Chapter Text
Luisa wasn’t stupid.
She knew what some people thought, that her Gift making her strong meant that she wasn’t as smart as Isabela or Dolores. She was, but she didn’t see the point in saying anything. Everyone was always so happy when she helped them, she didn’t see the need for extra conversation beyond the usual. There wasn’t time, anyway, the list Abuela gave her was usually really long and she sometimes got more requests on her way between tasks, so she didn’t have time to talk or play much.
So she noticed, when all of the adults started acting strange after Mirabel’s ceremony.
She had been spending a lot of time with her hermana, taking Mirabel with her when she went out to do her chores and just generally spending time with her little sister. Isabela was ignoring Mirabel, even shouting at her if she saw her, so Luisa took to keeping Mirabel out of their sister’s way.
But Abuela was ignoring Mirabel, except when she was trying to tell her not to spend so much time with Luisa. It was one of the only times she’d ever defied Abuela, just picking her little sister up and carrying her along. She didn’t care that Mirabel didn’t get a door, her little sister was special enough that she didn’t need one.
Tía Pepa seemed to agree, she had taken Mirabel to the fields with her a few times, on days when they just needed it to be sunny. Mira got to run and play with the farmer’s children while her Tía kept an eye on them all, and she seemed to enjoy it. Tío Felix didn’t seem to think anything was wrong either, still laughing and joking with Mirabel like always, taking her with him to town when it wasn’t safe for Mirabel to be with Tía Pepa or with Luisa.
She noticed how her Tía and Tío seemed to agree with her keeping Mirabel away from Abuela, and how her Mama and Papa didn’t seem to notice. She knew that Mami was busy, Abuela always told her not to bother her mother when she was in the kitchen, but Luisa thought it had to be more than that. It seemed like they were avoiding her little sister, but she didn’t know why.
She got her answer late one night.
She’d gone downstairs to get a drink of water; Mirabel was asleep in her room since she didn’t like leaving her sister all alone in the nursery but no one had asked Casita to make her a room of her own yet. Camilo liked to have Mirabel sleepover with him, they were close enough in age that they’d spent almost their entire lives together at that point, and Dolores had even had a sleepover with Mirabel a few times. Still, Luisa liked having her hermana with her, Casita made an extra bed for Mirabel to sleep in and it made her own room less lonely. She was grateful that Casita made a room where she could train, but she sometimes wished for something pretty. Mirabel’s sewing supplies, from her hermana’s attempts to learn to sew, were bright and colorful and made her room seem more cheerful, so she never minded the company.
It was her Tía’s thunder that she noticed first. Tía Pepa was thundering, and for once Luisa didn’t hear her mantra of ‘clear skies’. She liked when her Tía was happy, but didn’t understand why everyone else got so angry with her for expressing herself. Still, even though she could hear the thunder, no one said anything about the cloud. Likely because her tía was furious , angrier than Luisa had ever heard her.
“-and so, you want to send her away?!” Pepa asked, incredulously. She had to be misunderstanding something, because there was no way that her mother, sister, and brother-in-law really were serious about this. “Mirabel is five years old! She’s already upset about her ceremony, and you think the best course of action is to send her away?”
“Mirabel is a danger, to our family, to the Miracle, to the whole Encanto,” Alma said, her expression firm as she looked at her rebellious daughter. “Clearly, there is a reason that she did not receive a Gift, and given what happened with Bruno-”
“We don’t know what happened to Bruno, we haven’t found him yet!” Pepa interrupted, the cloud above her growing darker by the moment. Felix, for once, made no move to try to calm his wife down, his usually jovial expression serious. This was his littlest sobrina, his little mariposa, and they wanted to send her away like she was nothing because she didn’t have a magical gift?
“I asked Bruno, after Mirabel’s ceremony, to have a vision,” Alma replied. “I wanted to see if he could find anything, any reason that she had not been given a Gift. He has not been seen since, and I believe that whatever he saw pointed to Mirabel being a threat to the Encanto and so he fled.” She had looked for the vision but hadn’t found it, she was unsure what had happened to it when he ran. But she would do what she must, for the good of the Encanto, for the good of the family. “Mirabel is a threat, one that cannot remain in our family. Augustin has family outside of the Encanto, he will be able to send her to them when the traders come through again.”
“You want to send mí sobrina off with a group of traders ?!” Pepa shrieked, lightning flashing in the sky outside as well as in her own personal cloud.
“You would send off your own granddaughter, your own daughter , all for the sake of a candle?” Felix asked, glaring at the three adults across from him. Only Alma was able to meet his eyes, Julieta and Augustin looked away, ashamed and unhappy. But neither of them spoke up against Alma. “You want to send a young girl away from the only home she has ever known out of paranoia? Is this why Isabela has been ignoring her, on your orders?” He had heard Alma telling Luisa to spend less time with Mirabel, but the girl had ignored her. She was fiercely loyal, but Alma wasn’t the only one she was loyal to. Luisa loved Mirabel; she had loved being a big sister. When she had been unable to help with either Camilo or Mirabel for a year after she’d gotten her Gift, until she learned to control her powers, she had been heartbroken. She would never shut out her hermana. “You ordered her to stay away from Mirabel, the same way you tried to order Luisa.”
“Isabela is a good girl, she knows what must be done,” Alma refuted. She still was unsure why Luisa had picked now to be so disobedient, but she would be able to get the girl back into line once Mirabel was gone. “And Luisa will see sense eventually. Once Mirabel is gone and stops influencing her, she will understand that this is for the best.”
The door behind them flew open, cutting off Pepa’s scathing question about how a five-year-old would be dangerous to an exceptionally strong nine-year-old. Luisa stood framed in the doorway, her hands fisted in her skirt, a scowl on her usually smiling face and tears in her eyes.
“I’m never going to give up Mirabel! Mirabel is my hermanita, I don’t care if she doesn’t have a Gift! Abuela doesn’t have a Gift either, and no one is making her leave the Encanto! No one outside of our family has Gifts, but they can stay even when they make Tía Pepa sad or make Mama cook all the time, or make me carry things they could carry themselves!”
The big little girl put her hands on her hips, scowling at the room at large. “If you send Mirabel away, I’m going too.” She wasn’t going to let them send her little sister away, not for something she had no control in. It wasn’t fair, and the fact that her tío and tía were the only ones who protested made it hurt worse. Mama and Papa loved Mirabel, she knew that, she didn’t understand why they didn’t tell Abuela they weren’t sending Mirabel away.
She rubbed her eyes, she needed to be strong, but a few tears escaped anyway as she looked at her parents. “I wish Tío Felix and Tía Pepa were our parents instead of you!” Her tío and tía were fighting to keep Mirabel, looking out the window showed that there was a near hurricane from how angry her tía was, but her parents were just going along with what Abuela wanted.
Pepa saw both Julieta and Augustin flinch at Luisa’s words, shock and hurt plain on their faces, but she held up a hand to stop her mother from reprimanding the girl. “No, Mama, I think Luisa said it far better than any of us could.” She took a certain satisfaction out of the fact that Luisa had managed to quiet her mother, Alma could hardly refute the fact that she was indeed giftless. She moved over to her sobrina’s side, taking Luisa’s hand while Felix slid an arm around her waist. “If none of you want Mirabel, then you do not deserve her. From this day forward, she is ours, mine and Felix’s. Camilo will have his gemela back, as well as a hermana mayor, and Dolores will enjoy having two hermanitas.”
“Two?” Julieta asked, the first words she had managed since the argument had started. Her daughter’s words hurt; she knew it would be hard on Luisa but her mother had stressed that it was for the best so often that she had eventually given in.
“Luisa deserves to be with her sister, as she was the only one in this household willing to fight for her,” Felix replied, seeing the hurt his words caused Julieta and Augustin and not caring. When a nine-year-old was able to see how wrong it was to send her sister away and was willing to fight for her place but her parents were not...it showed quite a lot about the issues in la familia Madrigal. He had known where his wife was going as soon as she had agreed to Luisa’s comment, and he fully supported her.
“Tell the town whatever you please to save face, but Julieta does not deserve Mirabel or Luisa, they’re our children now,” Pepa said simply, leaving the room without further comment. She wasn’t going to listen to them defend their choices anymore, she had two new hijas to take care of.
“We’ll have to go to town tomorrow to get fabric, Mirabel may fit into a few of Dolores’ old things but Luisa won’t,” Felix said, and Pepa smiled at her husband even as she led the way up the stairs. She was furious with her mother, furious with her sister and brother-in-law, and still upset at her brother’s disappearance, but Felix had a tendency to make her smile even at the worst times.
She hoped the skill worked with their new niñas, as there would be quite a lot to adjust to in the coming days.