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“Have you ever wondered what it would be like?” Camilo had asked one bright, summer day. Mirabel was sitting beside him, her small legs tucked in, hiding away like shy rabbits beneath her long skirt. He stood on top of a stone in their family’s garden, arms spread wide and far. If Mirabel squinted hard enough through her green-rimmed glasses, it would almost look like Camilo was about to take off into the sky.
She fiddled with the hems for a brief moment before finally biting the bullet. “Wonder about what, Camilo?”
“Wondered what it would be like if we had the chance to explore the outside world.” They were younger and livelier back then, when the both of them thought their family magic was strong enough to let them pluck the stars and spin the sun out of orbit. “You know, the places that live beyond these mountains of ours.”
“But Abuela said that it would be too dangerous though.”
Camilo’s expression dropped a little, when he realized that Mirabel wasn’t sharing his same enthusiasm. He jumped off the rock before taking the spot to her left. Camilo then pouted and put his chin on the small palms of his hands, taking on the look of a kicked puppy.
"Yeah, but it wouldn't hurt to try, right? I mean, Papa is always talking about how beautiful the countries he visits are."
Mirabel lightly grabbed one of his curls and twisted it around her fingers. She contemplated his statement for a bit and thought about what it would be like if Camilo turned into an eagle right now and flew off into the glowing horizon.
"Would you come back and tell me all about your adventures then, if you do go?" Camilo was like the sun in a way, destined to burn brightly and infinitely. If he tried hard enough, Mirabel believed that nothing would stand in his way. She pondered if she would be like the quiet moon to his vibrant sun then.
"What are you even saying?" Her cousin turned around abruptly, and suddenly Mirabel was looking face-to-face with Camilo. "Obviously I am going to take you along with me, silly!"
The wind blew through them and the world around them was bright and colorful in a way that almost resembled a painting. But deep down, Mirabel knew that nothing could ever come close to how blinding Camilo’s smile was right now. He reminded her of the golden sunsets in the late afternoon and the autumn leaves and the golden earrings that Isabela often wore on her good days.
Mirabel didn’t know what to say in response to his words.
“Once we both get our powers, we’ll convince Abuela together! What do you say?” His confidence was infectious, radiating and bleeding through like the black ink on some of her father’s old documents. He held onto her hands and linked them together, connecting them through the promise of a future where they can be free together. Dolores and Luisa once joked that Camilo and Mirabel were like two halves of each other, twins in the way like the stars and clouds would be to the sun and the moon.
But they were wrong.
Because if Camilo embodied all of the skies and the solar system, she would rather be the mountains then. Strong, durable, resilient. The moon and the sun. The grounding mountains to the ever-changing skies.
Because wherever Camilo goes, of course Mirabel is going to be there with him too. So she held their hands even tighter and wore a smile that matched his own. “Let’s make a pinky promise on it then. When we’re older, we are going to bring back so many souvenirs for the family, even Isabela will be speechless!”
Camilo laughed out loud, the small gap between his front teeth peeking through, as Mirabel lifted her little pinky finger toward him. She could hear the family house behind them, creaking and clicking, surrounding the two of them and the entire town in its wake. And when Camilo finally connected their pinkies together, it felt right and Mirabel almost wanted to hold onto this moment forever and ever and ever.
They were young and scrawny and small back then, but they thought that as long as they had each other, the constellations and the infinite galaxies would always be theirs to keep.
However the mountains, stars, and the sun meant nothing when the house denied her wish and refused to give her a gift.
Mirabel melts away into the floor, and suddenly years of waiting were wasted on a ghost — an incomplete fragment to the magical family of Madrigal.
Not even Camilo could grab her hand in time when the world crumbled away beneath her feet. The void opens up and swallows her whole, chewing and spitting out every last bit of her self-worth into the kitchen drain. She would cry and shred every part of herself into the crevices and corners of the house, hoping and praying that it would be enough to let herself fade away into stardust.
She was a fool to believe that she could be anything like the moon or the mountains. Instead she is simply a rock, a small gravel, left to drift away in the river where her Abuelo once laid.
For five years after her failed ceremony, it became a broken record. It would repeat itself, skip through some parts, then rewind, but the words were always the same. It was a constant series of what-does-this-mean-for-our-family and was-this-a-mistake-somehow, alongside the worried stares of the townspeople and Abuela’s endless disappointment every time her eyes landed on Mirabel.
What once was two became only one, and as she stood in the center of the half-empty nursery, she could feel the walls growing taller around her. They loomed over her, arms reaching out like rotting branches in a dark forest. Mirabel’s small frame would sink through the walls like quicksand, forgotten amongst the paint and floor patterns — maybe then, it would appease the painful feeling in her chest that threatens to break through her very rib cages.
What do we do now and maybe she had messed up somehow.
Could this be a sign that the magic is failing and maybe this was her punishment for not doing enough.
It might have been a mistake then and maybe she was never really enough to begin with.
(“Casita, am I the mistake?”)
Mirabel was nine-years-old when Tía Pepa made an announcement about her new pregnancy. The news revived a hope in Abuela and the feeling in her chest only continued to grow, because Abuela has never once looked at her like that — like a person worthy of her time, her efforts, her love.
She sulked in the kitchen, while her mother worked away at making the meals. It was supposed to be a momentous occasion, but the sadness never went away. And Mirabel was scared, she was always scared.
It became difficult for Mirabel to properly look any of her family members in the eye anymore because she was afraid of what she would find. The disappointment, the anger, the pity.
Mirabel remembered a story that Luisa once told her and Camilo a few years back. A story about a little bird who accidentally broke its wing one day and was forced to remain on the ground, far far away from its destined sky. Until a kind fox came along and offered the little bird shelter until it could fly again.
She had thought that she was similar to that bird. But as time went on, she knew that it wasn’t true — because no amount of her mother’s affectionate kisses or arepas con queso could ever unbreak what has already been broken. She could never truly be free and the distance between her fingertips and the skies grew further and further everyday.
And when her mother stopped to take a breather and reached out to lovingly pinch her cheeks, Mirabel would feel the urge to pull away and suck back her tears because she feared the day when all of this would disappear.
She tried writing a letter to Camilo later that week, the pencil unsteady and shaking in her hand, because she wanted to apologize and say that she’s sorry, sorry, sorry — they weren’t the same little kids anymore but she still held onto that promise like a desperate prayer — the paper wrinkled under her fingers and the words blurred away like a distorted picture.
Mirabel needed something to change, but she also wanted the little things she still had left to remain the same forever. She was scared — scared, scared, scared; ("why are you scared, little one" was what her father once asked but she couldn't answer him) — to ask her cousin directly if he still remembered. She was a coward and as she stared at the void, the darkness stared back. Camilo never did get to see the letter in the end.
Mirabel was ten when she finally realized that some promises were meant to be broken.
Antonio is born and the cycle repeats itself once more. It is the same song — tune, rhythm, harmony — as always. It follows the familiar footsteps of Abuela and the celebratory cheers for every birth of a Madrigal child and the morning light that peeks in through the window in the nursery room—
The same tune, rhythm, and harmony. No missteps, no imperfections, no failure.
Mirabel is haunted by things that shouldn't matter and more pieces of her younger self is chipped away in the growing winds of change. She can no longer recognize herself in the mirror, blacked out and cracking — breakingbreakingalwaysbreaking — under Luisa's strength and Isabela's beautiful flowers.
A misstep, a word spoken out of line, and suddenly the music stops.
When the sun goes down and Mirabel can't recall the summer days spent playing in the garden with Camilo anymore, she lets herself fall back into the dark void once again.
Five more years went by and Mirabel found herself breaking under the judgment more times than she can count. At one point, she screamed and yelled because Abuela was not listening — she never is — and how could she say those things about her own granddaughter?
When their miracle died in her own hands and their house had crashed down all around them and laid in ruins, she wondered if this was how her story was always meant to go:
An outcast to the family. Antonio’s misplaced love and admiration for her. Her parents’ worries, her sisters’ growing pressure to be perfect because she couldn’t be, Tío Bruno’s hiding place in the wall, the prophecies, everything and nothing at all in the middle of— un-special, never special, plain, normal Mira—
(Mountains get broken down by corrosion, the moon changes shape every few days or so. They both are never ending but finite at the same time)
The world stopped turning. The void was silent for once. Then it rewound and there was finally a break in this endless limbo that all of them were trapped in — and then their miracle came back to life once more.
It was about seven month after the restoration of the house that Mirabel found herself outside, feeling the breezy night air. Not a soul was awake beside her own, with only the crickets and the moonlight to keep her accompanied. The town flourished during the day, but at night, it slumbered on like a giant, with the tiles and windows gently rattling like old bones.
She walked two steps forward, three steps back, and then took a big leap. She counted the different stones on the ground, pointed out the stars to herself, greeted the mountain that guarded their home, and basked in the moon’s soft gaze.
Despite everything, she was still here, breathing and existing. A few steps later, she discovered a small bench by the town’s well and sat down. The universe above her sparkled and shined — it murmured, as if it was trying to let Mirabel in on a little secret, and she hummed back in return. Leaves ruffled and the trees swayed, and all was silent.
Until it suddenly wasn’t.
A foot stepping onto a branch, a certain shuffling not too far away, and then:
“Hey you.”
It was Camilo, adorned in his typical sleep attire and yellow ruana. His black scandals were slightly dirtied but he paid no mind to it as he walked up to her. His normal curls were messy and moved in the wind, like gentle ocean waves.
“Hey to you too,” Mirabel scooted over to make space and patted the spot next to her. Camilo took the invitation and before long, they were side-by-side one another, with their shoulders slightly touching. It had been a long time since it was just the two of them — Mirabel has stopped counting the days, months, years that had passed by because she thought it would have been easier that way.
She didn’t know what to talk about with Camilo anymore.
“What are you doing all the way out here?” He took the first step, as he always does, his voice softer than it normally was around the rest of their family. “Have been trying to find you for the past five minutes, y’know. You weren’t in your room when I came knocking on your door.”
“Really?” Mirabel turned to look at him curiously, pushing back her glasses. “I couldn’t really sleep and decided to take a little walk. Did you need me for something?”
“No no.” Camilo played with his fingers for a bit before continuing, “I just wanted to make sure that you were okay, since you weren’t at the engagement dinner today.”
“Oh, I just had a bit of the sniffles,” Mirabel couldn’t help but chuckled at her cousin’s concern. In her mind, Camilo was always off doing who-knows-what with his jokes and sarcastic remarks and dramatic transformations. He was never worried, and when he was, he would bury it under the large amounts of laughter and smiles that he gets from his family and the townspeople. That was just how he is as a person — as they have gotten older and older, because time waits for no one and it felt like that was all she seemed to be losing nowadays.
“I was able to get Abuela’s permission to get a free pass. Though I think she mostly agreed to it because she didn’t want me to mess it up again,” Mirabel lightheartedly joked. “Remember what a huge disaster the last engagement dinner was?”
Camilo laughed and it sounded like the morning bells to her ears. It was endearing and created a warmth in her chest, that was big enough to erase all of the remaining awkwardness between them. She stopped listening to the chattering of the skeletons in the closet a long while ago and even took the time to scold the darkness that kept taking up the spaces in her bedroom. There was no need for it anymore.
“Come on, it wasn’t that bad. Though now that you mentioned it, it was pretty hilarious how the dinner turned out. But I can definitely reassure you that it went much smoother this time.”
“Pfft, I thought for sure that Dolores would combust right on the spot. You know how flustered she gets, when she’s the center of attention.”
“Oh trust me, I know.” Camilo’s eyes twinkled mischievously. He raised his hands up in a dramatic flair, each one becoming alive in its own way, and took on a light-pitched tone. "Ohh Mariano, how I have dreamt of this day with you, where you will get on those handsome knees of yours and ask for my hand in marriage!"
He deepened his voice next and quickly changed his form, until suddenly in a swirl of colors, Mirabel was staring right at Mariano himself. “My beautiful Dolores, with these big muscles, I will carry you off into the sunset where we will have our family of exactly five children!”
Mirabel couldn’t help but squeal and laugh at the ridiculousness of Camilo’s imitations, her hands grabbing at her stomach in a weak attempt to stop herself from falling. Before long, they both were in giggling fits, grasping and hitting each other’s shoulders. Mirabel didn’t know how long it had been since she had laughed as much as this, belly-aching and overwhelmed with joy.
It was a different kind of happiness now, when before, it was often overshadowed by her sisters’ and cousins’ accomplishments. In the recent months, the days did not seem as taunting and the sun glowed in a way that felt freeing. Time doesn’t heal all wounds, but it was better than nothing. Abuela had been kinder and Tío Bruno became more outgoing in a way that couldn’t have been achieved from within the wall.
The sense of tension that used to wrap around their family like a thick fog doesn’t appear as often anymore.
“Man,” Camilo said, still breathless and wiping tears from his eyes. “I have missed hanging out with you like this.”
“Yeah, it has been a while,” it was strange and the nostalgia hit harder than she thought it would. It comes and goes, but sometimes she wished that they could be like they used to be — just the two of them (Camilo and Mirabel, Mirabel and Camilo) and the Earth and the skies and everything in between. “I missed our hangouts too.”
Camilo still glowed — he never really stopped — and when he bumped his head against hers in that affectionate way of his, Mirabel thought that maybe they don’t need to be. They can make something anew out of it instead, from the rubble and ruins of their old selves.
Scars may not always fade and mistakes might be repeated more times than they should, but she was more than willing to try.
Mirabel was fifteen, almost but barely touching on the beginning of her sixteenth year, when she learned that she could finally let go.
Later, much later, when they are both walking back to the house together, they’ll make quiet jokes and tell each other stories of ancient heroes and sneaky dragons. Mirabel will ruffle Camilo’s hair and he will try to fight her off, cartoonish karate moves and all. She will dance along the way and he’ll join in, and it will feel like they are writing a love letter to the people of long ago.
She will remember Abuela's words and the memories of Abuelo Pedro that she still tightly holds onto. She will wonder if he is watching over them right now, from across the numerous planets, supernovas, and stars.
Little bird, little bird (the fox once said) won’t you come along and stare at the moon with me.
Ah (the little bird responded back) only if you agree to go sightseeing with me at the mountains.
It's a storybook tale that Mirabel knows Antonio would love to hear.
The clock ticks and ticks, and she finally makes peace with the void. It is a farewell gift to the person she could have been and the future she could have had. The chains and the guilt fall away a bit more everyday since then, like sand in a broken hourglass.
The song comes to a stop. She doesn't let it start up again.
It is only when they make it to the front steps of the porch, that Mirabel finally picks up the courage to ask what her younger self couldn’t before.
The mountains rumble behind her, while the moon cheers. They both are waiting for the sun and clouds to come by and visit again. She is, too.
“Hey Camilo?”
“Mm?”
“Do you remember that old promise we made as kids?"