Chapter Text
The first time Camilo remembers seeing snow, he's three years old and his mamá won't come out of her room. Dolores tells him they should leave her be, that she's sad and needs rest. Camilo thinks that's stupid because when he's sad he doesn't need rest he just needs a hug and maybe to sleep in his parents' bed or for his tío Bruno to tell him a funny story with the voices he imitates so well.
He tells his sister that he wants to go make his mamá laugh again, that he can do it, but it's no good. She takes him outside and shows him the tiny snow flakes falling from the sky, melting almost immediately upon reaching the ground. Camilo is sure it's the most beautiful thing he's ever seen.
Then Dolores tells him snow means mamá is really, really sad and he can go see her again and make her laugh when the snow stops and he decides it's not beautiful anymore. He wants the snow gone and he wants his mami and he wants her to make the sun shine again.
It takes almost a week for the snow to completely stop, only getting lighter in between, turning into soft rain at times, cold winds sweeping up what little blankets of snow appeared on the roofs of their Encanto. Camilo finds his mamá is still sad, but she's not cold sad anymore, just normal sad and it's okay for him to try and make her laugh now, even if she still needs to be alone and rest sometimes.
The other kids in the Encanto love snow. There's never a lot of it, only ever a gentle trickle of snowflakes, melting in the palms of the people reaching up to catch the prettiest ones. They smile when it snows, a welcome change from the warm stuffy weather or his mamá's heavy rainfalls.
Camilo hates snow.
Snow days aren't good days and he doesn't understand why people smile when they happen. His mami is sad, really sad, cold sad. It's bad and it makes Camilo sad too and he doesn't understand why no one else hates the snow.
"I don't want mami to make it snow," he says, curled up on his tía's lap, staring out of the window and seeing the tiny white specks float down from the sky.
"You don't like snow?" asks his tía and Camilo wants to be angry at her for even asking that question.
"Of course not," he tells her, because it should be obvious. "I don't like when mami is sad."
Tía Julieta smiles at him and she explains something that Dolores forgot to tell him the first time he saw snow. "Being sad isn't always bad," she says. "Sometimes something bad happens and we need to be sad about it for a while, so we can be happy again after."
"Why?"
"Well," she's looking out of the window like the snow has the answers and she's reading them out for him. "If we don't let ourselves be sad, and let the bad feelings out with some snow, then it stays inside."
His eyes are wide and he sounds a little fearful when he asks, "Would mami be all cold inside, if she didn't get sad and made it snow?"
"Letting it snow or rain helps your mamá feel better, sobrinito," his tía says. "So it's a good thing."
He thinks about it, wonders if there's a way to make people feel warm inside without magic. "I still hate snow," he whispers and his tía doesn't tell him he shouldn't.
When Camilo gets his own gift, he decides he's never going to let it snow again. He has magic now and he can make his mamá feel warm, he can make her laugh and feel better so she doesn't even have to get sad and make it snow. He's going to make everyone laugh and they'll be happy and he's going to make his familia proud.
Everyone loves when he imitates other people and he realizes that when he uses his gift to help others, when he turns into someone else and makes himself useful and makes people like him so doesn't get into trouble, it rains less and it snows less. His mamá is happy when he uses his gift, so he does.
Camilo hates snow and he hates not using his gift.
He feels bad when Mirabel doesn't get a gift. She's five now, just like him, and he wishes she had magic to help him make people happy. It would be so much easier to do it together and Mirabel wouldn't be sad and tía Julieta wouldn't be sad and his mamá wouldn't be scolding him for using his gift so much in fear of making Mirabel jealous.
He wants to be angry at Mirabel because if she had a gift he could use his own and he could make the clouds go away. But he's not angry at her, he's just angry at himself.
Then his tío Bruno disappears and everyone is searching for him and his mamá is angry and then she's sad, cold sad and it snows and Camilo is so, so angry at his tío. He thinks maybe he's playing a prank on all of them, he's trying to make everyone happy and distract from Mirabel's failed ceremony, but a week passes and he's not back. Camilo tries to use his gift to cheer everyone up while they look for his tío but everyone tells him to just 'give it time' and to 'not worry about it'.
At one point he's messing around with it, he misses using his gift to help, he misses being someone else, so he turns into whoever he thinks of. At first he's his mamá, then Dolores, Mirabel, tía Julieta, papá, tío Bruno-
A loud gasp cuts him off and he sees his mami in the doorway, all wide eyes and brimming tears. "Bruno?" A weird stabbing feeling appears in his chest and he feels guilty. He's not sure what for, he just knows something about this is wrong and it's his fault. His form shifts and Bruno disappears - again - and now he's just Camilo and his mami looks so disappointed.
He wishes he could trade places with his tío so his mami would make the sun shine again. But he can't and after his mamá stops being angry and frantic, once everyone stops spending all day looking for his tío, when they start to tell him to 'stop mentioning your tío, it makes your mamá and your tía very sad', it starts snowing.
And it snows and snows and everything is cold and Camilo just wants the sun back, he wants his mamá to stop feeling cold sad and he wants Dolores to stop telling him he's too young to understand and he's tired of the way everyone in the house just lets their Encanto be buried in a heavy blanket of cold.
Camilo stands outside in the snow and he hates his gift.