Chapter Text
Breakfast was, as always, an absolute fiasco.
In the Madrigal household, if breakfast was ever not absolute chaos, then there was something to be worried about. However - it wasn’t the magical gifts of the family that saw the breaking of the day turned into an absolute clamour, as one might expect. No, it was simply excitement in its purest form. Love, even, absolutely abound in fervent gossiping and kissing of cheeks. The family were together in one piece, happy and content, and there was nothing more magical than that.
So Mirabel thought, anyway, watching her beloved family as she prodded mindlessly at her breakfast with her fork. Huevos pericos, made fresh by her mamá, and yet she’d partaken in nary three bites since the Madrigals had sat down that morning. She simply smiled and and watched her papá fend off one of Antonio’s spider monkeys (to no avail), and laughed when Camilo decided to spend a full five minutes pretending to be Dolores’ boyfriend, Mariano, preferring flexing his muscles to Julieta’s lovingly prepared food.
That was how things had been for the past year. Their family was whole and complete again with all heads accounted for, grievances were aired out into the open at least once a week at family meetings, and life was better than it had ever been.
And yet … Mirabel couldn’t help but ponder.
“Hey,” came a soft voice, spoken carefully in her direction. “You’ve barely touched your food, chica. You feelin’ okay?”
Tío Bruno. The pair of them tended to sit together near the head of the table, these days, Bruno between his mother and his youngest niece. Mirabel had wanted to ease him back into things as gently as she possibly could, and she’d ended up enjoying bonding with her long absent uncle so much that she’d taken to catching up with him every morning - and so had her Abuela, who was holding Bruno’s hand while he ate, a fond smile on her face.
“I’m just fine, Tío,” Mirabel said quickly, beaming. “Hey, uh, what’re your plans for the day? I was thinking. Just thinking. Er, do you need help with anything? I mean - we could do some more work on your vision cave, y’know, seeing as I was the one that destroyed it and all. I could ask Luisa to -“
“You don’t have to worry about that. Really. I haven’t used it in - in forever.” Bruno twitched and then knocked habitually at the wooden table, an age-old anxiety alighting in his eyes. “I think I’m supposed to be seeing that guy - uh, Hugo? He’s concerned for the future of his favourite donkey, or something like that.” He subtly shook his head. “What about tomorrow, kid? We can dig out the Parqués board. Or - or something else. I don’t mind.”
“Oh! Yeah, that sounds great. Tomorrow it is, then!”
Mirabel fell back to pondering.
When breakfast was over, she volunteered to help clear the table and clean the crockery ready for dinner, determinately running back and forth between the kitchen and outside with piles of dirty plates and cups in her arms. While everyone else set off to go and help the Encanto with their varied magical gifts, she scrubbed and dried and neatly set things back in their place with far more precision and efficiency than was perhaps necessary (mostly thanks to Casita, of course).
Sensing a presence behind her, she turned with half an arepa hanging out of her mouth to find Abuela standing patiently in the doorway, watching her with the same fond smile she had lended Bruno that very morning.
“Hola, Abuela,” Mirabel greeted, using her hip to shunt a plate right onto the top of the neat stack nearby. “I’m almost done! I was thinking I’d sweep the floors, dust the walls, go to the market to get mama’s ingredients - and anything else you need. Hey! That’s why I’m here. I can - I can - Do you need me to -?”
“Mirabel,” Abuela murmured, her often stern tone somewhat gentler than usual. “Remember what we talked about. You are sixteen years old. You are allowed to have days where you are doing things only for yourself.”
“I know. I know that, but -“
“You want to help.”
“It, um. It still feels like it isn’t …” Shame-faced, Mirabel turned back to the washing up and scrubbed at the last cup as though it had personally offended her. It had, in a way, because she couldn’t manipulate it via magical means to get the job done, so really it deserved an all too thorough scrubbing. The floor and the walls would get the same treatment, and so would hagglers at the market.
“Mi mariposa. Walk with me.”
Bound to do as the family matriarch wanted, Mirabel dried her hands off with a sigh and followed Abuela out into the courtyard. They ascended the stairs to the veranda, and she was surprised when they stopped directly outside the door to Abuela’s room. Distracted by the golden, shining light radiating from it, she blinked and stared up at it with the usual arising feelings of awe, happiness, and pain.
It was just habit, really. She understood that. She had a door, now, at the very front of the house, and she had a door because she had made a difference without any magical gifts of her own. Because of her undying love for her family, their home, and their village.
All around them, doors were glowing with magic because she had helped heal the cracks in her family’s walls. She knew that.
And yet.
Abuela looked at the door, too, reaching out to lightly touch the beautiful golden patterns inscribed on its surface.
“You have been working tirelessly and doing everything you can to help others,” she observed, though concern was etched into the lines of her face. “Mirabel. I hope that you are not feeling forced or coerced into doing these things? It seems that every day you are finding something new that needs cleaning or fixing. When was the last time you did something for yourself? You did such wonderful embroidery.” With a frown, Abuela looked at her granddaughter and fiddled with the embroidered butterfly near her shoulder. “My love … I do not expect you to do these things. Your sisters and, well … our entire family seems much happier now that the weight of expectations is lifted from their shoulders, including myself.”
Mirabel adjusted her glasses and glanced down at the floor. Her chest tightened in that horrible way it did.
“I’m not sure why I need to help. I just do. I know that I brought the family together, but … I don’t know. It still feels like there’s something else! It’s like an itch that I can’t scratch, Abuela! After seeing Casita falling down and people nearly being hurt, I need to know that everybody is going to be, um. Okay. That things are gonna be okay.”
Abuela smiled, then, gentler than it had any right to be.
“My love. You are growing into such a wonderful and brave young woman. I shall speak to you frankly, like I would your mamá, your Tía, and Tío. There are no decisions to be made yet, but is there the chance you would choose to stay here in La Casa Madrigal into your adulthood, like your family? There is no -“
“Yes!” Mirabel half-shouted so suddenly that she surprised even herself, a steely resolve taking hold at once. “I couldn’t leave. I care for this family way, way too much! I love living here. I love my life here with all of you. I don’t think there’s anything that could make me -“
“ Then, Mirabel,” Abuela interrupted, still smiling, “I truly believe that this room … I believe that it is destined to be yours when my image finally fades from this door. I think that yours will take its place, and that you will one day be the one to take hold of the wheel and guide and protect this family. I think that could be your destiny, to continue to be the beating heart and soul of this home. If that is something you would want.”
Mirabel gaped.
She looked at the door, too, imagining her golden, magical image taking its place there, holding the candle that had blessed her family with their incredible magical gifts all those years ago. What higher honour was there than that? To be chosen by the one who had led them to Encanto and saved them from strife. To be the guiding light of the Encanto, to preserve its miracle even in the absence of the candle itself.
Such a thought was not unwelcome. She could do it, she knew that. However, the more she considered, the more her chest continued to tighten and the ice-cold grip of fear and sorrow took place in her heart.
The thought of an Encanto without Abuela …
Without thinking, she took a step forwards and hugged her Abuela right around the middle.
“Not for a long time,” she said, her voice muffled by the dress her face was buried into. “But I will. I promise I’ll look after them all. Nothing bad is ever going to happen to our home again.”
When she pulled away, Abuela had tears in her eyes which were hastily wiped away.
“Oh. Mi corazón. I told you I would speak frankly. Part of being a leader is to expect the bad. Though our life is so secret and protected by these mountains, by our miracle … You know from experience that sometimes the bad might come from within.” Abuela sniffed and straightened herself up, her usual sternness taking its place on her countenance. “Enough. For now, at least. Go into the village and do something fun, will you? La Casita can take care of herself for a while, I’m sure.”
The tiles beneath their feet rattled in agreement.
“But -“ Mirabel began, only to find herself being thrust back towards the stairs by the tiles. When the winding stairs flattened beneath her feet, she ended up sprawled on her front and sliding down the smooth ramp feet-first, quickly arriving in a crumpled heap on the ground floor. “Okay, okaaayy! I’m going!” In a low hiss, she added, “You’re supposed to be on my side, Casita!”
The stair in front of her shrugged - and then the tiles moved in a smooth wave across the floor, rolling Mirabel across the house entirely against her will. She held onto some of her sister’s vines draped along the pillars in an attempt to stay put, but they swiftly tore in her grasp.
“Adios, Abuela!” she called, waving frantically as she was thrown out of the house entirely.
She face-planted the path outside. Picking herself up, she cleaned the lenses of her glasses on her skirt and sighed heavily before placing them back on her nose. It was a beautiful day. Encanto had seen many beautiful days as of late because Tía Pepa was usually in a good mood; a sign that things were well and good in La Casa Madrigal.
Maybe Mirabel could afford to relax a bit.
And she tried. She really did, because when she tried anything she would try and try with all her might. The market was busy and people welcomed her, inviting her to look over their wares and politely asking how she was. There, she bought some cooking ingredients and some new needles and thread, and she spoke eagerly to the lively citizens of her village to catch up on their lives.
Still, something niggled in the back of her mind. By mid afternoon, she was sitting alone on the edge of the well nearest to the mountains and gazing into the fearsome depths of the valleys and the jungles, her brow furrowing with intense thought. Surely there was something she could do, no matter how small, to ensure that things would stay exactly as they were?
As she looked up into the green canopy of trees ahead, the rather obvious answer came to her in an instant.
Tío Bruno was often difficult to find. Nobody really knew where he snuck off to on the days he didn’t turn up for dinner, nor show his face for the entire evening, but they had long come to accept that it was simply his way. Mirabel suspected that things simply got too much, sometimes, and he needed the familiarity of his own company no matter how much he plainly adored his family. Large gatherings made him rather jittery, more so than usual. It was hardly a surprise, then, when he didn’t show himself at all for the rest of the day.
He didn’t turn up for breakfast the next morning, either. Nobody remarked on it, though Mirabel noticed Abuela looking at his vacant seat every now and then, a strange sort of look on her face.
Once everybody had set off for the day, Mirabel headed straight for Bruno’s tower and was relieved to see that the majestic, magical image of him on his door was still glowing bright. She exhaled, oddly nervous, then approached to knock.
The door opened before her hand even made contact with the wood. She pulled back as a spooky, yawning breeze tickled at her skin, bringing with it grains of sand that spilled out onto the tiles. Right. She’d forgotten just how … different Bruno’s room was compared to the others. Blinking sand out of her eyes, she poked her head into the room and found it dark save for the vague light that emitted from the hourglass shaped doorway beyond.
Bruno was standing alone near his bed, staring into the wall of sand and gnawing on his thumbnail. Mirabel gulped. It wasn’t her Tío’s fault, but his tower really, really gave her the creeps, and not just because she had almost been smushed to death by the ruins of it just over a year ago.
“Um -“ she greeted, attempting to be quiet, but her sandals ended up skidding on the sand and she tumbled noisily down into the room with an all too loud ‘¡Maldición!’
By the time she arranged herself onto her rear, Bruno was staring blankly down at her with a frown.
“Buenos días, Tío,” Mirabel said apologetically, flushing. “I wasn’t - I mean, I think the wind blew your door open! I actually wasn’t sneaking around, I swear. I just wanted to see if you were, um … okay?”
Bruno continued staring owlishly at her. He blinked, coming back to himself, then reached down to help her up to her feet.
“Hey. Between you and me, you can curse in here but nowhere else, okay? Otherwise Abuela will be after you with la chancla.” He shuddered and ran a hand down his face, shedding what looked like an entire layer of sand from his cheeks. When he turned away to begin rifling through his set of drawers, he coughed up an entire lungful of the stuff.
“Did you have a vision?” Mirabel asked pointedly, raising an eyebrow.
“No,” was the all too quick response. “I mean, yes. Y-yesterday. The donkey. Oh, it wasn’t good fortune, not good at all.” Bruno gripped the edge of the drawers and knocked hurriedly across the wood, then jumped when Mirabel took a quiet step towards him. “No! I mean - Oh, look! Look what I dug out last night. Parqués! D’you remember this, kid? You always wanted to sit on my lap and make me teach you how to play.”
He reached in and retrieved the board and pieces, gazing fondly down at them for a moment.
Mirabel didn’t remember. In fact, she only had extremely vague recollections of Bruno from her childhood; she was only five when he had mysteriously disappeared. Still, she couldn’t help but feel just a bit guilty that she didn’t have quite the same fondness for the past that he did.
“Luckily, seems as though you’ve already got more foresight than all of us combined. Even me.” Her uncle laughed awkwardly to himself, then sat cross-legged on the floor and began to set the board up. “C’mon, c’mon. Better late than never. What colour do you want to be? Blue? I’ll be green, ‘cause … heh, well.”
“Uh. Sure,” Mirabel murmured slowly, descending down on the opposite side of the board to get to grips with its layout. “Um, Tío? Before -“
“You’re blue,” Bruno reiterated quickly, and he put four blue pieces down into a box labelled ‘celda’. “We start off in jail but we escape and move around with dice rolls. I’ll explain all that, don’t worry. The priority is to capture all my pieces, though, see? So it’s sort of luck but also -“
“Bruno, I was just wondering if I could ask a teeny, tiiiiny little -“
“- it’s strategy too, right? That’s why I mentioned foresight. That’s why I thought you’d be real good at this, ‘cause -“
“Could you just give me one really small, one itty-bitty little vis-“
“ - because real honest to God foresight is really so much better than seeing into the future!” Bruno argued loudly, forcing a smile as he shoved his four green pieces into place. “Sometimes - sometimes that’s all you need, is to trust yourself and your own mind. We don’t know what the outcome of the game will be but you can make it go the way you want if you - if you think ahead. Maybe.”
A bit annoyed, Mirabel stared stubbornly at her four pieces and began walking one about as if it were a person, making it dance along the edges of its jail cell.
“It just gets more difficult when there’s several pieces to think about,” she insisted. “I guess it gets a whole lot easier if you can see a key decision you make along the way, right?”
“You’re gonna make decisions anyway, Mirabel. What they are - I mean, how you get out of jail and capture all my pieces is entirely up to you, not up to fate. Otherwise you may as well just keep all your pieces in jail. Do you understand?”
She did. Sort of.
She listened intently as her uncle explained the rules to the game. When they finally started and they both had one piece out of jail, she said, quietly:
“You knew I’d be coming, Tío.”
“Well, y’know, we all live in the same house, so … It’s your turn, kid.”
“You saw more than you bargained for yesterday, didn’t you?”
“Mirabel, please.”
“All I want to know is if there’s anything I need to be worried about. That’s not so bad, right? Abuela told me that she wants me to be the one to … um, you know. When she’s gone. I’ll be looking after La Casa Madrigal and keeping the pieces together.”
“I know.”
Forgetting the game between them, Mirabel sat bolt upright.
“You know?! Then you must have seen something!”
“Or Abuela talked to me about it already.” Bruno suggested uneasily, drawing his knees up to his chest and fiddling with the dice in his hand, rolling them over each other in his palm. “Yesterday, I thought … What was the harm in one small vision about a donkey, huh? I should’ve known. Should’ve remembered. It hasn’t been that long! I saw this donkey getting really sick and passing away, and so it’s gonna happen soon. Hugo has to live with that pain for longer than he would have done if he hadn’t known a thing. I am not giving you a vision, Mirabel. I’m done with them. I really mean it this time. I’m not gonna bring you bad fortune again.”
And Bruno squirmed in sudden discomfort. Unable to help himself, he flung a handful of salt from his pocket over his shoulder and then found solace in the wooden floorboards beneath him, touching it as though it would somehow draw any supposed misfortune from himself and his words and soak it away. It was all old superstitions, ones that he reluctantly put enormous faith into, even now.
“But … you don’t. That isn’t you, Tío. You don’t make bad things happen. You’ll keep remembering that, right? But you have this really cool, really useful gift that literally nobody else in the entire world has and it might just tell me if I’m gonna help the family through everything or if I’m just gonna be a huge, huuuuge failure and let Abuela down and if I don’t know what’s gonna happen then I can’t do anything to -“
She was silenced by a single finger landing directly on her lips. Bruno stared at her, wide-eyed as ever despite how enormously tired he looked.
“Ay-ay-ay. Slow down, conejita. If I don’t bring bad fortune, then you’re not doomed to disappoint your family just because you don’t have a magical gift. You have no idea how - how proud we all are of you, our Mirabel.” Bruno quickly drew his hand away, emotion flitting across his long, gaunt face. “Look. I don’t need a gift to know that you’re gonna be just fine. This family will always be strong with you around.”
He sounded uncharacteristically confident about that. Mirabel felt a smidge of confidence in turn, but doubt still clouded her thoughts, looming over her like one of Pepa’s storms. Apparently she hadn’t been able to abandon the need to be perfectly helpful quite as quickly as she’d hoped, only it wasn’t Abuela that she was desperate to impress, now. She didn’t really know who it was, truth be told.
She remembered the cracks. A falling house. She remembered thinking about running away because she simply wasn’t enough and it was hurting the people she loved most. For some reason, though things were so much better and the growing cracks within her family had long since started to heal, thoughts of those things still came back when they were the least welcome. It shouldn’t be like that, should it?
Bruno cleared his throat. It brought Mirabel gradually back to the present.
“Um,” her uncle began, nervously tugging at the collar of his scratchy new ruana. “Listen. I know that look. I know what it feels like to - to be on the outside, ya know? I mean, I’m not saying that you are, but - ugh. What I mean is … It isn’t easy to just forget. Soooo, I thought we could just, uh, play this game, you and me, and if there was anything you wanted to talk about … ‘cause I get it, kid, I do. If it helps you figure something out, then I’m here. It’s just - the whole vision thing, it’s just … it doesn’t help.”
The pieces on the board gazed expectantly up at Mirabel, awaiting their turn. All she had to do was roll the dice and set their paths in motion. However, in that moment, she had never felt less motivated to play a game in her entire life, as though she’d walked into a wall and was stuck there. The numbers she would roll weren’t as random as she would want; Bruno had the option of knowing who would win, but she didn’t.
Slowly, she moved her one freed piece back to jail.
“Sorry, Bruno. Do you mind if we finish this another time? I have, uh … I think Luisa might need a hand planning another reroute of the river, actually, and Isabela wants my opinion on some stupid giant cactus she’s growing, so …”
Bruno’s face fell. He looked abysmally disappointed before his features picked back up in a smile that was truly more of a grimace than anything else. With a hard swallow, he quickly began sweeping the pieces back into their bag.
“Oh! Of course. You’re busy. I should’ve - stupid. Man, you must think I’m a real bore, huh, playing games indoors on a beautiful day like this. Hey, go and make the most of it, kiddo. I’m sorry I couldn’t … um.” He rubbed the back of his head as he stood and moved back to the door, holding it open just as a cold wind blew in from the ruins of his tower, covering the room with yet more sand. “You’ll say hola to your sisters for me, right?”
Already feeling guilty, Mirabel inched reluctantly towards the door. After a moment’s thought, she took her uncle’s hand into hers.
“Come with?” she suggested. Or was it something more akin to beseeching?
He blinked cluelessly at her in return.
“What? Me? Oh, I … Y’know, it’s okay. I didn’t get much sleep last night. Was too busy dreaming of donkeys dying horrible, horrible deaths, ‘n all that. Weeeell …” Bruno let go of her hand to stretch and yawn all too dramatically - then accidentally inhaled some of the sand and dust fluttering down and choked noisily on it. “Ach! Ugh, beauty - beauty sleep. That’s me. I mean, that’s what I need. Ech. Maldita sea esta arena!!”
Mirabel was ushered out of the door before she could insist. Disappointed with the lack of visions and her uncle’s reluctance to leave the Casita, she turned in preparation to make her argument - only to find herself face-to-face with Bruno’s golden manifestation on his closed door, instead. Not realising until she’d already walked into the hard wood, of course.
Rubbing her nose, she headed back towards the rest of the house, silently fuming at both herself and the lack of progress she had made. By the time she reached the bottom of the stairs, she realised there was something still tightly clenched in the somewhat sweaty palm of her hand.
The two dice.
They were old. The paint was flaking off the wood. The dots indicating numbers could barely be seen save for where they had been etched in long ago.
Mirabel closed the dice gently in her hand, then slipped them into her pocket. She would have to take them back to Tío Bruno alongside an apology soon. He had only wanted to help her in his own way. He had only ever wanted to help.
Just like her.