Chapter Text
Bruno could clearly see that the only things his future held for him was boredom, misery and despair, and he wasn’t even using his Gift! Kicking out vacantly at the leg of his sister’s chair, he whined in his most miserable voice, “Juli! Play with me!”
“I’m reading,” Julieta said, not looking up from the pages of her book. “Go find Pepa.”
Bruno wrinkled his nose and crossed his arms with all the indignity a six year old could muster. “Pepa’s boring.”
That finally tore Julieta’s eyes from the pages before her and she stared at Bruno over the top spine, one eyebrow raised eloquently. “Pepa? Pepa, who chased you halfway up your tower this morning, threatening to embalm your dead body in sand because you stole her stuffed rabbit?”
Bruno shrugged. “Yeah. Boring.”
Julieta snorted, dropping her gaze back to her book, but Bruno could see the corners of her mouth twitching. Invigorated, he redoubled his efforts at knocking the legs of her chair out from under her. “Juli…”
“Bruno, stop,” Julieta snapped. “Leave me alone, or I’ll tell Mamá.”
Bruno scrunched up his face in dismay, but at the mention of his mother, he dropped his feet miserably back to his side. “Fine,” he whined, sliding slowly off his own chair and melting bonelessly to the floor in a display of sheer boredom. “I’ll go.” He hesitated briefly, then, just as Julieta turned the page, snatched her book out of her hands and turned to sprint down the hall. “I’m taking this with me though!”
“Bruno!” Julieta’s screech of rage echoed down the halls after him. He laughed as he ran, nearly a full blown cackle, and dodged the shoes she sent flying after him. Still laughing, he threw open Pepa’s door and lunged through.
It was a good day inside Pepa’s room. The walls beside the door were wallpapered with a pretty, yellow paper, patterned with raindrops. The pattern continued through the whole of the room, but past the door, Bruno’s eyes were drawn from the walls to the vast space above. He wasn’t sure if Pepa’s room had a ceiling. They’d tried, but none of them had been able to get high enough to tell. What they could see though, were the vast collection of clouds that covered the roof of the room. Sometimes, they were nearly black, and heavy with rain - though the rain refrained from falling inside the room, leaving that task to the identical clouds that clustered dark above Pepa’s head. Other times, such as now, they were a bright white, shining with the light of an invisible sun that beamed down upon their heads.
In the area close by the door was shoved a collection of abstract furniture. Blankets and pillows were draped over several items - a tall bookshelf, a wooden bench, a pile of crates and boxes piled up until they were almost as tall as the bookshelf - to create a cozy looking blanket fort over the top of Pepa’s bed. Pepa herself was not visible within the room, but Bruno could hear her humming to herself from inside the fort. He leapt towards the bed, pulling aside the blankets so he could poke his face inside the fort. “Pepa!” he yelped.
“No boys allowed!” Pepa announced, looking up from her coloring book and pushing him back out of the blankets. He landed on his back on the floor with a grunt.
“But Pepa!” He protested. “You have to hide me!”
She poked her head out of the blankets after him and frowned. “From what?”
There was a slam as the door was flung open behind him, and Julieta’s voice shrieked. “I’ve got you now, Bruno!”
Bruno yelped again, and drove past Pepa into the fort, scattering pencils everywhere.
“Hey!” Pepa yelled, but her voice was drowned out as Julieta threw herself between the blankets, latching on to Bruno’s ankle as he tried to crawl away across the bed.
“Give me my book back,” Julieta demanded, pulling herself up onto the bed.
“Never!” Bruno proclaimed, crawling back until he was leaning against Pepa’s pillows.
“Get off my bed,” Pepa demanded. “This is my fort!”
Bruno ignored her, squinting at the front of Julieta’s book. “Time and Ri - Ribbons,” he sounded out the words slowly. “What’s that about? Sewing?” He stuck out his tongue in mock disgust.
Julieta clambered across the bed and snatched the book out of his hands, giving him a whack over the head with it for good measure. “No, you idiot. It’s about time travel!”
“What, like my Gift - “
Thunder rumbled across the fort, stunning Bruno and Julieta into silence. “Get out!” Pepa snapped, pointing sharply at the entrance. “I said, this fort is mine! Argue outside!”
One did not simply argue with Pepa Madrigal when she was thundering, not even her opinionated and headstrong siblings. Bruno slid feet-first out of the fort, then spun back to face Julieta as soon as his feet landed on the carpeted floor. “Time travel?” He repeated. “Like my Gift?”
Julieta stuck out her tongue, holding the book protectively close to her chest. “Not even close. You only see the future. This person can travel between times! She just goes like, poof - ” She gestured dramatically with one hand, the other still clutching the book. “And then BOOM! She’s fifty years ahead in time!”
“Is she fifty years old then?” Pepa asked, apparently forgiving their invasion of her fort in favor of a semi-interesting conversation. She leaned out between the blankets, almost falling off the mattress. “Oof!”
“No, she’s not fifty, but she almost meets her fifty-year older self,” Julieta explained, ignoring Pepa’s grunts.
“Almost?” Bruno asked, tipping his head to one side like a curious dog.
“Almost,” Julieta emphasized. “It would be really bad if she did! Like if it changed the future or something!”
Bruno frowned. “But if that is her future self, how could she change it?”
“Because she saw the future, so if she goes back to the past and just does stuff anyway because she knows what will happen in the future, she could change the future and make everything be different than it was,” Julieta explained. She looked at her siblings’ blank faces, and sighed. “Um… like, if she knows she’s alive when she’s fifty, and then she goes back to her own time and jumps off a cliff since she knows she lives until fifty - “
“But jumping off a cliff would kill her!” Bruno interrupted. “That doesn’t make sense!”
Julieta looked at him like he was the one who didn’t make sense. “Yeah, so she changed the future, ‘cause now she’s dead.”
“Ooh,” Pepa piped up, the light in her room brightening along with her expression. “So she avoids her older self so she doesn’t do stuff she assumes will turn out the same way as her old self did, in case they don’t?”
“Yes!” Julieta cheered. “Exactly!”
Bruno scratched the top of his head. “I’m still confused,” he said. Julieta opened her mouth to explain again, and he shook his head frantically. “No, no, don’t tell me! My head hurts.”
“Could you do it, Bruno?” Pepa asked. She tumbled headfirst out of her fort and popped up to her feet, brushing off the front of her dress. “Time travel?”
Bruno wrinkled his nose. “No, I don’t travel,” he said. “Maybe if my Gift was a bit stronger we could time travel though! That would be fun!”
“How do we all see it at once?” Pepa asked.
“Um…” Bruno glanced towards the door, seeing the warm golden glow that outlined his sister’s image. “Maybe we could ask the candle? It gave me my Gift, maybe it can make it stronger so we can all see our future!”
“Didn’t you hear anything I said about the book?” Julieta demanded. “You don’t want to mess up your future!”
Bruno shrugged. “Then we can ask the candle to make sure we don’t remember any of it.”
“You would time travel and then forget about it on purpose?” Pepa scowled, planting her tiny fists on her narrow hips. A dark cloud lowered above her head, shrouding her face in shadow. “That’s stupid! What’s the point then?”
Bruno considered for a moment, then shrugged. “‘Cause I’m bored now? And after we time travel, I won’t be?”
Pepa shrugged too, the cloud instantly dispersing along with her mood. “Alright then!” she declared. “Let’s time travel!” She set off towards the door of her room. Bruno grinned, and scrambled behind her.
“Wait!” Julieta called. After a moment of silence, she sighed, and Bruno heard her stomping towards the door after them. “If you’re going to be idiots, don’t do it without me!”
The triplets hurried together through the halls, and up into their mother’s room. Alma was out in the village during the day, so her room sat, clean and empty, a direct contrast to Pepa’s wild chaos, Julieta’s tangled garden, and Bruno’s dramatically barren landscape. Pepa plopped herself down on their mother’s perfectly made bed, wrinkling the covers, while Julieta stood carefully beside it. Bruno climbed up onto the bench under the window where the candle sat and hesitated, his hands wrapped around the smooth, waxy surface.
“How do we do this?” He asked, pulling his hands away. “Should we tell Mamá first?”
“No,” Pepa said immediately, shaking her head until her braids flew wildly around her face. “This is our adventure!”
Bruno nodded, and made to touch the candle again, then froze. “Wait! I need some sand.”
Pepa groaned. “Sand?! Why?”
Bruno shrugged. “I dunno. It just helps, sometimes. And we want all the help we can get here, right?”
“Fine,” Pepa groaned. She slid off the bed with a thump, and scampered over to the door. “I’ll get some.”
“There’s a bucket just inside the door to my room!” Bruno shouted after her. “You can use that!”
He fidgeted in place as Pepa’s footsteps echoed off down the hall, glancing nervously at Julieta. His sister had her arms crossed over her chest, and was somehow managing to give him a perfect replication of their mother’s glare on her child’s face. Bruno hunched his shoulders and crossed his arms under his ruana, trying to fold up inside the cloth like a turtle in its shell. “You don’t think this is a good idea, do you?”
“The book says time travel doesn’t work,” Julieta said sternly, shaking the aforementioned book in one hand. Then she shrugged, her face brightening. “But if we can make ourselves forget like you suggested, well, I am bored too.”
Bruno grinned shyly, relaxing. “Maybe we have two Gifts,” he suggested. “And mine is time travel!” He made a whooshing sound and swept one hand through the air. “Boom! Future me! Boom! Past me!” He frowned. “Past me was just a baby though. That sounds boring.”
Julieta giggled, but before she could respond, Pepa stormed back in the room, hauling a full bucket of sand. She grunted as she dropped it on the floor and dove back onto the bed, headfirst. “That’s heavy!” she complained.
Bruno jumped off the bench and tugged the bucket up closer to the window. “Thanks, Pepa!” With great effort, he hoisted the bucket into his arms and dumped it all over the floor under the bench. He tried to make it somewhat circular, but the weight of the bucket, and the proximity of the wall resulted in a vaguely oblong blob of sand covering the floor under the bench. He shrugged, and climbed back up, feeling the familiar crunch of sand in his sandals. “Alright then,” he said. “Let’s start!”
Touching the candle, he closed his eyes, feeling a little silly, but spoke anyway. “Um… magic candle, would you please let us have some fun and travel to our future together? And afterwards to make us forget everything so we don’t mess anything up. Thanks.” He hesitated, then opened his eyes.
Nothing appeared different.
“Alright then,” he said doubtfully. “Let’s try this.” He held out his hands towards his sisters. “C’mere, we should hold hands so we all go together.”
Pepa stuck out her tongue in mock-disgust, but reluctantly climbed off the bed and grabbed Bruno’s left hand. Julieta moved forward to seize his right, and Bruno took a deep breath.
“Here goes,” he mumbled, and activated his Gift.
In the scant year since Bruno had received his Gift, he liked to think that he had become very good at using it. To be fair, it wasn’t like he had anyone to compete with. But in the same vein, no one had been around to teach him either. Smaller visions came and went, almost of their own desire, but big prophecies were something he summoned himself. The desert-like landscape of his room was a big hint, but he had found they went a lot better if he had large quantities of sand around him.
First of all, it looked a lot more dramatic. That was always his goal. Also, it helped form the smooth, green plate which displayed the vision, which was helpful when he was trying to explain it to his mother.
Here, the sand rose up and swirled around himself and his sisters just like always - but it felt different. He didn’t feel the heat of a vision building in his chest, the sand didn’t hold potential, like it usually did, but something else. Something… other.
Bruno gasped, feeling his eyes burst into green light. In the sand wall in front of them, he could still see the glow of the candle between the grains. Something about the light drew him in. He probed towards it, reaching with his Gift… he gasped, as something seemed to tear inside his chest. There was a brilliant flash of green light, and everything went black.
When Bruno opened his eyes, he found himself lying on his back below the window. The candle still burned merrily above him, its flickering flame catching his eyes. He sat up with a groan, and saw Julieta and Pepa lying beside him, just beginning to stir.
“Did we do it?” Pepa asked, rubbing at her eyes. “What happened?”
“I don’t know,” Bruno said anxiously, glancing around. “Everything looks pretty much the same…”
“The sand is gone!” Julieta announced suddenly, pointing at the floor beneath them.
Bruno glanced down, and sure enough, the boards beneath him were as clean and shiny as if they had just been swept. “Huh,” he said eloquently.
In a blur of motion, Pepa zipped over to the window and leaned over the sill, straining to see into the courtyard below. “No one’s down there!” She said loudly.
“Is Mamá’s room any different?” Julieta asked. She stood slowly, poking at the blankets on the smooth, well-made bed. “This is new.” She lifted up a warm, maroon blanket, covered with beautiful embroidery. Flowers, candles, and animals were stitched in neat, loving colors all along the bottom edge. Bruno rubbed one corner against his cheek.
“It’s soft,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve seen that before.”
“Does that mean it worked?” Pepa called. In a blur, she moved from the window to the door leading out of the room. “Let’s go see if we can find anyone!”
Bruno felt a smile curling up the corners of his lips. It had worked. He had time traveled! That was super cool. “Let’s go!” He said. “C’mon, Julieta!”
Julieta grabbed his sleeve. “Already behind you,” she said. Bruno noticed she was still holding her book in her other hand. “Let’s go find some future people!”