Chapter Text
It’s amazing the things humans take for granted. Shelter from the cold and rain, a warm and filling meal, water without a hint of poison in it.
And, as Renata discovered, opposable thumbs.
Sure, paws had their advantages. She barely noticed the scratch of tile and stone as she scurried through back alleys, and her new claws proved useful in aiding her escape from predators. But without the ability to speak or hold a pen, Renata had no hope of finding help.
So far her only assistance had come from a small colony of rats a few streets over. Her first night here, she’d attempted to drink from a puddle forming beneath a house, only to be knocked off her new feet by a brown, furry mass, squeaking rapidly at her not to go near it. The owners of the house had wised up to the rats’ presence and were taking measures against it. That was how Renata discovered that rat poison had a scent - if you knew what to sniff for.
After that incident, the local mischief had attempted to bring her into their fold, wary of her otherness but wanting to help all the same. Renata had staunchly refused. She knew what to look out for now (even if it was difficult to parse through the sheer plethora of smells in this village), and the last thing she needed was more people - rodents - breathing down her neck.
No need to bring up that that was how she’d ended up in this situation in the first place.
That was three months ago, if Renata’s scratched-in calendar in the church’s rafters was anything to go by. She’d had no more run-ins with poison, and had easily outmaneuvered the local cats on the prowl with her superior human brain. As much as she cursed the witch who put her here, Renata had to admit she was getting the hang of this rat business.
I’ll show you, bruja. I can survive anything on my own.
And to prove it, Renata decided tonight was the night to follow the most delicious scent of them all. She had discovered it on her first full day in the village - a charming place the locals called “Encanto” - and had nearly been stepped on no less than three times while trying to investigate. Still too new to her acquired size, she had decided to wait and try again the next day. When that proved just as busy as the first, and the day after that, and the day after, and so on, Renata had all but given up on finding the source of that delicious smell.
But tonight the streets were clear, except for a few stragglers, and that delicious smell was making her delirious with hunger. So she pushed herself from her perch in the church, gripped the brick wall between her sharp claws, and scurried down the road. The walk to the edge of town was long, and she’d had to hide more than once at the hoot of an owl - but the promise of food was a strong motivator. So Renata pushed on, spurred by the rumbling in her tiny stomach. White fur gleamed in the moonlight as she rushed over the cobblestone until finally, she reached the edge of the encanto.
The size of the house would have been foreboding even as a human. Did many people live here? Would she be discovered? How was she meant to get in?
At her forlorn squeak, the shutters flew open. Renata scurried, ducking out of sight behind a rock, but it was unneeded for no one was there. Curious but with a tentative step, she made her way to the now open window, leaping onto the ledge once she deemed it safe to do so.
The windows led to an open courtyard, decorated with a beautiful floral tile pattern that was too big for her to see properly. The space was blessedly empty, not a soul present to inspect the intruder. So who had opened the window?
The tiles below the window lifted, tittering and tinkling as if to say “hello!”
Renata promptly fell from the window.
The house - the house! - reached out its tiles to catch her, settling gently flat on the floor, but doing nothing for the hyperventilating rat-woman. Nothing moved while she settled her breathing, dark eyes flitting frantically from the floor to the stairs to the glow coming from above. Renata instinctually flinched away from the unknown light, backing herself against the wall. The floor tinkled sadly before flipping a row of white tiles to red, creating a line that led into a side room.
The same room the delicious smell came from.
“Come on, Nata. Sentient houses are hardly the strangest thing you’ve encountered,” the human-turned-rat squeaked. The magical house chittered happily, as though it understood her, but made no more movement as she scurried along the red line of tiles. Soon she found herself in the kitchen, a cozy room with a fresh breeze wafting through the many butterfly-shaped windows. The scent carried with it, and Renata’s nose twitched as she sought out the source.
There!
High on the counter sat a plate of arepas, long cooled but still mouth-watering and tempting. Leaping onto the counter, she inspected the plate closely: a few crumbs sat among the pile, suggesting it had been sampled from earlier in the night. This worked in Renata’s favor; she could eat without being discovered. She cautiously leaned forward, delicately sniffing at the fried cornmeal with her long nose, whiskers brushing against the plate and making her rounded ears twitch. She glanced at her paws.
I need to clean these.
Running along the countertop, Renata skid to a stop beside the sink. Rounding the faucet, she placed her eight fingers around the smooth metal, throwing all of her weight behind her push. It didn’t budge. Squeaking out a huff, she tried again, only to alert the house to her distress. In its eagerness to help, the faucet flipped fully around, causing the rat-woman to squeak in fright as she nearly fell into the basin. Her wiry tail shot out behind her, keeping her upright, and the house quickly adjusted the stream of water for her - both in apology, and to avoid waking its inhabitants.
Paws clean, the sink shut off on its own, and Renata walked slowly, two-footed, back to the plate of leftover arepas. Even hours old, they looked delicious. Her stomach rumbled, surprisingly loud for such a tiny thing, and she wasted no more time taking a bite. Instantly, a rush of warmth flooded through from the tips of her white fur to the ends of her toes. Her stomach felt lighter, her fur smoother, and that scratch on her toe from last week was nonexistent.
Not the strangest thing - Not the strangest thing -!
She quickly devoured the rest of the arepa, then two more after that, until she felt full and fat and slow. Exhaustion was creeping over her mind, stressed from the discoveries within the large house at the edge of Encanto. The very thought of walking all the way back to the church filled her with dread. “Maybe I can find a nice corner,” she mused aloud with a quiet squeak. The countertop buzzed beneath her feet, the tiles shifting rat and plate to a cozy spot out of the way. Renata squeaked in thanks, ignoring the happy chirp of the window shutters, and settled into a ball to sleep. Just a little rest, and then she could take her leave, and the denizens of this magical place would be none the wiser. Darkness crept at the corners of her consciousness, and with a satisfied sigh, she let herself fade away to sleep.
She awoke to a booming scream and a clap of thunder.
“Rata! There’s a ginormous rat in the kitchen!” a woman was shrieking, echoing loudly in poor Renata’s ears as she leaped up with a terrified squeak. The rat-woman panicked, running a circle over the countertop, trying to avoid the sudden inclement weather but with no clue on how to escape. How is it storming inside?! What is with this place?! Her lungs expanded and deflated rapidly as she ran, her heartbeat erratic as the woman continued yelling for someone else to come. Just when she thought she might not make it, a large hand swooped in out of nowhere, scooping up a shaking Renata.
“Oye, estás bien pequeña. Cálmate, cálmate…” a masculine voice soothed, running his other hand gently over her fur. The human side of her brain bristled at being treated like an animal. The animal side, however, burrowed itself deeper into the newcomer’s palm. “There we go. See, Pepa? I told you they’re more scared of you than you are of them.”
“I don’t care if it’s scared, Bruno! I’m getting married in three days, I can’t deal with this right now!” Renata continued to shiver and shake as the wind whipped around the kitchen, the man’s hand barely shielding her from the woman’s wrath. “There’s still so much to do, and everything needs to be perfect, and there’s going to be so many people, and we have rats in the kitchen, and everyone’s going to know we have rats in the kitchen, and then it will be all anyone talks about, and Félix won’t want to live somewhere with rats in the kitchen, and -”
“What on earth is going on in here?” a new voice interrupted, this one much older and more commanding. “Pepa, you’re tornado-ing the dishware, calm down mi amor.”
“I’m trying, Mamá, but a rat was sleeping in Julieta’s arepas!”
“Ay Dios mio, Julieta, I’ve told you not to leave food on the counter.”
“I know, Mamá,” yet another voice answered, warmth and calm echoing through the room. Renata peeked her nose between the man’s palms. “Bruno gets hungry during the night, I thought it would make it easier for him.”
“It made it easier for pests to come in,” the first woman muttered, not too quietly.
“Pepa,” the older woman scolded, and Renata poked the rest of her head out to inspect the scene. Three women stood in the entrance to the chaotic kitchen, two younger and one older. The first, the one who had made the mess with her strange weather powers, had red hair pulled into a messy braid that she was currently running her fingers through, muttering something about “clear skies”. The second of the younger women had kind eyes, and dark curly hair pulled away from her face, and she moved to clean up the plate Renata had once occupied. The older woman, their mamá, had dark hair pulled into a low bun, gray beginning to streak at her temples, a black shawl wrapped around her shoulders. She was looking at her daughter with concern but made no move to comfort the young woman as her cloud finally shrank and disappeared.
Crawling slightly out of her shelter, Renata craned her neck around to look at her savior. A young man met her beady eyes with his forest green, a soft smile on his shadowed face. Dark curls covered his head, messy and untameable, and from this close Renata could tell he was tired. "Hola, pequeña," he whispered softly, controlling his voice so as not to be too loud for her sensitive ears. How thoughtful. Carefully, he lifted the hand that shielded her from the rain and gently ran a finger down her spine.
Oh.
Most humans, upon seeing what appeared to be a normal rat, looked upon her with disdain at best and absolute revulsion at worst. Reactions like this “Pepa” had were hardly out of the ordinary (though, the change in weather was new - Not the strangest thing you’ve seen-!), and Renata had even been chased off with a broom once when she tried stealing food from a grocery cart. None had ever touched her before, and none especially had ever pet her before.
The human side of her sneered. The animal side arched its back for more.
“Ah, see? You’re not so scary,” the man - Bruno? - said, scratching a spot behind Renata’s ear that she hadn’t even known was itchy until he did so. “I’ll bet you were hungry, huh pequeña?”
“Hungry or not, we cannot have rats infesting our home,” his mother scolded before Renata could so much as squeak. Bruno’s eyes shifted to the floor, and Renata was struck with a sudden urge to nuzzle his hand. For the sake of her dignity, she resisted. “Brunito, take it outside, please?”
With a heavy sigh, Bruno nodded, shouldering past his mother and sisters out of the kitchen. Renata clung tight to his fingers, suddenly aware of just how high off the ground she was. She’d fallen from worse heights since becoming a rat, but her human mind would forever be terrified of heights.
The doors to the house flew open as they made their way through the courtyard, a mumbled “gracias, Casita,” falling from Bruno’s lips. Once they were a fair distance from the door, the young man dropped to the ground, laying his palm flat and waiting for the rat to depart.
Renata stared at him, unmoving.
“Heh, come on now. You heard her, you can’t stay here,” Bruno scolded without any bite, softly motioning for her to leave. She didn’t. He shook his hand a little firmer. “Come on, pequeña rata, it’s time for you to go home.” Renata sat resolute, sitting back on her hind legs and gripping his thumb in her paws. Bruno bit his cheek.
“What, you - you want to stay here?” He asked, not expecting an answer. It was just a thing he did, speaking out loud to get the thoughts out of his head. So it came as a shock when the little white rat in his hand let out a perfectly clear squeak! and a nod. His eyes widened, his face moving closer to the tiny rodent (because really, she was tiny, despite his sister’s shrieking) to stare her in the eye. “Did you just answer me?”
“Squeak!”
“Huh…” Bruno sat back, his lips held together in a thin line as he processed the intelligence of the rat in his hand. “Are you sure?” he drawled in a high-pitched voice, his anxiety over the situation making itself known. “I won’t be able to save you from Mamá or Pepa if they find out.” Bruno huffed, adjusting himself so he could sit in the grass more comfortably, allowing the rodent to crawl onto his knee. “Pepa’s been so stressed about the wedding. I keep trying to tell her it’ll be fine, Félix clearly adores her, but every time I bring it up she shushes me.” He let out a humorless laugh. “Of course, I haven’t actually seen the wedding yet. I keep getting worried I’ll see something bad, and then it’ll be all my fault, you know?”
The rat shook her head.
“Ok, that’s…hmm,” the man held his breath, biting his lips to cut off whatever he’d been about to say. Renata blinked up at him, wishing for the first time in weeks that she could communicate with someone. “You…must be a very smart rat,” Bruno finally breathed, turning to a chuckle as the white rat seemed to preen under his praise. “Alright, alright, you win. But you need to stay hidden, can you do that?” Renata nodded, allowing the man to scoop her up once more, and place her in his front shirt pocket.
Nestled against his chest, hidden beneath a large green ruana, Renata let herself relax against the gentle sway of his body as he walked, his heart beating right beneath her round ears. It was soothing, nearly enough to send the small thing to sleep, but she resisted. She wanted to see more of this magical place, explore the house - the casita - and take solace in the shelter provided within. And if she happened to sample some more of those arepas, all the better.
“Did you take care of our friend?” she heard after a moment, muffled through the many layers of fabric. This wasn’t Pepa or Mamá’s voice, instead, it was the other sister - Julieta? - and Renata assumed they were near the kitchen.
“Oh! Uh…yep! She-she’s gone! Ran off…somewhere.” Ay Dios mio, Bruno was not a great liar. She could practically hear the smirk in Julieta’s voice as she responded.
“Uhuh…so what do you think you’ll name her?”
Bruno spluttered at his sister’s teasing, only to stammer more when Renata poked her furry head out from his shirt pocket. She could just see over the collar of the ruana, and as she popped out from beneath the fabric, squeaking for all to hear (but not understand) that “my name is Renata! Renata!”, Julieta took a step back in surprise.
“Oye, pequeña what did I say about not getting caught?”
“You said not to let your mother or other sister catch me,” Renata squeaked, unheeded. “You didn’t say anything about this sister.”
The siblings just stared at her, surprised at the amount of noise the tiny white rodent was making. “Maybe you should call her ‘Squeaky’,” Julieta teased.
“What? That’s a terrible name,” Bruno and Renata both told her. The woman shrugged.
“You’ve got to call her something, right hermanito?” Bruno rolled his eyes at her laughter. “Sorry, I’ll stop. Take her to your room before someone else sees - or hears her. And here -” she grabbed Bruno’s wrist before he could turn towards the staircase, pressing the last arepa into his hand. “Make sure she stays out of the kitchen from now on, hm?”
With that, she returned to the kitchen, and Bruno made his way to the second floor of the house. No one else was around, and so he allowed himself to talk with the rat he had inadvertently acquired. “She’s right, you know. You do need a name.” He paused to think for a moment, muttering under his breath too quick for Renata to make out what he was saying. “White fur…Blanca…and you’re so tiny…Blanquita?”
Renata’s brow furrowed, or at least, the rat version of her brow furrowed. The man laughed at her expression, deciding to just accept the strangeness of the situation he found himself in. “Well, it’s either that or ‘Squeaky’. Which is it gonna be?” Renata deflated. Blanquita it is. Bruno chuckled, then paused outside a glowing door. “Well, Blanquita. Welcome to your new home.”