Have you seen the movie “Encanto”? If not then anything with Jiang Cheng is fine 🎊
If Alma had been anything less, then Encanto would not have survived. Alma did not just receive a miracle, but she has to perform one too. She had to lead their new village and settle their people all while raising her three children without the love of her life. If Alma had been an inch softer, an ounce more unyielding, all would have been lost.
Casita knows this. Casita loves her.
But the circumstances which Casita was born of will not be what sustains her, what sustains the family within its walls, what sustains Encanto.
Things are different now. They need to be different now.
Alma will not live forever, and Casita loves her, but she is no longer what Encanto needs.
The triplets are too young and it is not time. First Isabella, then Dolores, Luisa, and Camilo. Casita is proud to have them, but they are not quite right for this.
Alma pulled off a miracle to protect and nourish Encanto along the miracle she’d been given. Her replacement must be able to lead differently, but just as well, just as strongly, with enough conviction to cleave a home out of the earth and stand as tall as the mountains that surround it.
Sweet, darling Mirabel, who dances to the beat that no one else can hear, not even Dolores. No one except Alma.
The difference is Alma does not dance to it.
Mirabel is born and Casita knows.
Mirabel stands in front of her, waiting for her door, and she is so small and so young and Casita makes it as clear as she can, tries to make it so Alma and their people will understand. It is too soon. Mirabel’s room is now Alma’s, but it’s not time, yet, but it will be. Casita dissolves the door and flickers the candle in Mirabel’s direction.
Casita tries to speak to Alma, but even her Alma cannot understand her like Mirabel can, and no one listens. Bruno hides within her walls and Mirabel cries herself to sleep and Casita does not understand how it could have gone so wrong, how they can look at her Mirabel and think Casita has no gift to give her.
Casita gives her everything.
She gives Mirabel herself.
It is not a gift that can undone, but they do not understand, and Alma does not let Mirabel lead as Casita hoped she would. Cracks shift around its walls and it does it’s best, but now the miracle is stretched thin, pulled between Alma and Mirabel.
It would have all pulled apart so much sooner, except.
Except Bruno lives in her walls, hiding himself away to protect her Mirabel, and patches the cracks no one can see. Except Mirabel loves her family and loves Alma and does her best to walk in step with her even as her feet yearn to move to a different beat.
Casita worries about Antonio.
Without Mirabel’s blessing, she cannot give him his door and his powers, but Mirabel does not know that she has to give it.
Thankfully, Mirabel walks Antonio to his door, and it is enough.
But at the same time, it is not enough.
Mirabel can’t help but feel as if she doesn’t belong and Alma holds tightly to a power she doesn’t know she can safely relinquish and it all comes apart. Everything is tearing itself apart, Encanto is tearing itself apart, and all Casita wants is to get everyone to safety, to get them as far from the center of disaster as she can.
But her Mirabel tells her to bring her to the candle, and she listens.
Alma screams at her to stop, and she does not listen.
Encanto is Mirabel’s now. Mirabel’s to protect, Mirabel’s to love, and Mirabel’s to break.
Casita falls to pieces and folds herself around her Mirabel. She is sad, but she is not disappointed, not upset, not capable of anything besides love for her Mirabel.
It will take a miracle to bring her back, to heal her broken family and restore magic to Encanto.
Casita would not have chosen Mirabel if she wasn’t capable of miracles.