Chapter Text
It had started off as an average day. Sunny, Pepa must have been in a good mood, a slight breeze, Camilo was playing with a few kids while their parents kicked back for a bit, Julieta was in town with her food cart, and Luisa was doing her every day chores. It wasn’t much actually. It was a bit of a lazy day without too much to do. No inexplicably tilted houses or the need to move any buildings again. Now that their family was working together a bit more it took the strain off of the individual. Isabela had actually put together a much more efficient fence for the donkeys using her vines so Luisa hadn’t had to chase them down for a while. Of course that wasn’t what she wound up chasing after. That’s getting a little ahead of the story though.
It hadn’t been a bad day but neither had it been a good day. It was simply average and Luisa was content with that. She was especially glad to know that her tía Pepa was having a good day. Her mom, though, almost always had a smile on her face. Julieta was just like that. She was always rather cheery even if she didn’t display it with heightened levels of energy. Her mom had never been the most energetic person in the world but she was honest with how she was feeling and she liked cheering people up. She couldn’t stand to see someone sad and she had a way of understanding people straight away. She was soothing, kind, and uplifting in nearly everything she did.
Luisa was actually much like her mother although she’d deny it. Her mother was gentle and quiet and Luisa was anything but. She liked helping people just as much as her mom though and did her best to make others happy because seeing a smile on someone’s face always cheered her up. Physically she was the opposite of her mom, but physical strength, height, or build does not a person make. Her job was much the same as Julieta’s. Just be in town and wait for someone to need a bit of help. Sure, her mom got to kick back a little bit more but it was a pretty boring job. As a result Julieta was easily entertained and noticed the smallest details.
Luisa guessed that that was probably why her mom was so good at reading people. She’d learned how to do it out of sheer boredom. She’d done it without even realizing it actually and it made Luisa laugh that her mom could be so dense about it. It wasn’t just her mom that could be a little, she didn’t want to say stupid, thick about their own self acquired abilities. Her hermanita could be more than troublesome when it came to understanding her own contributions. Contributions that had been long overlooked and that always put a weight on Luisa’s shoulders. She often wished she’d had more time to spend with Mirabel. Luisa had seen how hard things were for her, but she’d just been so busy and with how much she juggled from day to day having another person around was more of an obstacle than a relief.
She’d worked sunup to sundown and never really had the time to spend with her hermanita. That was a regret and a big one at that. Of course Luisa had seen how much Mirabel was like their mom. Always ready to help, to heal, to fix, and anything in between. She’d become a jack of all trades without realizing it. Despite her rather aggressive socializing techniques she was well liked. People tended to be tactless about things though. People might not have been intending to rub the fact that she had no gift in her face but they did anyway. Mirabel was good at keeping a smile on her face even if it wasn’t a genuine one. She was good at bringing people together whether they wanted to or not.
That brought her thoughts to her tío Bruno. Luisa had tried to not hold anything against him but she knew that she’d contributed to the problem in her own way. She hadn’t been active in it and that was exactly the problem. She hadn’t done anything. She knew none of it was true. Her dad had always liked Bruno actually and he’d been hit pretty hard when Bruno had left. He hadn’t shown it for the sake of not causing arguments or trouble, but she could see it. He’d always said it was stupid to blame him for things like that. After all, he needed Julieta’s cooking nearly every day for something or another and Bruno hadn’t had any hand in that. No prophecy had ever brought him “bad luck” he just had it and didn’t need any help keeping it. Bad things happen, he’d say, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it.
She could see that he held the same regrets that she did when it came to her tío. He hadn’t been an active participant but neither had he stood up for his cuñado either. No one had ever really defended Bruno, or helped him, or just tried to make him feel better. He’d certainly been there for her though. He was there to pick her up and soothe a skinned knee or a scrape or put a smile on her sad face. She’d been the smallest of all the Madrigal children growing up and that had just been something that she’d never grown out of when it came to the way he saw her and, honestly, she liked it. When people looked at her they saw her strength, her muscles, and her confidence. No one ever seemed to really see her as anything but a big strong person. Even still after everything that had happened that is still the way she was seen and it wasn’t really about her gift at all. It was about the way she looked.
That never mattered to her tío though. Even after she’d gotten her gift and could lift him up with one hand he still treated her the same. He’d never even stopped using his little nickname for her, conejito, and she loved it. He’d even manipulated his way into giving her shoulder rides. She wasn’t a stupid child. She knew her tío could see perfectly fine but that didn’t stop him from faking it so she could “guide” him around the house. She had liked being picked up and held and people kind of stopped doing that after she’d gotten her gift. Granted, she’d had a bit of trouble learning how to control it at first. A five year old didn’t exactly have the best control over everything let alone how she grabbed things and the force she used.
People had become a little afraid of her, but not her tío. He still picked her up and held her and played with her the same as ever. He’d gotten more than his share of accidentally broken bones from her in the beginning, but he hadn’t cared. He’d somehow manage to coax her right back into his arms and they’d go racing through the town. He hadn’t even made a noise even though she could feel the snap under her hands. He would stop breathing for a moment though. He knew how much it would hurt her if he reacted too badly. She had become scared of herself and that was the last thing he’d wanted. He couldn’t hide his disappointment when she’d finally become too big to carry. Never stopped him from calling her his conejito though. He still stuttered over the nickname and she didn’t know how to tell him that she still loved it when he called her that and had missed hearing it. It was comforting to have someone who, quite obviously, did not see her for her strength and build. He had no idea how much that meant to her.
She liked her gift of course, she liked her strength and what she could do with it, but sometimes she just wanted to be treated like a girl. She knew she wasn’t exactly the most feminine woman in the world but that didn’t mean that she didn’t want to be treated any different from her hermanas. She wondered if he knew how important that was to her or not. Losing her gift had been especially hard for her because she felt like that was all she had. It had been too long since she’d been treated like she could be sensitive or delicate. She knew that she was anything but delicate but she kind of missed the gentility that people had used because she’d just been so small.
Her tío somehow managed to understand people without understanding people. Social anything and he was a doe eyed, clueless, moron. He couldn’t make casual conversation to save his life, but he just knew how a person wanted to be treated and, she was certain, that it had nothing to do with his gift. He’d spent his whole life being treated as something he was not and he could easily see it in others. He really didn’t see outward appearances. Her tío could look straight into a person’s soul and not in a bad way. He’d never put any of them in a box because of their gifts. He’d been the only one and he didn’t seem to understand how important that was.
It was good to have him back even if he was so different. The roles between them had reversed a bit and now she was the one protective of him. That didn’t stop him from, somehow, knowing when she was upset and showing up to make her feel better. He had no idea how special he was to her. She was worried for him though. Everything that had happened had changed him. She’d never forget how powerless she’d been when that monster of a cat had pushed him down into the grass and mud and sank its’ massive teeth into him. She hadn’t been able to see him, but she’d been able to hear him. He’d spent his whole life being so kind and protective of her and when the moment came for her to return that she’d failed and she’d failed hard.
He didn’t hold it against her of course. He’d just tell her that she’d done what she could that she’d done a good job too.
He still had a tendency to get himself in trouble. It wasn’t really that people would get angry at him but more that he’d be extremely stupid just long enough for something ridiculous to happen. Like the time that he’d mistaken a jaguarundi for an alley cat and the thing had split his face in two. Her poor tío did not have a good track record with cats. In fact, he was terrified of them. That was the only explanation for what was happening right now. A combination of his talent for getting himself into situations that were beyond outrageous and the pure terror he held for cats. It didn’t help that he carried rats with him everywhere and they seemed to be tempting enough, and him unthreatening enough, that the cat would go straight for him.
I all actuality it wasn’t that much of a surprise to find herself watching her tío managing to outrun, outjump, and outclimb an ocelot. However, she was at a loss as for what to do about it. She’d been in the middle of helping to rebuild a fence and heard a noise behind her. She’d turned to find him hopping along the fence posts, looking absolutely terrified, with a snarling ocelot on his heels and a rat clinging to the back of his ruana. He made a leap from the final fence post and jumped off of one wall and onto the roof of another building with the cat hot on his heels.
He jumped from the roof to a balcony and ran along a windowsill before grabbing hold of a rain gutter to swing himself around the corner and out of sight. She’d forgotten about the fence in an instant and ran after her tío. She rounded the corner to see him land in the street, rolling to soften his impact before springing back up onto his feet. He vaulted a cart and landed on a barrel before jumping and wrapping his hands around the railing of another balcony to swing himself up and narrowly avoid the ocelot behind him. From there he’d managed to leap clean across the street and barely catch himself on the roof of a smaller house.
If there was one thing Bruno wasn’t scared of, it was heights.
He scrambled for a moment before using the chimney of the house to land on the roof of the next. He slid down the slanted roof and caught himself on a windowsill. He jumped from windowsill to windowsill and Luisa could see a thousand different ways this could go wrong. He’d actually managed to trick the cat by jumping onto a roof and back flipping behind the animal after it made the leap after him. It had slipped on the roof, claws scraping the terracotta shingles, and swung back around to keep chasing him.
“Dolores.” She said. “Tío Bruno needs Antonio’s help.”
He launched himself headfirst from the roof of a house and into a tree. He swung his way to the top before making the leap to an even taller tree to do the same with that one. He jumped down two stories to land on the roof of another house with a roll and vault himself over the edge. He landed on the railing of the balcony and Luisa nearly had a heart attack when he wobbled and lost his balance. His arms circled through the air as his back bent backward and he just went with it, managing to duck underneath the ocelot as it jumped for him. He grabbed the floor of the balcony and swung down onto the street. He landed in an empty cart and leaped back onto a tree as it rolled passed. He swung from the tree onto a roof and Luisa had to appreciate the dedication of this cat. He rolled to one side as the ocelot leaped and tumbled clean off of the building. He caught himself on a window ledge and jumped over to the windowsill of the next house. He jumped off the wall of the previous house and onto the next roof. He grabbed hold of the balcony on the second floor and launched himself onto the third floor.
Dios mio…..if he fell….
Was her mom nearby? She certainly hoped so. She was afraid to yell in case she broke his concentration and he either slipped and fell or was caught by the angry animal behind him. There were plenty of things he could have picked up and used to smack the cat away but her tío had no fight reflex. He was all flight and damn if he wasn’t good at it.
He made another massive leap and caught himself on the ledge above the door of the church and she watch the priest’s jaw drop before he crossed himself and muttered a prayer. He jumped up from the ledge and his fingers caught the sill of the window above him and from there he grabbed the edge of the roof and swung up there. Of course, by now he had the whole town’s attention. He wasn’t actually paying enough attention to be scared of that right now. What he was paying attention to was the fact that he’d accidentally cornered himself. There was nothing in front of him to jump to no trees, no buildings, no nothing. The absolute horror on his face was almost funny. His gaze snapped back behind him where the ocelot was scrambling and clawing its’ way onto the roof behind him and he ducked behind the steeple to climb up that. It was the only place he had to go.
The cat was right on his heels. It was probably feeling victorious at knowing that it had finally cornered him with no place to go. He reached the top and the two circled the steeple for a few seconds before Bruno grabbed hold of the heavy bronze bell and shoved it forward. The cat hit the bell headfirst with a loud clang. The crowd gave sympathetic groans for the poor animal and Bruno took the opportunity to slide and leap his way off the roof, leaving the stunned cat behind, and into the street.
Luisa watched him run right passed her father screaming about how he was never leaving the house again. She looked up and watch the cat stumble for a moment before it slumped over and fell to its’ side atop the church. Agustín shot his daughter a confused and questioning expression and she shrugged with a wince as the cat made a pained noise. He pointed back behind him to ask if he needed to go back and chase after Bruno and she gave a slow nod. Luisa watched him roll his eyes before turning on his heels and running back toward Casita.
Yup, she nodded. That was her tío. She couldn’t wait to get the full story at dinner. She looked around and was surprised at how small a mess he’d made. A few knocked over pots, a tipped barrel, and a dislodged cart was all he’d left in his wake. If she hadn’t seen the chase herself she wouldn’t believe it had actually happened even with the knowledge she had of Bruno. Sometimes the best moments with him were the ones that were entirely out of context. She would never understand how that poor man managed to get himself into situations like this. She would also never understand how he managed to pull that off at fifty years old. He had aged well. He had aged very well.
Yes, it was nice to have him back even if he was incredibly bizarre in the funnest way possible.