Chapter Text
Encanto wasn’t a very big town. Everyone pretty well knew everyone, especially if you were a Madrigal. Pepa, the storm. Julieta, the healer. Bruno, the prophet. Alma was the mother. The Madrigal triplets were in town constantly, helping where they could, aiding what they could, fixing what they could get their hands on. Bruno Madrigal wasn’t really the same as them. He was fairly shunned, and generally shadowed his sisters, only because his mother forced him to go out and ‘pull his weight for the miracle’.
Occasionally, he’d see a few visions for people, but the reaction was always the same. He’d patiently bear the brunt of a rage, the same ‘Bruno Madrigal, how could you say something like that! Bruno Madrigal, this is all your fault! You make wicked things happen, Bruno Madrigal! Oh, I hate you, Bruno Madrigal!’
The same things, and no one seemed to care, and they still kept coming and kept coming.
He found silence inside the walls of the little Carmelite Monastery, where they’d accept him for a day or two and he could help with the chores and follow the Brothers around, pray with them, read with them, help prepare their meals.. there was silence, and no prodding, no questions.. no one wanted any visions, there.
“I don’t think you have been sleeping, Bruno,” commented the soft voice of a Brother, sitting down across from him at a short wooden table. He had been stringing beads on wire and twisting it so that they could be taken and joined together to make rosaries to be sold for the profit of the convent.
“I haven’t,” Bruno admitted, glancing toward him. “But it’s alright. Im used to it by now, Hermano.”
His visions kept him awake. His blinding headaches kept him awake. The pain, the loneliness, the ache in his body, the thought of everything he saw, everything he had seen.
“Our offer still stands for you to join us,” the Brother replied with a soft smile. “Though you’re still young. You have to be eighteen to make the choice on your own… your Madre would have to approve it, right now.”
…his mother? He fought a soft laugh and put down the wire cutters on the table, looking over at the Brother, dressed in his brown robes, wearing no shoes.
“I can’t even entertain that thought,” Bruno replied with a shake of his head. “Even after I turn eighteen, I doubt she’d let me leave. You know. Our Miracle, or whatever it wants to be called…”
“Well, I don’t think it’s a terrible thing to give back to God,” he replies thoughtfully, reaching over and resting his hand on top of Bruno’s curls.
“Padre Ignatius of the Holy Face says you can stay here tonight if you’d like. I have to go finish help picking the tomatoes-.. come back tomorrow, and you can help us make Hogao.”
“Thank you, Hermano Toribio.”
Bruno smiled faintly and watched as the Brother walked away and toward the door, outside, where he would inevitably go to the large garden to help his Brothers with their quiet labor. And he knew he wouldn’t be coming back. He could barely get away with coming here every other week… two days in a row was going to be a stretch. But he supposed he could visit the Dominicans and see if he could help them, and make his rounds, and hopefully a few days of peace would be good for his head.
He wiped a bit of blood on his pants, where he had poked his fingers with the wire, carefully counting out the beads in a slow and careful manner as he dropped them all into a basket so that they could be taken up and used by someone else. Then he cleaned up his little space and listened to the ringing of the bell that signified a call to the Chapel so that all of the brothers could pray None out of the Divine Office.
As he walked through the courtyard, he could hear the intoning of the prayer, the soft and beautiful chant and response.
“Deus in adjutórium meum inténde.”
“Dómine, ad adjuvándum me festína.”
“Glória Patri, et Fílio, et Spirítui Sancto.
Sicut erat in princípio, et nunc, et semper, et in sǽcula sæculórum. Amen.”
“Allelúja.”
He loved to listen, and oftentimes he would join, though he settled at the foot of The Lady of Las Lajas, staring at her and studying her before he made the Sign of the Cross over himself and offered her a quiet smile, fixing a rose at her feet.
“Mother,” he softly said, “I’m sorry for my superstitions. I know they’re useless, and now they’re a bad habit. Help me to break them. And Mother, if this truly is a miracle given to my family, help me to accept it … but please, for the sake of my humility and my sanity, I ask, if it is the Divine Will, take it away from me, and help me to trust in Him and to love Him much more. And, also, if i am meant to be a Religious, please obtain an answer for me. Ave Maria, gratia plena, dominus tecum. Benedicta in mulieribus, et benedictus fructus ventris tui, Iesus. Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. Amen.”
He made another Sign of the Cross and stayed sitting as he listened to the chant and the sound of the town floating in from over the courtyard walls. And when the Brothers finished, he embraced them, he thanked them, and he regretfully departed from them to return to Casita for dinner, where he knew his Sister would be preparing a warm meal to feed them all, likely with her boyfriend being invited.
He didn’t mind Agustín. He was a very kind fellow, a little soft spoken, and they got along rather well. He’d never asked for a vision, nor had he let the rumors about Bruno deter him from a quiet sort of friendship, and his presence was a welcome one, so he never minded when he was invited to dinner, which was a relatively often occurrence.
He could see Casita growing closer as he walked toward it, lifting his hand in greeting, and the shutters waving back toward him.
“You were almost late again for dinner,” Pepa called out of the window. And he waved his hand toward her dismissively as he pulled a loose string out of his ruana.
“No way! I’m right on time!”