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Just shy of his fifteenth birthday, Bruno learns that the scariest thing about viewing the future isn’t the sights he’ll see. It’s losing his hold on the present.
By then he’s learnt that his visions come in two distinctive ways. The first is the one he actively seeks. The second comes to him unannounced.
It’s easier when he knows what he wants to see. The ritual he does is to prepare himself. The feeling of sand, coarse and everywhere. The smell of incense, sharp and familiar. It eases the tension, granting him focus that he can't afford to slip.
The future is vast, infinite possibilities with paths so winding that eternity will see no end to it. When faced with this gaping, yawning expanse, he needs to make sure he has a hold on the present so he doesn't... wander.
He has vague memories of the first time he wandered (it’s the kindest way he can put it. Lost, set adrift, forgotten– this is the easiest one to swallow). It comes from the visions that come whenever they want, fleeting and indistinct, wanting simply to be known. The ones he should only dwell after the glow dies from his eyes. Never during.
If he does, it’s terribly easy to wander down the countless paths of the future, ever branching with each flap of a butterfly’s wing.
Bruno can’t recall what it was that caught his attention at that time. Only that he tries to see more. His mind focuses in an effort to sharpen the blurred images, eyes still glowing a poisonous green. He gets a clearer vision, which then shifts to another. And another. And another.
By the time he remembers and returns, he finds that his eyes burn, head pounding and hears the watery voices of his sisters.
(Bruno is told that they found him in his room, sitting upright on the bed with his glowing eyes. That he remains in that state, unresponsive to their pleas for almost a full day before he returns. After that he remains bedbound for days, wrecked with chills and a fever so high that he can barely keep down anything that Julieta made. He can’t distinguish his dreams from his visions and reality).
He theorizes that it’s the consequence of wandering for too long. His brain is unable to cope with what he’s seen, even if he barely recalls it. Their gifts might be beyond human comprehension but that doesn’t change the fact that he’s still terribly human.
Bruno learns from that experience. He doesn’t want to be in that position again, if only because it caused so much stress and worry for his family.
He doesn’t wander for many years until he hides within the walls. Mirabel’s vision is the last one he actively seeks, though that does not stop the unannounced ones. Bruno understands that despite the complicated feelings that he has with his gift, it’s not worth repressing it till he’s left with a migraine so intense that he questions the worth in holding on to this life self imposed exile.
So when they come, he answers with his eyes aglow within the dim environment. He remembers his lesson— until one day, five years in that he glimpses the future where one of his family members get hurt. Logically, he knows that no injury lasts long with Julieta’s cooking at the ready but it still grips his heart with enough fear that he forgets and tries to see more.
By the time he returns (after seeing so many possible outcomes and the repercussions after) to the present, he’s lying on his side, gasping for breath with his eyes squeezed shut. He remains there, trembling and aching something fierce, tears running down his dusty cheeks. The rats offer minimal comfort with their panicked squeaks and nibbling and nuzzling.
(It still surprises him that he survives that week. In his delirium, he didn’t think the hands that cradle his flushed cheeks are real, nor the ones that massage his throat so he’d swallow an achingly familiar liquid till his eyes no longer burn, mind finally receding into slumber’s cool embrace. He has vague memories of waking up with his ratty blanket draped over his body and a plate of arepas that doesn’t taste stale).
He goes another five years without wandering. The next time it happens, Casita has fallen and rebuilt, Bruno leaving the walls and returning to the family he loves so very much. They welcome him back with open arms, though he understands its an adjusting period for them all.
The family is reminded that the table is now twelve and Bruno is learning to be in other people’s lives again. They have their ups and downs, hard conversations and tearful apologies but they’re adding another brick to this new foundation, where their bonds are stronger and the love that they have runs deep like the river that granted their miracle.
Bruno doesn’t mean to wander. He simply forgets out of concern for his family.
He’s in his room (no longer the sandy death trap where Mirabel found that vision in what seemed a lifetime ago. It has since changed into a larger, cleaner and well furbished version of his space within the walls, complete with all sorts of spaces for the rats and easily accessible vision cave with everything he needed for his ritual), having woken up from one of the better sleep he had since his return.
The building pressure behind his eyes is his sign that he’ll be joining his family for breakfast later than usual. With a muted sigh, he lies back down, figuring that he might as well be comfortable when he metaphorically opens the door for the future begging to be seen.
It starts off like it usually does; flashes of events that will occur, too indistinct for him to make out right now. He let those slide off him, letting the visions run its course. Then he sees a familiar shade of yellow, a young face shedding tears and he tries to see more.
Bruno sees Dolores crying. He sees Mariano apologizing. Then it shifts to the young couple happy and laughing again. After that they go on a date. And then another. And another.
He sees the man going down on one knee and Dolores is crying again. So he watches the day after, and then the end of the week. The next one. And the next until he sees them surrounded by family and friends, looking older yet the happiest he’s seen as they exchange their vows.
Then it shifts and shows them looking surprised and Dolores is crying yet again so he sees her holding a hand on her stomach, lips stretched into a beaming smile as she tells the rest of her family that she’s–
It's only then that he remembers that these futures have yet to come, that there is still a present to go through. That he should return before…
Right. It’s time to go back.
Bruno looks behind him, sees the split paths that extend forever. He knows he’s wandered.
He tries to ignore the rising dread from the pit of his stomach. This isn’t the first time, he reminds himself. He can return. He has to return.
Out of the corner of his eye, he sees it. A spark of gold in this sea of green, fluttering towards one direction without forming ripples of endless possibilities. Bruno follows after it, mind grappling for the familiar within the disjointed images, anything that he could grasp and hold tight like a lifeline.
Bruno keeps one eye out on the spark, the rest of his attention on his blurred surroundings. It’s like he’s in the eye of the storm; everything else whirls past with no rhyme nor reason while he exists in a moment of peace. He keeps moving, poisonous green eyes flickering for something that’s present.
Then he spots it. Gold flecks shimmer over a table filled with food and company, where he’s actually sitting with them without a separating wall. Bruno knows that’s recent. It’s not a shard of his past, filled with memories he can’t unpack in several lifetimes. It’s the present, it’s where he should be right now.
Bruno extends a hand and grasps before it slips like sand between his fingertips–
When he comes out of it, his head is splitting, eyes burning, and stomach turning, disoriented and hurling with all the moments of time passing in and out of view. Bruno then squeezes his eyes shut with a hiss, raising a weakened hand to press on them in an attempt to alleviate the pain.
Suddenly there’s an arm slipping behind his shoulders that eases him upright. A whimper slips out before he can stop it, nausea bubbling from that slight movement.
“Drink this.” Bruno recognizes it as Julieta’s voice. She brings the rim of a mug to his lips, wafts of steam tickling his cheeks. He opens his mouth just enough to (carefully at her behest) drink its contents —chamomile tea, he notes sluggishly— and slumps back once her magic eases his itchy, burning eyes and tempers his headache enough to a level he’s used to. The urge to expel the meagre contents of his stomach passes.
“What happened?” he slurs, blinking heavily from the bone deep exhaustion that settles in far too familiarly instead.
“We’ll talk later, Brunito.” Even when his vision blurs and fades, he knows it's his Mamá by touch, her worn hands warm against his sand torn ones. “Get some rest.” The soft kiss on his forehead smoothens the wrinkles there and he releases a deep, weary sigh.
“Alright Mamá.” It’s not like he has the energy to process whatever conversation that explains his current state. He doesn't need to see the future to know that he's messed up on some level. Perhaps he should nip it in the bud; apologize for his transgressions and cross his fingers that the aftermath won't lead to his early demise.
Still. Every bit of him yearns for sleep, if only so he doesn’t have to think for a while.
Bruno closes his eyes and falls into a restless slumber.