if he wants to go out to eat tomorrow, and he replies yeah, that diner they finally rebuilt? Gus sends him a photo he must’ve snuck when Hunter wasn’t looking: one of Hunter presenting a brown tabby-cat palisman to a very, very excited girl. What, Hunter responds, are you mad I have a job, and Gus replies, nah but next time you gotta tell me who carved emmiline bailey marcostimo, which, gus, not all palismen carvers know each other. also literally all of them are dead except me and dell. Gus says, well, do you know, with a close-up of his palisman sleeping, and…okay fine YES you wont know her but she was this really prolific carver like, RIGHT before belos came into power, when she died she was actually buried in the bat queen’s woods so she’d nourish any future palistrom trees.

Luz sends him—a picture of himself, on the bench, texting, with the bluejay sleeping in his lap. Hunter looks up.

“Oh,” he says, “hi, Collector.”

“Hiya.” The Collector lowers Luz’s scroll and floats through the air to sit next to him. “Eda said I could stay ‘til you left since you’re eating dinner with us tonight.”

“I am?” Hunter is pretty sure he didn’t agree to that.

“You are,” The Collector informs him, and like, yeah. Alright.

“Huh. Well. I’ll probably head out once they’re done down there.” He gestures to Dell and the Bat Queen. “Were you helping out, too?” He knows Luz and King were, though Luz was helping Dell with the kids who were interested in carving their own palismen, rather than Hunter, who was just going wherever he was needed. He did bump into King a few times, though—palismen really like that kid.

“No,” says The Collector. “…I. Um. Was tryin’ to—to find a palisman. But nobody wanted me.”

In Hunter’s lap, the bluejay lifts her head.

“Oh.” Hunter rubs his finger down the line of the bluejay’s head. “Any reason—why? I mean, you can do magic fine without one.”

“I know, but.” They look away from him. “I just. Don’t.” They huff. “Why do you care? You don’t even like me.”

“That’s not—” true Hunter is going to say, because he doesn’t hate The Collector, or anything. But…

“Yes it is!” They cross their arms. “You’re always coming over to hang with Luz but never me, and when she makes me tag along you like never pay attention to me! Just her!”

“Luz is my sister,” Hunter snaps, “no duh I hang out with her.”

“She’s my sister!”

“Luz can have more than one sibling—”

But the Collector ignores him, flipping through the air, bits of star-magic sparking off of them and glinting off the bench. “But she’s always talking about you, and it’s like, why are you so cool? You yelled at me for no reason when I was just trying to be nice.”

“I was—” Hunter grits his teeth. Of course that stupid day in Luz’s bedroom forever ago is something The Collector just can’t forget. “I was mad, okay? Because you were pushing me! You can do magic just fine without a palisman, but I can’t!”

“And you’re just alone!” The Collector continues, glaring at him with narrowed eyes. “And I’m alone, too! But Luz doesn’t—she won’t—”

Hunter stands. The bluejay tumbles out of his lap squawking, but he ignores her as she flutters around his head. “You don’t know the first thing about being alone.”

The Collector lands on the bench and crosses his arms. There’s something sharp in his eyes. “Says who.”

“Me.” Hunter jabs a finger in his chest. “ME! Who got his best friend fucking killed! Because he was too weak to just not be controlled by Belos, again, every single Titan-damned time! Who isn’t a witch without a staff, but he can’t even carve another one, even though Flapjack is dead and gone and never coming back! But I just can’t move on! I can’t stop thinking about him!”

The Collector takes a step back. “Hunter—”

“And then there’s you,” Hunter spits, “the most powerful person on the Boiling Isles. And you’re—what, you’re lonely? You could’ve killed all of us but you’re still here, aren’t you? You have Eda, and King, and Luz, and—and do you know how many people would’ve killed to get what you have? The people you have?”

“But you have—abominations guy—”

“Yeah,” Hunter says, “I have one guy, and he basically hated me most of my life. You know who I had most of the time? Belos. And then I had Flapjack. You’ve never met him, but he was amazing. I’d be dead if not for him, and all I do to pay him back? I’m an idiot and I get him fucking killed. You have so many people. But I have nobody, because the one person I had, he’s dead—”

The bluejay shrieks and Hunter’s hands go over his ears. The Collector trips over his own feet, tumbles down and lands hard on a bench a few rows down.

Hunter is, suddenly, vividly aware of the fact that Dell and the Bat Queen and a small handful of Hexside students are still in the field, staring. His heart pounds erratically in his chest. The bluejay’s wings are battering his face and Hunter struggles to breathe.

There are tears in The Collector’s eyes, and they’re trying to rub them away with their overlarge sleeves.

“Let’s just—go to the Owl House,” Hunter mutters. The Collector flinches when he talks. Hunter sort of wants to throw himself into the Boiling Sea. “It’s nearly dinner.”

Dinner, needless to say, is very awkward.

“Darius,” Hunter says, before he retires for the night, and the man looks up from where he’s on the couch, clearly bogged down by government stuff. “Why didn’t you do anything earlier?”

“Do?” Darius asks. “When do you mean?”

Hunter pets the bluejay’s feathers, and the palisman churrs softly at him. “Back—back with the covens,” he says. “You—you had to know something was wrong. Why didn’t you…?”

Why did you leave me to fend for myself?

Darius looks away. Opens his mouth, closes it. The paper he’s holding crunches in his hands.

“I…didn’t want to believe it,” he says, finally. “It was…easier. To ignore the warning signs. To believe that Belos would not harm his own nephew in such a way.”

I didn’t care about you, he means, Hunter thinks. And then I did.

“Okay.” Hunter’s voice doesn’t shake. That doesn’t make it better. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight, little prince.” I know.

“Ugh,” Luz says, when she finds him in the palistrom woods, slumping against his side. Stringbean coils up to greet the bluejay by shoving her entire face into the bluejay’s. The bluejay tilts her head but accepts it, not moving from Hunter’s head. “Home sucks.”

“Which one?” Hunter sits down and tugs Luz with him, and she topples sideways to rest her head in his lap.

“Both of them,” Luz grumbles. “I mean, Mama and Vee are fine. Really busy, but they’re both fine, and I wanted to just hang out with them, but I can’t, because the Owl House sucks really bad! Eda’s really busy figuring out this college she wants to build—did I tell you about the college stuff?”

Hunter nods.

“Cool. So yeah she’s out a lot to figure that out and Raine is with her so I’m the one in charge, and usually that’s fine! ‘cause okay, if it gets to much I go bring King and The Collector to Mama and she lets me have a break. But The Collector refuses to go to the human realm! He won’t leave the Owl House and I don’t know why, and King’s tried to talk to him, and I tried to talk to him, and we found François just lying in the dirt outside their window which they never do, like, they never treat François badly, but every time we give him back it happens again and I’m tired of it!!!”

Luz grabs one of Hunter’s hands in her own and squeezes it tight enough it actually hurts, and muffles a scream into Hunter’s thigh. “GAH! It’s stupid! They’ve been all weird since palisman adoption day! And they wanted to go! They wanted to help out like me and King!”

“Didn’t they,” Hunter fumbles his words, “I mean—they didn’t go to get a palisman?”

Luz tilts her head. “No? The Collector is like King, they don’t really need palismen.”

Hunter says, “oh.”

Did they—only tell him that? Why would they…surely, they’re closer to Luz and King, right? Hunter just…tolerates them, at best.

“Yeah, it’s just.” Luz sighs. “I’m just so tired, Hunter. Eda says she’ll watch them today and give me a break but Eda’s busy too and I don’t want to keep her from her cool stuff because I really need her to finish witch college before I’m 18, but—it’s just so hard! Being an older sister sucks!”

Hunter pets her hair. “I know.”

“I used to be an only child!”

“I know.”

Stringbean thumps down onto Luz’s chest and nuzzles her chin, and Luz mutters, “I’m sorry. I’m being—stupid. But I really want to throw them out a window! And that’s stupid!!”

Hunter shrugs. “Nah. Sometimes I want to throw you out a window, too.”

“Hunter!” But her protest is half-hearted. The bluejay flutters down to land next to Stringbean, and Luz sighs, sitting up and hugging both palismen against her. “…I do still love them. And I want to help! But I just…don’t know how. And I hate it.”

“Yeah.” What can Hunter do to help? The Collector isn’t his sibling, but Luz is, so… “want to come back to my place? We can try baking again.”

Luz giggles wetly. “Last time our cake was so burnt even Eberwolf wouldn’t eat it.”

“Which means,” Hunter says, standing, “that it can only go up from there. C’mon, Luz. Darius owes me a lot, so he can’t even get mad when we trash the kitchen!”

He offers her a hand, and she takes it, as both Stringbean and the bluejay perch there on opposite shoulders. Luz scratches her own palisman’s head, glances to the bluejay with a little half-smile.

“Yeah,” she says, “alright.”

The cake they make is…

“I can’t believe the spiders survived the oven,” Luz comments, using their mixing spoon to poke one of the spiders crawling out of the oozing cake. It smells…like burning, mostly, and Hunter’s too scared to look in the oven because quite frankly he’s half-convinced they destroyed it forever. The bluejay flutters off his shoulder to peck the cake, and Stringbean drops down to join her, chomping one of the spiders.

“I feel like this is worse,” Hunter says. Their last cake was for Gus’s birthday, it came out harder than a brick, and they swore to never tell him how much they failed, and went to buy one in town, instead. This one is—alive, he’s pretty sure, and he’s not talking about the spiders. Did they not double-check that all the crickets in the flour were dead? Hunter was pretty sure Luz blasting them with arcs of dark purple magic was enough to kill them.

“Eh.” Luz wobbles her hand. “At least Eberwolf could eat this one.”

Hunter considers that. “Okay, you have a point.” He leaves the palismen to poke at the cake, and takes in now the kitchen. There is icing on the ceiling. Cracked griffin eggs coating the floor. Ingredients spilled all across the counter. Used bowls on the fridge. “We should really clean this up.”

“Yup.” Luz watches as Stringbean takes a careful bite of cake, recoiling as she tries to spit it out. “Eberwolf is coming home before Darius, right?”

“If you consider a difference of less than a minute before: yes.” Hunter sticks out his hand for the bluejay, flapping away from the cake, and she lands there before climbing up to his shoulder. Stringbean follows, flopping across Hunter’s hair with a purr. “Here, I’ve got the counters if you get the ceiling.”

They’re able to clean up most of the mess before Darius and Eberwolf return, and in the thirty seconds where Eberwolf is in the house and Darius is still outside, Luz and Hunter are able to convince him to eat the cake. Eberwolf informs them it is actually pretty good, and heads off to nap, leaving Hunter and Luz tripping over each other to sit on the couch and look as innocent as possible as Darius enters.

Hunter brushes flour off of Luz’s dark hair. Luz beams sunnily.

“Good evening, Darius!” she greets.

Darius looks between the two of them. “What did you do.”

“Us?” Luz bats her eyelashes, and Stringbean lifts up her head to try and mimic her witch. “Why, we did nothing! We have been sitting here, helping each other with homework—”

Darius pinches the bridge of his nose, though Hunter catches the hints of a smile spreading across his face. “Hunter doesn’t go to school.”

“He could still have homework!” Luz leans against him, and Hunter yelps, because she’s taking up more couch than she’s owed! He shoves her back as the bluejay flies around to grab Luz’s sleeve in her beak and try to tug her into her own space. “Hey! Hunter, you suck!”

“I assume you’re staying for dinner?” Darius asks, passing the couch as Hunter manages to bite Luz’s palm where she’s trying to stop him from talking. “Does the Owl Lady know?”

“Uhhhhh.” Luz hesitates. “She will?”

Hunter steals Luz’s scroll from her before she can let Eda know where she is, and all the way up until dinner that’s what they do, squabbling over this or that, knocking all the cushions off the couch. At some point the palismen must get tired of them because when Darius calls them for dinner both Stringbean and the bluejay are dozing in the armchair, a sight Luz snaps a picture of as Hunter punches her in the shoulder.

She ends up staying the night. They stay up vying for space in Hunter’s bed watching various movies on their scrolls, first Luz’s then Hunter’s when hers dies, and then just talking, about everything and nothing until they drop off. Luz falls asleep first, and for a while Hunter just lies there in his bed listening to her quiet breathing, drops his blanket over her head when she starts to snore, and sighs, rubbing the bluejay’s head.

Without Luz awake, it means he has to think about…what actually brought her here: The Collector. And Hunter is…pretty sure he knows exactly why they’re locking themself in their room, refusing to talk to anybody…

His eyes catch the palistrom wood, still on his nightstand.

…throwing François out windows.

“I’m never going to carve that into my palisman,” Hunter tells the bluejay, her golden eyes catching his own, her blue and black feathers lit by the moonlight spilling across her back, “am I.”

She ruffles her wings.

“Yeah.” Hunter sighs. “I’m—it was. Stupid to think I ever would. I’m—really, really good at carving palismen for other people. But for myself…”

She stands and flits over to perch atop the wood. He’d have to reach over Luz to get it, and his knife, but he’s used to how Luz sleeps. He wouldn’t wake her up, and the soft sounds of carving wood wouldn’t, either.

He can’t leave it unfinished forever. Whatever comes out of it—it won’t ever be his palisman. He had a palisman, and he died, and that’s it. End of the story.

He leans over Luz. Takes the wood, carefully, and the bluejay picks up his knife, sets it on his lap. This won’t ever be his palisman, but there’s a kid out there who really, really wants one. And the kid’s annoying, and a brat, and yet despite it all Hunter can’t stop thinking.

I’m alone, too.

The bluejay lands on his shoulder and rests her head against his cheek.

“Alright,” he whispers to her, “let’s make this right.”

Hunter knocks on the door.

“Go away,” comes The Collector’s voice, muffled.

“It’s Hunter.”

“I know.” More muffled, now. “Go ‘way. I don’t wanna talk to you.”

“Well, you don’t have to talk to me. But I want to talk to you. You can just listen, if that’s okay? And then I’ll leave.”

Silence. But then the tell-tale sound of a lock turning, and the door creaks open. Hunter enters.

He’s…never actually been in The Collector’s room, before. Like Luz’s room, it used to be used for storage, but has clearly been renovated to fit a child. It’s smaller than Luz’s own, and the curtains have been pulled shut over the windows, meaning, as the door shuts behind him, that the only lights come from little pointed, starlike orbs up close to the ceiling, like the night stars: though, Hunter notices, the constellation of the light glyph is clear in the center.

“They aren’t glyphs,” The Collector says, and Hunter jumps. They’ve burrowed under the covers on their small bed, a deep blue criss-crossed with lighter lines, though their head pokes out from under them, hugging their pillow to their chest. “It’s just my magic.”

He snaps his fingers and summons another one, before swiping his hand through it. The orb fizzes out and vanishes.

“It’s…really pretty,” Hunter tells them, looking for a place to sit. Other than the bed there’s not a whole lot of furniture: a small dresser, against the wall, a toybox against the foot of the bed. Cautiously, Hunter picks his way over to the bed, and, when The Collector stays quiet, sits on it.

They pull their head back under their covers.

“I’m sorry,” Hunter says, letting out a breath. He was angry, coming here, at this kid for being the cause of Luz’s stress, for acting like he has it so bad when he’s been shown nothing but kindness from Luz and her family, but—he can’t get that anger to rise up. Not anymore. It’s like carving—he just…gets into the rhythm, and it’s like everything else slips away. “About what I said, at palisman adoption day.”

Nothing. The lump doesn’t even move. What’s the point? He puts in all this effort, and—

The bluejay bites his ear. Right. He’s carving palismen. He’s calm. The Collector is—a kid. And it’s not their fault they never had to grow up like he did.

“I don’t understand you,” Hunter says, and laughs, a bit. “But—I guess I get feeling alone, and upset. And I’m probably not the best person to talk to about this, but for some reason you only told me you want a palisman, I guess.”

From under the covers, The Collector says, “thought you’d get it.”

Hunter pauses. “Huh?”

“Get it. Get alone. Luz doesn’t. She has Stringbean. King doesn’t. He’s—he doesn’t care. He’s okay. But you, I thought—you don’t have a Stringbean, and you don’t not care. But I was wrong.” The lump shrinks in on itself. “You can go away now.”

“Collector…”

“Wasn’t even right.” They sniff. “You aren’t alone either. Just me.”

“I am—”

The Collector throws the covers off of them and they fall in a heap around them, where they’ve got their knees pulled in and are hugging them to their chest, and they look so small, and—and for a second Hunter is reminded of Luz, when they’re in the woods together, and she’s shuddering and leaning into him and he wants to make her be okay again, he has to make her okay again. Except this isn’t Luz; this is The Collector.

They hug their legs tighter just like she does and when their voice wobbles and their eyes go teary they talk through it like she does.

“You got her.” The Collector doesn’t move, but Hunter does, and sees…the bluejay. Sitting, quietly, on his leg, her head tilted as she watches The Collector. “And you say I have Eda and Luz and King but—but they all have each other first. I’m just…also here. Not like you. You come and Luz is—happy. I come and I just…make her sad.”

Hunter snorts. “I’ve made Luz plenty sad. You just weren’t around to see it yet.”

He…owes her a lot, for sticking with him, even at his worst. He’s seen things with her he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to tell anybody else, clung to her because at the end of it all, they had each other, and understood without words. And he wishes it wasn’t true, because it means she went through everything he did, and has to live the rest of her life with it. And he wants her to be happy.

And she’s…

“Luz is…pretty good, these days, you know.” Hunter grins, a tad. The bluejay bobs her head. “I mean, she has bad days. Everyone does. But—overall? Lot more good days. And the same goes for me, and even on my worst days—I got away from Belos. And—you did too.”

The Collector watches him.

“I can’t—help you,” Hunter says, “not really. But—I think you already know the people who can. You know, Luz didn’t get a palisman on palisman adoption day, either.”

The Collector jerks out of their stupor. “Huh? But—Stringbean.”

“Yeah. They didn’t meet there, though.” Hunter nudges the bluejay off of him, reaches into his pocket. “Palismen…they meet their witches if they have a goal, a wish, a hope, something they share. Or.” His hands close around soft wood, “witches can carve them, and imbue hopes in them, that way. Stringbean was an egg for a long, long time. You’ll have to ask Luz to know the details, because it’s her story to tell, but…”

He can already feel tears pricking up in his eyes. “Flapjack and me—it took me a while to accept him as my palisman, even when he knew. I—I didn’t believe he was anything good. That I was anything good, and worth someone like him. But he found me, and he believed in me. And I—I really, really miss him. But.”

He takes a breath.

“You’re right about one thing,” he says, “and that’s that—that I’m not alone. I have Luz, and Darius, and Eberwolf, and Willow, and Gus, and so many people—but you’re wrong that you’re alone. Because—you have all of us too, okay? No matter what.”

The Collector rubs at their eyes and Hunter pulls the palisman out of his pocket.

It’s a wolf. It was always going to be a wolf, because when he was first given the palistrom wood, so long ago, that’s what he thought: I found wolves in the human realm. My palisman has to be a wolf.

But…it’s not his, is it?

Carving palismen is always—different, for each one. Sometimes because he doesn’t know who they might find, one day. Sometimes because he knows exactly who they will. And this one…he thinks he’s known, for a very long time, that it would not be him.

The Collector says, inching closer to Hunter, “that’s a palisman.”

“Yeah.” Hunter holds them out for The Collector as the bluejay sets down on Hunter’s arm, churring. He grins, tilts his head to bump against her. “Sort of my job, isn’t it? I’m a palisman carver, and there’s this kid who wants a palisman, so badly.” He places the wooden wolf in The Collector’s arms. “So. What do you want?”

“I…” The Collector sniffs, blinking rapidly. “I—I want to understand you guys. I want to—to learn about mortals even if you’re all so itty-bitty because you’re so interesting and nothing else is interesting like you. I wanna stay at the Owl House and I wanna play with King and make Luz proud of me and you to like me and—and most of all I don’t wanna be alone.”

And…that does it.

The little wooden wolf blinks, yawns, opens their eyes for the first time. Their fur is a soft blue, darker down their back and legs and lighter at their chest and belly, shifting into a paler color. Their eyes are a deep brown and they’re patterned throughout with little stars and swirls, subtle things that shine brighter when they catch the light.

“O—oh,” The Collector says, as the wolf wags their tail, their forepaws braced on his arm. “Hi. Hi hi. Hi.” They stutter, tears spilling from their eyes, and the wolf bowls them over and onto their bed, barking. “Hi! Oh my gosh you’re so cute you’re—you’re—”

They lick his face and he giggles, delighted, and Hunter can’t help the grin that spreads across his face, as The Collector wraps their arms around their palisman and the wolf wriggles there, jaws parted in a smile with their tongue sticking out.

“What do you think?” Hunter whispers to the bluejay as he stands, “good?”

She clicks at him and fluffs up her feathers. Good.

“W—wait!” Before Hunter can let himself out The Collector’s leapt after him, grabbing his hand. Their palisman dangles in their other arm, tail still wagging away, their floppy ears pricked. “I—thank you. Thank you thank you thank you I thought—I never could—”

They throw their arms around him in a hug, their palisman bounding circles around Hunter and yapping happily. The bluejay flies down to nip affectionately at their ears, leaving Hunter to deal with the child hugging him with a force stronger than even Luz, which is saying something.

“Oh,” Hunter says, and hugs them back, meaning he has to kneel a bit, meaning they sort of just bury their entire face in his chest, and he…hugs them. And it’s. They’re trembling, still, and sniffling little tears, and he’s seen happy kids getting their palismen, and this is—

I did this, he realizes, I…this is what I’m able to do. I made him so happy, and…

“Of course,” he whispers into their hair, and squeezes tighter. “Do you know their name yet?”

The Collector pulls away and nods, his wolf leaping into his arms. “Their name is Aster,” he says, “and I have to tell King and Luz and Eda Hunter c’mon!” They grab his hand and charge for the door and Hunter can only follow, this kid who was locked up in their room less than an hour ago, and is now sunny and shining and happy, and he doesn’t think he’s seen Aster’s tail stop wagging since they came to life.

“KING!” The Collector shrieks, dragging Hunter down the stairs, and what could Hunter do but follow? The bluejay nests in his hair and nuzzles her beak against Hunter’s forehead. “EDA! LUUUUUZ! Look what Hunter did for me! I have a palisman now!”

It’s a madhouse of congratulations downstairs, and when Luz tugs him aside, punches him in the shoulder, laughing, says, I don’t know how you knew but you’ve just made their life—

He’s pretty sure he’s never felt this warm since—oh.

He’s never been this honestly, truly happy, since before Flapjack died.

It’s late at night when he finally leaves, begins the trek back to his own house, because he could’ve slept over at the Owl House but he really, really wants his own bed, tonight. So waving goodbye to Luz and Eda, King and The Collector and Aster long since conked out, he sets out with the stars to guide him.

“I guess that’s it, then,” he tells the bluejay. “That was my one shot at getting a new palisman, and…I would give them to The Collector again. Because it made him so happy, and—that’s. That’s what I…want to do. Because for me, I can’t…”

She tilts her head, fluttering in front of him, and lands on a fencepost. Hunter stops next to her, turns to stare up at the stars.

A year and a half. He’s not a witch without a staff, lacking any magic of his own. He’ll never play flyer derby again. He’ll never see Flapjack again.

“I can’t move on,” he says, “I can’t…”

He takes a breath. The sky is lit brilliant, dark blues and purples and pinks. The stars are painted across, shapes witches have seen in them for centuries, surviving even throughout Belos’s rule, into the now.

He rests a hand on his chest. His heart beats a steady rhythm, warm.

The bluejay clicks her beak at him and flutters off.

“Hey!” Hunter calls after her. “I thought we were resting!”

She churrs laughter and flaps up a steep incline, one Hunter couldn’t climb without a struggle. But there she is, laughing at him, much closer to the stars than he is. She stretches out her wings and yawns.

“Yeah, yeah,” he mutters, making his way to the base of the incline, “menace.”

The world goes golden and he’s up next to her, sitting on a sturdy branch with his legs kicking. “Gotcha.”

She pecks him.

“What? How did I get up here? Easy, I…just…”

He looks down. No way he was climbing that incline. It’s covered in thick brambles and plants and protruding tree-roots and he’s pretty sure anything more than walking would make him tip over and decide that he’ll just sleep outside, for a night. And yet here he is, up in the same tree as the bluejay, and he didn’t climb a single thing.

The only way he got up here is if he—

Hunter blinks. The world shutters, jolts, and—at the bottom. Again. Up in the tree. Again. Base of the tree. One more time. Further down the path.

“I—” He makes one final burst into the tree, and the bluejay churrs, her white feathers, momentarily, lit gold by the magic…coming from him. “I can flashstep? I can flashstep again!”

He punches his fist up in the air, leaps up, teeters on the branch, and he falls but it doesn’t matter, because he seizes that warmth in his heart and it spreads across all of him, brings him with a flash of gold right back where he started, next to the bluejay.

“But that doesn’t make any sense,” he says. “I—I haven’t been able to do it, since…”

Since they won. Since he wasn’t living in a state of constant panic, anymore. Since he had to really, truly, sit there, with the weight in his chest, saying Flapjack is dead.

The bluejay flutters up off her branch. For a long moment she holds herself there in front of Hunter, and he stares at her, and—doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. But then she changes, and he does.

A staff falls into his hands, and there’s a bluejay topping it. It’s—got a heft to it. Not like Flapjack’s did. Flapjack’s fell into his hands like that, and there was no question. The staff was like an extension of Hunter himself. This staff is—a little rough to hold. Doesn’t balance right in his hands.

He stares down at it. “Why are you…”

When the bluejay returns, she lands on his shoulder, presses her head against his cheek.

“But I still miss him,” Hunter says, staring out at the sky before him, at that gaping hole in the center of it all, where once was the light glyph, and now there is nothing, and won’t ever be, again. “I miss him so much.”

The bluejay warbles something soft. Her feathers are warm against his skin, and he breathes. In, out. His heart continues to beat.

“Why do I—if you’re—does this mean it won’t ever stop?” Hunter swallows. “I—I want him back. I’d give anything to give him back. Even now, I…I just…”

She nips, gently, the tip of his ear, and then turns her gaze to the sky, traces, with her beak, the non-existent pattern that was once the first glyph he ever learned.

“You…miss him too.” Hunter cups his hands and she lands right there in the center of them, and she’s just a bit larger than Flapjack was. She doesn’t fit perfectly. She fluffs out her feathers and doesn’t move. “He was…he was your friend, too. And mine. And now he’s—not here. And we won’t ever get him back.

She says, won’t ever. But she nods to the sky, tilts her head, look-though.

Hunter looks.

He doesn’t know this yet, but one day in the future he’ll get a tattoo, of a little red bird who was his friend when he had nobody else, and stayed with him through it all. One day he’ll make a grave, put his woodcarving skills to the test against stone, and it won’t be perfect, but it’ll be what he made. He’ll put it right next to the very first palistrom tree that grew, and he’ll pass it every day, and he’ll be smiling.

One day he’s going to play flyer derby again. One day he’s going to learn new magic, different magic, and it won’t be the same—it won’t ever be the same—but it’ll be his, and he’ll be happy.

But right now he is looking at the sky, at the stars, at changing shapes. At those stars that were once the light glyph, and are not it, now—but there is a blue wing, extended out, tracing new shapes, new possibilities, and Hunter lifts his hand and follows her.

“Hey, um…” he lets out a breath. “What’s your name?”

She tells him, and he laughs. He laughs, and cries, and she flaps up and presses her head to his, and she’s shaking, with him, and it’s everything. It’s too-much, and that’s everything.

“Waffles,” he says, rubbing at his eyes, rubbing her face, “it’s—it’s really nice to meet you. Finally.”

She churrs, a pleasant rumbling he feels in his own chest, and the sky above them glows bright. You-too, she says, and there the two of them sit: laughing, crying, together.