Luz watched with some curiosity as the door materialized on the wall.

This was not unusual. In fact, she had seen Eda's own portable door more than once. Or well, a couple of times only, really, when she had stepped through it and when it had been stored. However this one was slightly different.

For one, even though the door was clearly opening on private property, the owner—a short, very round eye with a mouth that was oddly part of the eye itself—completely ignored it. It wasn't that he didn't care… he didn't see it!

"King." She elbowed the small, dog-like demon. "King. Can you see that?"

"What? What?!" King pushed away and turned to face in the direction Luz was pointing, his yellow eyes narrowing visibly within his skull-mask. "It's a door, Luz. We've seen those before. We have one at home!" He rolled his eyes. "In fact, we have a whole bunch of doors at home!"

"Yes, but since when is it okay to open a door in private property like that?"

King shrugged. "Who knows? Who cares anyway?" He pulled out a small brochure. "I'm more concerned with my grooming appointment!" He showed it to Luz. "See? Fit for a king! And guess what? I AM A KING!"

"There's just something about it that…" she stopped as the door opened, and she could see inside. There was… another human! And she was talking with… an anthropomorphic duck?

She picked up King, who didn't say anything as he kept browsing through the brochure and approached the door trying to walk a little to the side so it wouldn't be obvious she was listening in.

"Look, I just want to make sure you'll stick to schedule," the human redhead with highlights was saying to the duck, who Luz could now tell was female, apparent given her human-like appearance despite the slightly-too big green and black striped sweater she was wearing. "I know I've taught you enough spells but I can't help but worry."

"Oh, come on," the duck said, her voice sounding warm despite her amusement. It was a young voice, sounding maybe just a bit older than Luz herself. She held her breath as the duck girl continued. "You know I can take care of myself. Relax, Sunset, it'll be fun. I'm just going to use the library. Nothing will happen to me there. Besides, you need the bar right now, right? Chill. I'll be fine."

Luz casually leaned against the wall next to the door, able to hear the woman 'Sunset' speak much clearly. She also sounded young. "You know saying that is basically challenging the multiverse to prove you wrong."

That didn't seem to deter the duck girl, who simply stated: "I'll see you later, okay?"

She heard Sunset sigh. "Well, I taught you enough to kick ass. Just… be careful, alright?"

"Sure thing!" the duck girl ran out of the door and it closed behind her, fading into nothing. She stretched and looked around a big smile on her face until she spotted Luz, who waved. "Um… were you listening to us?"

"Sorry!" Luz said, putting down King, who grunted in annoyance. "I just… um, well it s-sort of looked like your teacher was a human? There's not that many here."

The duck girl crossed her arms and raised an eyebrow. "I wasn't aware that there were any humans at all here," she said, "But yes, Sunset is human at the moment. Or most of the time, anyway." She smiled, and Luz was again reminded of how weird it was that creatures with beaks could do that everywhere else but Earth. "My name is Lena."

"Luz."

"Gah! Luz! Why are we still here?" King asked, smacking the brochure with the back of his paw. "We should be over at Continental Royal Grooming Services!"

Luz sighed, and Lena must have sensed her disappointment, because she shrugged. "Hey, I don't really have any plans, why don't I go with you to your cubone's grooming session?"

"Did you just call King a pokemon?" Luz asked, her grin widening. "Oh my gosh, he really does look like a mutated cubone!"

"I don't know what a Pokemon is, but if they look remotely like me then they are very lucky," King declared, scampering up to Luz's shoulder so he could ride on them. "Now. Onward, fair carriage!" he shouted, pointing in the direction of the grooming place.

Luz shared a laugh with Lena and the trio set out to walk through the town. "So," Luz ventured after a few minutes of silence. "How did she get that door? Where does it go?"

Lena shrugged. "I'm not sure exactly how she got the place, but that's a door to her interdimensional bar, 'Sunset's Isekai'," she explained, watching the various shops with mild interest. "We came here a while ago and I thought it looked like a fun place to revisit, so when Sunset said she had something planned for later, I asked her to drop me off here for a while."

"Oh." Luz stopped at the entrance to Continental Royal Grooming Services and opened the door, allowing King to jump down from her shoulders and hurry inside. "So you're like an apprentice bartender?"

Lena laughed. "Nah. She's helping me with magic. I thought I knew plenty… being what—who I am, but it turns out there's always more to learn." She walked past Luz, who had stopped to gape at her at the door to the groomer.

"Wait, magic?" Luz asked. "How does she do magic?"

Lena blinked. "Um. You know…" She wiggled her fingers and a lamp turned into a chicken for a few seconds before returning to normal. "Magic? Well you know… um… everyone's different."

"But isn't she human?"

"Eeeh…" Lena sort of winced. "Currently? She's been a lot of things. Really depends on the occasion."

'So… not really human. Great.' Luz shook her head, bringing herself back to reality when the shop owner, a big, single eye that floated behind the desk blinked expectantly. "Oh, sorry!" She hurried inside to where King was waiting, tapping his foot on the floor and looking at her with an unamused expression. "Um, King here would like one of your Royal Treatments," she said to the eye.

"Yes!" King declared, jumping up to stand on the counter. "I am royalty, after all! The King of Demons must not have subpar treatment!"

"Right," Luz said, pulling out a small pouch with gold inside. "Here's the payment."

The eye studied the gold, then tilted up and down in an approximation of a nod. Two disembodied hands emerged from the back of the building, one picking the money, the other one picking up King.

"I shall return! More beautiful and powerful than ever!"

"See you in a bit, King!" Luz called back waving as King was carried into the back. One of the hands returned briefly to point at a crooked clock, then raised two fingers.

"Two hours." She gave the eye a thumbs up. "Got it!"

She followed Lena out of the groomer and stretched. It was a brand new day and she was still the only human that could do magic.

"So what's got you down?" Lena asked.

"Eh." Luz started walking down the road towards the market, with Lena following behind. "I just wished there were other humans who could cast spells. Maybe they could give me some hints on how to do it. When I came here and decided to stay, I thought it'd be easier, you know?" She traced a circle in the air, much like Eda would, but it left no magical trail of light behind. "The human world has so many stories of people learning magic and here… witches here have extra organs that help them do that. Up until I figured out how to cast the light spell they thought it was impossible for humans to even use magic at all, much less be able to learn."

"Is that the only way to do it?" Lena asked. "Even back home there's more than one magical system. My um… mother, I guess… was a master of several of them."

Luz shook her head. "If there is, no one here knows about it. Eda said there was a different way of doing magic centuries ago, but it's a lost art. None of them remember the 'old' way of casting from several centuries ago, so I'm having to rediscover it on my own."

"Huh." Lena said. "I guess it really depends on where you are. Have you discovered anything yet?"

Luz smiled, feeling a sense of pride at her chance to show off. "Oh yeah! Check it out!"

She could feel Lena watching intently as she drew the circle and rune on her note book, then tapped it with her finger. The sense of satisfaction at seeing the page crumble and become a pure, white orb of light would never fade. 'I did this. I figured it out myself,' she thought as Lena grinned in that way ducks do, and admired the gently floating sphere.

"That's really cool!"

"Right?" Luz said, "but witches here can just draw it in the air, and cast different spells that way. Me? I have to somehow figure out how to see the runes they don't and just… do it."

Lena patted the girl's shoulder. "Hey. If it's true that none of them remember how to cast magic like this, this is not only cool, but huge!"

"Yep! I even was allowed to attend Witch School here!" Luz said excitedly, pointing towards the building, far into the city. "My two best friends are there studying magic."

"Don't you miss home?" Lena asked after a moment of contemplation.

"What do you mean?" Luz asked.

"Doing this? Living here?" Lena motioned with her hand. "You sound and dress like a typical Type I civilization human," she explained. "You know, like me back home, airplanes, racecars, lasers… cell phones, internet?"

"Oooh, that makes sense, yeah, that's pretty much me back home!" Luz said pointing at herself with her thumb. "But what does that have anything to do with it?"

"Well, I mean, this is pretty much medieval, right? Creatures that don't exist back in your world, etc. A lot of misplaced individuals kind of feel panic about this kind of thing."

'Am I supposed to feel out of my depth here?' Luz asked herself, humming. She shook her head. "Come on, let me show you something."

They had reached the end of the street, so she motioned for Lena to follow her towards the forest. "I guess a lot of kids back in the human world would be freaked out," she said. "I mean, most of my school was just happy to be… normal. If I played pranks and got too excited about something, they really had issues with me, you know?"

Lena chuckled. "You remind me a lot of Webby."

"Webby?" Luz repeated, arching her eyebrow.

"Yup, a bit younger than both of us, and about as tall as King, but she has a lot of energy, and sees things in a very peculiar way."

"Heh. Sounds like fun."

They walked in silence through the forest until they reached the cliffs near Eda's house. Waving at Lena, she guided her over to her favorite spot, where she could sort of see the sight that Eda had shown her not too long ago. The huge bones of whatever titanic, ancient creature had collapsed and created the place where the Boiling Isles would become what it was today. She sat on the edge of the cliff, and Lena followed suit.

They sat there, admiring the isles in all their splendor, with weird creatures and birds of all shapes and sizes soaring in the sky, while buildings of unusual proportions and designs jutted out the town like challenges to sanity.

"How can you not love this place?" Luz asked, grinning. She placed her hands on the floor and leaned back swaying her legs back and forth. "Back home… I was just… weird, you know? It's not that people were not nice to me, but they just didn't get me. I love reading fantasy, I love magic and adventure, and I was just… in school. Doing normal, everyday stuff because people wanted me to be just like everyone else. I couldn't do anything that was unique about me without getting weird looks or just scaring people. I didn't fit. They wanted me to just get good grades and smile and never do anything that calls you inside unless it's 'normal'."

She sighed. "And there's nothing wrong with that if you're… if that's what you want. But what if it isn't?" She glanced at Lena, who was focused on her, paying attention. "What if I want to do magic? What if I want to be magic? What if I want adventures that involve dragons and quests and magical items? What if I want to fly on my own palisman? What if I don't want to just fit in a box?"

She glanced back at the isles. "I know it's very different… but this is where I belong. You know?"

Lena chuckled. "Yeah. I get it. I was a loner for most of my life until I met my best friend, Webby. She… changed my view on a lot of things, and thanks to her, I became… well, me. If I hadn't stepped out of my own preconceptions, I would have never gone on as many adventures as I did, I'd never really become part of either of my families. I would have never known the fun side of being different."

"It's just… hard to show others the good side of what you do when people think you're inexcusably strange," Luz said, nodding. "But sometimes you meet someone that can get that, and that's where home really is, isn't it?"

Lena sat back and looked up, a pensive expression on her face. "Yeah, I think you're right. People always judge different as if it was a bad thing, without even looking at what different does, and then making up their mind. I guess that's what I like about Webby and Sunset. They saw how different I was, but they also saw who I was."

"And that is why I'm here," Luz said. "Eda, King, Willow and Gus… even Amity… they are very different from the people back home. They all think I'm strange or naive, but rather than use that to push me away, they look past that and well… friends."

Lena chuckled. "Well, you can count me as a new one if you want to," she said, surprising Luz. "My teacher, Sunset, says that friendship is one of the most important things in the multiverse… and given what I've seen her do for it, I can't argue the point."

"Oh, I'd love to!" Luz said excitedly, jumping to her feet. "I need to introduce you to Eda and my other friends!"

Lena tapped her beak in thought, making Luz blink. When she noticed her reaction she looked down at her finger. "Huh. It seems I picked a habit. Anyway," she shook her head. "I have an idea. You've shown me a bit of your world, why don't you let me show you and your friends a bit of mine?"

"Hey kids," Eda greeted as she walked up to where Gus, Willow and a slightly-offended looking Amity were gathered. "What brings y'all here?"

"Um, Luz sent us a message to meet right at this spot."

Eda looked from the students to the wall of her house, back to the students. "On the side of my house?"

"weee! There's nothing mooooooreee fuun than hanging around meee!" Hooty hollered, his extremely long neck whipping around to face them all, making the group wince.

"Yeah, no," Eda said. "No one wants that, Hooty. Go back to your place."

"Aww."

Once the door guard was gone, she shook her head. "She also sent me a message about going to a bar." She smirked. "I've got to hand it to her, I never thought she'd be so advanced in her rebellious lessons."

"A bar?!" Amity asked, incredulous. "She told me we were getting together for a milkshake!"

"Wait, you and Luz have milkshakes together?"

Before Gus could get his answer, they heard Luz's voice as she called out to them. They turned to see her, a strange, humanoid duck and…

"King?" Eda asked, looking at the flowing fur, shining like silk and the well-polished skull mask with just the right amount of makeup with added, delicate eyebrows. "What happened to you?"

"I have discovered the value of grooming!" King hollered. "And it only cost all of my personal savings!"

Eda's surprise faded. "Right. You mean the money I gave you for food for the week."

"PERSONAL SAVINGS!"

"Oh hey, you're all here!" Luz said. "Great! Let me introduce you guys, this is Lena de Spell."

"Wait a minute, wait a minute!" Eda interrupted. "De Spell, as in Magica de Spell?"

Luz blinked. "Why?"

"Kids get behind me," Eda ordered. "Luz. Step away from that witch. Slowly. Now, I don't know what you planned to do by getting us here but I will NOT let you do anything to my precious student or anyone else, for that matter."

"Um, what's going on?" Luz asked, raising her hands placatingly, but still moving a bit away from Lena.

Lena sighed. "I'm not Magica, that's my…biological mother I guess you could call her. She's been dealt with, has no magical powers left and is currently probably trying to figure out a way to capture me." She smirked. "But she can't."

"Riight," Eda said. "And how can you prove you aren't her?"

"Well," Lena drawled, pulling out a silver key out of her pocket.

Eda narrowed her eyes, studying it carefully until her eyes settled on the engraving at bottom of it. "Is that…"

Lena grinned. "Look behind you."

Despite the possibility that this duck was indeed the infamous Magica de Spell, Eda couldn't help turning around, her eyes widening when she saw the stone arc and door on the side of her house. "I can't believe it," she muttered, lowering her palisman.

Lena walked past them and opened the door, allowing them to see into what looked like some sort of bar, but there were creatures there they had never seen before. The kids gasped. "Are those more humans?" Gus asked, eyes wide.

"Welcome to Sunset's Isekai, where we also serve milkshakes," Lena said, motioning with her hand to the door. "I asked Sunset if we could have a meet and greet party for my new friends. And she said yes!"

Eda shook her head in disbelief. "I never thought I'd…"

She felt a hand on her arm, and she looked at Luz, who was smiling at her encouragingly. "Do you trust her now?"

"Kid this is…" Eda shook her head. This was a legend. This was something that didn't appear in the blighted Boiling Isles. This was something that someone like her had been told countless times would never get to see by her sister and teachers. The type of place that would never open up to those that broke the rules and were not complacent to follow the norm. "Yeah." She chuckled. "I guess I do."

"Well then, come on in," Lena said, heading inside. "Luz told me a lot about you, so I think you'll like my teacher."

Having heard her reassurance, the kids—even Amity—followed her in, all except for Luz and King who jumped onto Eda's arms. "So… what is this place?"

"You ever heard of places like Avalon, or Shangri-la?" Eda asked.

"Nope."

"Well then don't worry your little head over it, come on, let's go have a drink."

"Heh." King jumped down and strolled into the bar. "I hope they have something fit for a king!"

"Hey kid," Eda said softly. "Did you really tell her all about me?"

Luz shrugged. "I didn't tell her about the curse, but I told her a lot, yeah. Why?"

"And there was no… problem with this?"

"Nothing as far as I know."

"I see."

She approached the door slowly, extending her hand as if she expected it to bounce out of some sort of forcefield. When it didn't she smiled. "Well. Hell. Thanks kid."

"Aww, I didn't do anything you wouldn't have done for me."

Eda simply smiled. They both knew it was true. Even if she'd deny it in front of everyone.

But for now, it was time for a drink.

Author's Notes:

I didn't want to publish this on April Fools. So Thursday it is.
Couple of things, if you don't know, you can buy a cleaned up copy of The Empty Room now! Take a look!
Also, Eda and Luz will probably return.
Peace!