Chapter Text
What happened?
The little girl looked at her Abuela, nervous and confused. Her door should have glowed, right? Where was her door? Her confusion increased when she saw her Abuela retreat from her with a face that she would not know how to decipher due to her young age. She at least was sure that wasn't a happy face. She looked around for someone to tell her what was happening, but her tías and primos had the same face as Abuela, and primo Camilo was hugging her mother's leg. They exchanged confused looks.
Where was Daddy? She looked around nervously, trying to spot the green ruana, though to no avail.
Not knowing what else to do, she began to cry. The little girl left and ran to the room in which she had been sleeping until that day, the nursery. She stood on tiptoes to reach for the handle, opening and entering quickly, pushing the wood until it closed.
Mirabel hurried to her bed, hugging her pillow tightly when she landed in the bed. She barely understood what had happened, but she was sure of one thing: the adults were angry with her.
She kept crying until she eventually fell asleep from exhaustion ... Not knowing that someone else had accompanied her that night.
Mirabel snapped awake, sitting up and hyperventilating at her own memory. She looked right at the wall, seeing the now familiar green glow.
No, it hadn't been a memory… it was a vision. That was exactly what happened.
Mirabel flopped back on the bed, covering her eyes with her hands. She couldn’t let her primo Antonio see her like that. She took several deep breaths to calm herself, gradually diminishing the intensity of the glow until it was completely gone.
Mirabel sighed, exhausted. It was the third night in a row that a vision crawled in her dreams. Knowing better than to try to sleep again, she struggled to keep her eyes open.
In her fifteen years, she has Seen a lot. She Saw the wedding of her tía Pepa, the hurricane that was summoned by her, Bruno just trying to warn her that she was creating a cloud.
She also Saw the gift ceremony of the triplets, the surprise of the guests from the town when her Papa got a vision and nobody could shake him from his stupor, complicated even more by the tornado from her tía.
Ah, yes. She never could forget her Papa, because she was constantly having visions about him and his life. The true problem of that, though? Her Abuela and tías were very convinced that she didn’t remember. Julieta was her mother, and that was what she had to pretend all her life… because they don’t talk about Bruno.
Honestly, that was a weird rule, at least for her that Saw almost every piece of their life. What has her Papa done to deserve exile? He was kind, almost every time rushing to Pepa to help her calm down before their Mama could discover the mess in her room, or hiding his most gruesome visions from the townspeople and her Mama to protect himself.
Mirabel almost puked when she Saw a group of angry people hitting her dad. He was saved later by Julieta, and her vision ended with Bruno crying himself to sleep in her sister’s lap.
The most important vision about him, though, was the one that made her aware that he was still in Casita.
Mirabel got that vision when she was nine. In it, Bruno had just talked to Abuela, and she asked him not-so-kindly to look into his daughter future after the failed ceremony. He went to his tower and did just that. She didn’t See well what that vision was or why he would look so nervous, so sad, but she then knew that he hid on the walls.
That night, she got up immediately after the vision ended, and found the entry behind the frame right away. Bruno watched her wordlessly, surprised by seeing her bright green glowing eyes illuminating the narrow passage.
After a very long session of cuddles and tears, he taught her how to relax. That would help her to be able to "turn off" her eyes again after the visions. (He laughed when he said that, and she decided then that she wanted to hear her Papa laugh like that many more times).
Returning to what Mirabel would like to call the present, she loves her Papa. She really does. That’s why she gets up, keeping her movements very quiet to prevent Antonio from waking up.
See, that was a plus of “her mother’s” gift, she knows how to cook. And she cooks for her dad.
A full plate of arepas later, she takes it and knocks on the family tree mural, smiling when it creaks and opens, Bruno slightly nervous and watching before letting her in.
He helped her with the arepas, putting them on the tiny table before helping her pass through the gap, smiling at her.
“Um… H-hi, mija… Another restless night?”
Bruno caressed her cheeks lovingly, his nervous smile betraying how happy he was of having her there.
“Yeah, the visions are getting annoying nowadays”
Her first true smile of the day shone somewhat darkened; she truly was exhausted. Her dark circles were beginning to resemble her father's in that sense.
Bruno wanted to reassure her, tell her that it would get better… But if her power was like his, it wouldn’t get better. He didn't want to lie to her daughter like that.
The days passed, then weeks and then months.
Antonio’s gift ceremony was today.
One of her jobs as a “giftless” Madrigal was waking up everyone, so she said goodbye to her Papa, hugging him tightly, and made her way out of the walls. Once she got out, she went to the kitchen to have the breakfast dishes ready, and went door by door calling out every one of her family.
That would be a difficult day, after all.