Night-Owl Trucking

Tuesday, 9:07pm

Luz hummed a choppy note as she deliberated, chewing slowly to gain a few more moments to think. Amity watched her with slightly narrowed eyes, as if she were expecting the tanned girl to weasel out of answering the question. Luz nodded, swallowed, and gave the green-haired girl a blinding grin, "You ready fo' this?"

Amity nodded.

"Alright, I'm thinking... Goats and pigeons," Luz said with a slight raise of her chin. She watched the pale girl blink in surprise.

Amity snorted into her hand, almost losing her grip on her sandwich in the process. She gasped a bright note of delight and asked, "Really?"

"Yeah," the brown-eyed girl laughed as she turned her sub around, finding the right angle of attack, "Wouldn't that be hilarious?" Luz took a bite of her sandwich as Amity tapped a fingertip against her lips, her golden eyes pointed skyward as she gave the question exaggerated consideration. Luz tried not to stare at her lips, at the way they bent just so under the pressure of her fingertip. She tried, but these things happen.

"Yeah..." Amity grudgingly admitted, shrugging slightly as she grinned, "Yeah, okay. I can see what you're going for."

Luz chuckled through a mouthful of roast-beef-on-white, and covered her mouth with one hand as she added, "Can you imagine trying to get a hotdog in the Big Apple? Pure chaos!" She shimmied from side to side and bumped Amity's shoulder with her own as she swallowed, "Okay, now," she turned the question back, "what two animal sounds would you swap, if—" She waved a hand in a casually dismissive way as she took a sip of her drink, quickly adding, "—if you were, y'know, a mostly-benevolent demi-goddess of unspecified power."

Amity chuckled, but before she could reply, Luz's phone let out a [spooky whistling tune][https://www.yout-ube.com/watch?v=Vpqffgak7To]. They leaned together to peer down at the screen when Luz pulled it from her jacket.

[mY MiDdLe nAmE IsN'T PiZzA]: omg sorry

Luz sighed and pulled a breathy, stretched-out Southern voice, "That boy ain't right." She shook her head with a dark chuckle as she slid the phone back in her pocket, "Oh ho, I swear, ask me to call you and then not answer—"

A horn blared from the roundabout nearby, and if Amity hadn't still been leaning into the shorter girl's shoulder, Luz would never have noticed her flinch at the sound. The pale girl's face and hands gave away absolutely nothing—which was both impressive and sad—but Luz could feel how her body stiffened at the sudden noise. She glanced over her shoulder, eyeballing the slow parade of cars working their way through the traffic circle, and felt Amity shudder again when another driver laid on their horn.

"Hey," She reached out to wrap an arm around the taller girl's back and rubbed her hand along her arm, her voice pitched soft and careful, "Are you okay?"

Amity looked down at the ground, carefully avoiding Luz's eyes with her own.

"Back in 'Frisco, the horns seemed to put you... on edge?" Luz licked her lips as she considered her words, "And that's okay, that's understandable, I just... want to be... considerate, and... help make you comfortable, if I can." She gave Amity's shoulder a squeeze and waited to listen in case the other girl felt up to speak.

"The loud... some noises... bother me, sometimes," Amity admitted, her face still pointed down at the ground, as a red shame crept up the back of her neck, "I— I don't know why, maybe it— it's an overstimulation thing— but— it's not like I could go talk to anyone about it." The golden-eyed girl looked up, then, and Luz realized it wasn't just embarrassment coloring her face. Amity's voice held a bitter, angry note, "A Blight mustn't show weakness, after all."