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Julieta liked cooking.
When you’re a kid, around age 4 or 5, you begin to find your ‘thing’. The thing that you like to do, and are perhaps better at, more than anything else. With Pepa’s short temper making her a poor candidate for doing anything more than kneading dough, and Bruno’s tendency to get distracted or even repulsed by the texture of certain things, it fell to Julieta to help mamá with the cooking.
And she liked it! She liked watching her siblings eat and tell her how good her arepas were, she liked her mother’s hands on top of hers, guiding her in how to fold empanadas so they don’t pop open when fried. Before long, it became her standard chore, with Pepa on washing up, and Bruno on drying. Of course it was no surprise when it came to the gifts they were given, that Julieta would be given the power to heal through her food, just as Pepa’s wild emotions were of course manifested through the weather, and Bruno’s anxious tendencies came through in fortune telling portents.
Julieta liked cooking, but sometimes, it was a bit much.
By age 11, the twins could be found making themselves busy all over town. Pepa would sit in fields and read that one book that made her sob like a baby, ensuring all the crops would be watered. Bruno sat in his room with a line of people outside the door, allowing only one in at a time, at least until the door was suddenly locked, indicating he had exhausted himself for the day. By then, Julieta would be done with her rounds for the day, passing arepas to people for injuries from scraped knees to broken bones, and she’d always save one with extra queso for her brother’s inevitable migraine.
When she arrived back at the Casita on one particular day, however, she was greeted by Bruno at the door.
“Brunito?” she asked, settling her now mostly empty basket of crumbs on her elbow. He definitely had a headache, she could see from how he winced at the sound of her voice, but he would usually wait in his room for her to come up. “¿Que pasa?”
Bruno was funny in that he would always pause a second before speaking, as though trying to remember how to say words in the right order, and when he did, they would tumble out all at once. “I had a vision,” he mumbled, bringing out a glass tablet from under his rauna. The green glow lit up the doorway, as a cloud passed over the sun. Ah, Pepa must be on the way home. “You’re in it.”
Julieta tried not to let her feelings show on her face, but her heart sank. By now, they all knew that Bruno’s visions tended towards the negative - and especially those that nobody had specifically asked him to look into. the random ones that came unbidden to him were always much worse. Swallowing, she set her basket down, and stepped forward to take the tablet.
The image glowed bright in her hands. A man, prone on the ground in an awkward and uncomfortable position. A large slab of brick beside him on the floor. And Julieta, leaning over him with an arepa in one hand and a bottle in the other, offering them to him.
It was a grim scene. But seeing it settled her heart.
“Oh, hermanito,” she sighed. “Don’t be so ominous! So Señor Guzman is going to have an accident, it happens!”
Bruno shuffled awkwardly, his toes pointed inward as always. “But it looks serious.”
“I know, but see?” she turned the tablet around. “I’m right here! And I have food with me, so this is just a heads up! Now I know I need to carry extra with me and be near the Guzman house. Do you know if this happens soon?” He shook his head, and she turned the image to look at it again. “Well I don’t look any older, and I have a haircut due next week, so if I had to guess…”
“What are you guys doing?” asked Pepa, squelching up the path to them. Her dress was thoroughly soaked, and she was shivering a little, especially when the wind picked up in response to her eyes landing on the vision in Julieta’s hands. “What’s that?”
“Nothing major, Pepa,” Julieta was quick to calm her sister’s worry, always. “Bruno saw that Señor Guzman will need my help in a few days, that’s all,” she showed her the image, and Pepa squinted at it, and hissed between her teeth.
“That looks pretty bad…” she said bluntly, and a peal of thunder rolled overhead.
“Most injuries do, but it’s okay, I’m used to it. Nothing grosses me out at this point. Did you know that I helped Señora Lopez have her baby and I saw–”
“Ew, ew, ew, no, stop!” Pepa plugged her ears, but the storm started to abate. “I don’t want to know about your gross medical stuff!”
Julieta’s gaze flicked to Bruno, who still looked down, and she continued. “Oh? Not even a little bit about the baby and all the fluids and sometimes pregnant ladies poop when–”
“¡MAMÁ!”
“Julieta! Stop winding up your sister!”
She winced a little at the scolding, but it had the intended effect of making Bruno smile, even just a little bit. Satisfied, she put her arm around her brother’s shoulders and squeezed them. “Leave it all to me, okay? Your big sister’s got it.”
“You’re older than me by half an hour,” Bruno said flatly, but with an affectionate lean into her embrace.
“Thirty four minutes to be exact,” Julieta pointed out. “And older than Pepa by– hey!!”
Pepa had decided to squeeze out her soaked hair onto her siblings by way of being taller than both of them, with a vicious grin. Julieta swatted at her, but it was too late, they were both soaked, and Bruno was complaining that he didn’t even do anything to Pepa, and the weather was clearing, and everything was fine.
Everything would be fine.
She could handle it.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The Madrigal kitchen overflowed with smells and sounds. A waft of cheese caramelising, the sizzle of dough on a hot pan. Julieta hummed while she worked, not any particular song but one with a pleasant beat. Casita helped her reach the counters by raising the tiles under her feet, and she needed only to step to the side to find the tiles rise to meet her. “Gracias Casita,” she said, as always, because Mamá didn’t raise an impolite child. Heaven forbid.
Pepa appeared in the doorway with a yawn, but Julieta already had a cup of cafe con leche ready for her. It swept its way into Pepa’s waiting hands on a wave of kitchen tiles, and Pepa mumbled her thanks as well, sipping the beverage as she sank into a kitchen chair.
“Bad night?” Julieta asked by way of conversation. Of course they both knew that she’d had a bad night, the whole town probably knew, there had been an abrupt thunderstorm at 3am, complete with raging winds.
Pepa mumbled something resembling a confirmation, before taking another sip. “Nightmare.”
“Do you wanna talk about it?”
“Not really.”
“Okay,” Julieta didn’t push. Pepa rarely held back her feelings - rarely could hold them back - so on this occasion, she decided to let her. After another few minutes, she slid a plate of arepas de huevo in front of her and watched Pepa mindlessly chew through them for a few minutes. The crease from her headache disappeared from her face, and Julieta turned back to the counter.
“Bruno’s late,” Pepa eventually said, slightly clearer now she was more awake and not in pain.
“He’s always late for breakfast.”
“But he’s Bruno-late. Later than he usually is.”
“Maybe he’s watching his tele-something. The play from the future he keeps deliberately having visions of because he likes the story.”
“Hm. Did mamá already come through.”
An awkward beat. “Yes, she did earlier. Left just before you came.”
Pepa narrowed her eyes at her. “What’s with that expression. Did something happen?”
There were a lot of things Julieta could do here. She could lie to her sister and say that their mother had simply stepped out to do some chores in town. Or she could tell the truth and say that the storm had caused a mudslide and knocked over one of the barns, setting the donkeys and goats loose. The former option was, of course, more likely to keep the peace, but the triplets had made a pact a long time ago to never lie to each other, and Julieta was a woman of her word.
“There was some… damage to the town, from the storm last night.” Before she was even finished, a dark cloud started appearing over Pepa’s head. “Pepa, it’s fine, it wasn’t your fault–”
“Oh, sure, you say that!” Pepa snapped, putting her face in her hands. “When mamá gets home you KNOW what she’s going to say!”
Julieta did.
Before she could open her mouth to further try and soothe her, there was the sound of chanclas slapping on tiles, and Bruno rounded the corner of the kitchen, hair wild and eyes still tinged with violently bright green. “It’s today!” he gasped, having apparently ran here from the inside of his tower. There were more stairs in that thing every day.
“ What’s today?!” Pepa thundered.
Julieta gasped, and started shoving arepas and miniature bottles of chicken broth into her apron. Today, today, of course it would be today, the houses were probably damaged from the storm! And that would mean loose bricks, and a loose brick is what would fall and hurt someone like what was seen in the vision!
“Juli–!” Bruno started, as she ran past him, the oil from the hot arepas burning her through her clothes.
“I know, Bruno, I’m on it!” she called back, blood rushing in her ears. She should have gone down to town with mamá, she should have thought ahead further, she had to get there fast.
She thanked God that Casita was on a hill, so gravity could aid her rushing feet. The Guzman household was at the other end of the village, but it wasn’t very wide to begin with, and people hopped out of her way as they saw her coming. She nearly slipped when she rounded the corner, but as she reached the Guzman house, she came to a stop, breath coming sharp and hard in her chest.
There was nobody here.
“Hello?!” she called out breathlessly. “¿¡Señor Guzman?!”
“Julieta?”
She whipped around, only to find mamá standing there, eyes wide with concern. “Mamá, where’s Señor Guzman?”
“What’s wrong, mija?” she asked, coming closer and holding her face, and her hands felt cold compared to how flushed Julieta’s cheeks were from running.
“Bruno saw a vision where he’s badly hurt! I need to get to him!”
The seriousness immediately hit mamá, and a determined frown came to her face. She did not once think to tell her 11 year old daughter that she did not have to be responsible for the safety of a fully grown man. “He’s gone to help the Gomez family with their wall, it’s leaning too far over–”
Wall.
Bricks.
“No!” she gasped, and pushed past mamá to run down the street. The Gomez family, where were the Gomez family! She knew this, she had to know this, didn’t she help Mario Gomez the other day with that sprained ankle, it was just off of the florist she loved and to the left–
This time when she skidded around the bend, she really did fall. Her knees hit the cobblestones in a way she knew would leave them swelling later. When she pushed herself up, she could feel something wrong with her left kneecap. It didn’t matter, couldn’t matter. Down the street, there was Señor Guzman, broad shouldered and tall, using his strength and height to reach up, to pass a huge brick up to his cousin, to try and rebuild the wall.
It was leaning too far.
Her knee hurt too much to stand on, so she bit off a chunk of arepa, chewing twice before swallowing the hard lump of it.
Even as she strode forward, even as her knee healed itself as soon as the food hit her stomach, she was already too late.
The brick slipped from Señor Guzman’s hands.
And landed directly on his head, point first.
He collapsed to the ground, both sickeningly slow and also all at once. She couldn’t run fast enough. The road seemed to stretch out impossibly long like it did in her nightmares. Her shoes kept slipping on the ground. Everyone was looking at him and looking at her and the sky was so bright and everything was ringing in her ears.
Her knees burnt with pain as she practically slid on them to his side, hot blood already pooling between the cobbles. Someone was screaming, but Julieta didn’t have time for that. Señor Guzman was already unconscious, he couldn’t chew and swallow the arepa safely, but that’s why she had the chicken stock. Pulling the cork out with her teeth, she tried to pour some down his throat, but it wouldn’t go down past his teeth. Desperate, she took some into her own mouth, and leaned down to force it from her mouth into his. When she leaned back, she saw it dribbling down the side of his face.
She tried the arepa again, tearing it into the smallest of pieces, forcing his mouth open, pushing it down his throat. Come on, swallow, do something, something!
She had to do something!
Something had to work!
Hands on her shoulders pulled her back. Someone said her name, but she jerked away from them, back to her patient, back to the man she had to help, she had to. Those hands returned again, more forceful this time. This time she whipped around to push the person away, but their grip only tightened, and she struggled against it.
“Juli–”
“I’m helping him, stop it!”
“Julieta-”
“I can help, I can save him–!”
“ Julieta! ”
The sharpness of the tone finally made her freeze and recognise who was holding her. Bruno gazed back, his eyes wide, but his expression not shocked. No, rather, his gaze was gentle, pitying even. Why? She was helping. She was doing her job. This was what she was for.
“Bruno-”
“You have to stop, Juli,” he said, gentler now.
“But…”
“He’s gone. He’s gone, Juli. You can stop now.”
Her gaze slowly shifted back to the motionless man on the ground. There was so much blood. She had it on her hands, on her apron, on her dress and her shoes. There are ten pints of blood in a human body, her brain helpfully supplied. You only need to lose about three pints to die from bloodloss. Head trauma can often kill instantly. These were all facts that she knew.
She knew.
She wished she didn’t have to know them. She wished she didn’t have to be here. She wished she had been faster.
“Don’t stop!” cried out Señora Guzman, face streaked with tears. “How can you stop– save him! He’s bleeding! Do your job!”
Bruno’s face hardened. “She can’t–”
“Be quiet you horrible little rat!” she snapped, easily shouting over Bruno’s soft spoken tones. His jaw clicked shut, but his face remained a glower. “All you ever say is terrible things, it’s because you came here and stopped her–”
“Oh shut up!!” roared Pepa, lightning crashing around them. How long had she been standing behind Bruno for? The whole time, Julieta realised faintly.
Her awareness expanded outwards, and she realised they’d drawn a huge crowd, and that overhead a huge storm was brewing. Rain and wind whipped through the air, a hurricane that pushed a few people back. Bruno and Julieta, in the eye of the storm with Pepa, remained untouched.
“How dare you–”
“No! How dare you! ” snapped back Pepa, pointing an accusing finger at Señora Guzman. “Do you know how hard Juli works for you people?! She gets burns every day making the food that keeps you clumsy idiots alive! She comes down here every day to fix your problems! And the one time she doesn’t make it, when there’s an accident that’s not even her fault, you start blaming her, and blaming Bruno when he wasn’t even involved! He’s keeping her from trying to stuff your dead husband’s mouth with arepas, he’s doing you a favour! Is that what you want, your last memory of your husband to be his mouth full of– ”
“Pepa, ENOUGH!”
The wind died immediately. Mamá’s voice cut through everything to silence the scene. The triplets stared up at her, and her expression was equally as stormy as the sky.
Julieta felt her heart in her throat. “Mamá–”
Mamá held up her hand, immediately killing the words in her throat. “Go home to Casita. Now.” Pepa opened her mouth, but mama snapped. “ ¡Ahora! ”
In the remaining miserable drizzle hanging over their heads, Bruno helped Julieta to her feet, and when they found she couldn’t stand properly, Pepa hoisted her up onto her back, giving her a piggy-back ride home. Julieta was grateful for the rain. It meant she could cry onto Pepa’s shoulder, and pretend like nobody would notice.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
When Julieta raised her head, she found she wasn’t in the kitchen like she thought they would be. Air pressure dials, wind speed monitors, and umbrellas filled her vision. Pepa set her down on a waterproof couch, while Bruno crept in through the door behind them. As soon as he shut the door, Pepa’s drizzle erupted back into thunder and lightning, and she turned to bury her head in one of the pillows of her bed, shrieking out her feelings. Meanwhile, Bruno knocked a few times on the wooden doorframe, before he knocked also on the edge of the couch, and sat down next to Julieta.
“We shouldn’t be in here,” Julieta said quietly. “Mamá will want us to wait in the kitchen.”
“She’ll be down in the village for a while,” Bruno replies, before appending. “Not a vision, just… you know. It’s what she always does.”
“Of course she does!” Pepa throws her sodden pillow into a strange contraption that she owns, at once both a press like one would use to get water out of clothes, that emptied out into a little warmer that would dry the pillow in minutes. She called it a ‘press dryer’ and they all quietly used it for laundry. Pepa paced the room. “She’s going to be doing damage control , because that’s all she cares about!”
“That’s… not all she cares about…” Julieta defended weakly, but Pepa whirled on her.
“Juli, look at yourself!” she gestured up and down at the state of Julieta’s outfit, which she herself was refusing to acknowledge. “You’re hurt, you’re a mess, and what’s she more concerned about?! The fact we’re making the family look bad!”
Julieta looked away, staring at the whirring wind speed monitor in silence for a moment. “She’s right to be angry. I should have gotten there in time. If I hadn’t fallen over, if I had gone down to the village when she did…”
“It’s not your fault,” Bruno takes her hand and squeezes it. His fingers have become rough, recently, from all the sand he handles. “... this morning, I wanted to check in on the vision, and I saw further than I did before. I saw that he wasn’t at the Guzman house, and I should have said something faster…”
A crack of thunder makes them both wince. “Oh stop it! Stop it both of you!” Pepa shouts. “Neither of you culicagados is at fault! It was my storm that made the bricks loose! The whole thing wouldn’t have happened in the first place if it wasn’t for ME!”
The tension hung in the air for a moment, with nothing but the wind howling in the silence between them.
Then, Bruno started laughing.
His sisters stared at him like he’d finally lost his mind, as he bent double on the sofa and tried to muffle his giggles. Julieta patted his back, for lack of anything else to do, and looked at Pepa with utter bewilderment, who echoed the same back. Eventually, Bruno managed to get a hold of himself, shaking his head.
“This is so stupid!”
“What is?” asked Julieta.
“We’re all just blaming ourselves! I should have somehow known to look more into the vision earlier, Juli should have been somehow faster, Pepa should have somehow controlled her weather in her sleep – you see how this is stupid, right? How are we meant to do any of that? We’re all just mad at ourselves and it wasn’t even in our control!”
Julieta and Pepa blinked at each other. Then, as though it only just occurred to them how dumb this whole thing was, they too started to giggle, and then chuckle, and then all three of them were laughing in a big wet pile on the sofa. Pepa pulled Bruno and Julieta into a tight hug, her long arms just right to fit them, and the rain turned tropically warm, more like a pleasant shower than anything.
“Mamá’s still gonna be mad though,” Bruno added, and Pepa pinched his nose.
“Don’t ruin the moment, mi piqueño hermanito.”
“Okay, literally, it is ten minutes difference between you and me Pepi.”
“And in those ten minutes I have become more mature than you could ever be. Juli, get out of that dress and borrow one of mine.”
“It’s gonna reach the floor on her!”
“It’ll look elegant! Sophisticated!”
Julieta smiled. “Thanks, Pepa, Bruno.”
Bruno smiled back at her. “Family sticks together. I’ll always be in your corner, Juli.”
“You’re more cheesy than her arepas,” Pepa teased, before whispering in Julieta’s ear. “Me too though.”