Chapter Text
It all started around 50 years ago, when innocents fled from attackers and were led to the safety of a miracle. That night a world changing blessing, an encanto, was placed on the Madrigal matriarch and the generations of her family to come. Little did they know that there was one other person blessed on that jarring day. You.
You, who at the time were just a babe, screeching, being cradled in the arms of a stranger as you were carried across the river, away from the flames. You were too young to bear the memory of this, the story of it retold to you by your saviour some years later - and with better control, your blessing allowing you to relive that night and see it with your own eyes; how your mothers tight grip loosened as she passed you through a window frame that was aflame, you can feel the searing heat across the the now faded mottled scar on the outside of your left thigh and the uneven scarred skin behind your left ear hidden beneath your hair.
What you see next are just flashes of images, the petrified screams, flames engulfing entire houses, the shaking of the earth with the sound of the horsemen. Then the sound of rushing water, trickling down the riverbed trail, nature interrupting this very real nightmare. The splashes of many feet, then panicked stomping, whimpers, one last racking sob - silence.
The vacant stares holding what little they have left in the world, tears falling, no sound. A numbness, a shock.
The images fade away, the water it was reflected in swirls and dissipates into nothingness. You are left once again alone in the small room that you can barely call your own. You wipe your eyes, not once have you been able to watch those events without feeling an almost unbearable heaviness in your heart and tears rolling down your cheeks.
The midday sun fills the room with warmth and light, there is some idle chatter and talk of rebuilding the Madrigal house that seeps in through the window. You fold your legs underneath you on the bed and hold your hands out in front of you, as a reflective swirling pool of water forms in front of you, you catch a brief glimpse of your eyes, now glowing a bright blue before beginning to reminisce on your life within the village, everything after that night.