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It’s been about three months since…the change. More specifically, the fall of Casita and everything that happened before and after. It’d been rocky and bumpy, but ultimately it’d been… happy .
It was strange. Feeling this trinkle of happiness shiver along your veins, and knowing that it’d last, which sent another flood of the golden light called bliss.
The townspeople were adapting, adjusting, most trying to come to terms with the lack of magic and the fact that the Madrigals are indeed, at the end of the day, just an average family who’d suffered, just the same as the rest of them.
So were the Madrigals themselves, to be perfectly honest. They’d been convinced that they existed, and their gifts existed, solely to serve the community and to keep the magic strong, but they’re trying. Julieta could be seen being coaxed from the kitchen to actually sleep through the night for once. Pepa could be heard nervously telling herself that she can, in fact, feel sad and angry and scared, that it was not her fault. Bruno left piles of sand and salt and sounds of knocking and the muttering of mantras wherever he went, but the habits were reducing significantly—an improvement, and that was all the family was trying to do. Isabela, after the initial excitement of new possibilities wore down, was trying to re-discover what she liked, what she wanted, even little things like posture and chewing or even how she sleeps. Dolores squeaked, no longer embarrassed by it, and she was thoroughly enjoying the silence the candle’s fall came with. Luisa had been spotted in hammocks, resting entire days (although she still regularly went to the donkey pens, just to visit old friends). Camilo threw himself into helping, utterly delighted by the attention he got by being himself, basking in the praise completely meant for Camilo and not a second Luisa (or José, or Juanita, or Martina, or—). Mirabel congratulated herself, complimented herself, spun around towns just like she used to, but now every bounce in her step, every lilt in her cheerful voice was now filled with so much realness, like a pair of suspended feet that finally found solid ground. Antonio was a child. He was experiencing the childhood no Madrigal had before, and he was happy.
And Abuela Alma? She still prayed to Pedro, and kissed her necklace goodnight, but the prayers and kisses, instead of filled with grief and sorrow and the haunting of memories, were now a swirl of new emotions, of hope and thankfulness and anticipation for tomorrow.
Still, it was strange. To those with doors, the lack of a bundle of warm magic nuzzling in their chest was, frankly, unsettling. To those without (namely Mirabel), it was the overwhelming appreciation for simply existing.
Besides, it’d been so long, too long, that the family had believed, or chosen to believe, that their gifts were all they were worth. So when their only sense of self-worth was taken away so suddenly (and some would say in the worst way possible), nightmares and spirals into anxiety were not uncommon.
But they were healing. And they were happy.
It wasn’t perfect, but neither were they.