violetable

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Paid service with ads: Well that's bullshit.

Because the town has erected this monument and he’s officially interred there on Dia de los Muertos, the first anniversary of his death (Because personally, I think he was doing a big Dia de los Muertos party the night he died). And Coco happens to see and she recognizes that guitar…

That’s her father’s guitar!

No one believes her. She grabs the photo as proof, people are still unimpressed. Could be it’s just a very good copy of Ernesto’s guitar, after all. She’s incensed. And in a sudden burst of impulsivity, she breaks into the tomb under the cover of Dia de los Muertos celebrations and steals it.

Landing herself directly into the Land of the Dead, where her instance that it’s not Ernesto De La Cruz’s guitar is met with about as much belief as it was in the Land of the Living.

Her purse is promptly stolen, so she’s not in the best mood when the agent tells her she’ll need Ernesto’s blessing to cross back over. “It’s his guitar, after all.”

“It’s not!” She insists. “It’s my father’s!”

“Well, do you have any family here that can give you a blessing?”

“… not that I know of.”

“I’ll contact Mr. De La Cruz then. He’s pretty forgiving to his fans.”

Coco is absolutely outraged. She doesn’t need his blessing because it wasn’t his guitar! She has the photo! She has proof!

Except… the photo was in the purse. And the purse was stolen.

Thus begins a mad dash to find the purse, along which she meets Hector one way or another. And while she doesn’t recognize him, I imagine it doesn’t take him long to recognize her. Coco Rivera from Santa Cecilia, with a striking resemblance to him personally and declaring that Ernesto De La Cruz stole her father’s guitar?

All it takes is a quick run-through of Remember Me.

And then he’s trying to send her home with the blessing and she’s insistent: Absolutely not.

“What? Are you crazy? You have to get home!” Hector says.

“First off, I don’t NEED a blessing because I didn’t steal ANYTHING,” Coco insists. “Second of all, that purse has the only photo we have of you in it and if you’re gone, I’m putting that on an ofrenda. And third,” here she scowled a stunningly Imelda-ish scowl. “That’s my purse and I’m getting it back.”

Hector knows that expression. He tucks the marigold petal into his pocket with a sigh and resolves to use it if things get hairy, whether she likes it or not.

But the whole time, Ernesto has also sent his people out to find her. A call from Family Reunions saying that a ‘crazy but pretty’ fan tried to steal his guitar is one thing, but ‘and she says it’s her father’s guitar’ is altogether another. He needs to put a stop to that right now.

Because my god. I can 100% see this being absolutely ridden with angst. If Coco was around 20 years old, too, she might have mostly forgotten the song that her father sang. With the ban on music, she remembered well enough that her father had sung music. But she’d forgotten what his voice sounded like. If she closed her eyes tight enough she could hear a soft-spoken warm warble. 

And when Remember Me comes out, her mother bristles, but there’s not enough in her to say for sure that that’s her fathers song. She probably doesn’t even think twice. She hears is once while she sweeps outside when a man drives by with his speakers turned to 11, and she doesn’t blink. 

That’s Ernesto’s song. She knows Ernesto de la Cruz. Who doesn’t. She keeps sweeping. 

Sometimes what it takes to trigger a memory is the exact noise. She wouldn’t recognize a song given to her so long ago if it had changed as drastically as it had. 

So when she finds Héctor, it wouldn’t click who he was. She might comment on Ernesto’s songs as Ernesto’s song (something that would quickly discourage Héctor from thinking this was his Coco- his Coco would remember his songs; and really he was giving himself too much credit in his ridiculous and wonderful hope, that she’d hold his memory that tightly, even after she’d had years without the reminders). 

Meanwhile, Coco doesn’t even believe her father is dead. She’s been raised to believe her father left. It’s the reason she leaves the door unlocked each night (they’d been robbed twice- nothing much taken, but her mother had brought the chancla down for what she assumed was just a forgetful daughter, not a hopeful one) and continued to write letters and send them to the little P.O. box in her fathers name they’d never had the energy or will to close. 

There are certain days, though, that are different. Her birthday. Fathers day. Dia de los Muertes. Those are days where she sits outside the family home and watches in both directions. Until the sun sets and the streetlights flicker on, she sits, drumming her hands on her knees. 

Imelda always tried to get her daughter to give up the habit. 

“What if he forgot where we lived,” she’d always say, as rationally as one could through the mist of frustrated tears. “I have to stay here. All the houses on this street look the same.” 

Imelda always gave up and let her daughter be. 

And though something in her knows that it wont happen, she still holds an absurd amount of hope. 

She got her mothers pride and beauty and wit. She got her fathers hope. 

And so she needs to get uncursed. Not only for her own sake. But because she needs to get back. After all, it’s Dia de los Muertes, and how will her father find their house if she’s not sitting outside in her brightest clothes? 

What if this is the year that he does come back to them? And she’s not there? 

No. She needs to get back. 

The two of them run circles round the other on their travels. One of them out to get a picture to remember her fathers face once he returns to their home (and he will- she intones, her mantra overused and worn. He will come back). The other trying to get her to take back a picture of him for any ofrenda. Because “I have to go see my girl”.

She assumes girlfriend. 

“My picture, my last picture,” the skeleton explained. “It’s with Ernesto. You get de-cursified, I get my picture on the ofrenda, you go home, I see my girl, BOOM! Everyone leaves happy! Claro!”

“Sure…”

“¡Bueno! Such a good child, now come on. ¡Ándale!” 

He doesn’t realize that the picture she’s looking for is the same one that he is. They don’t ask. They just go. 

They’re Rivera’s. It’s a family trait to swing shoes first, ask questions later. 

And it’ll be later, when they don’t get the photo, and she’s without a blessing, that the Remember Me makes its round. “I used to sing all his songs to my girl, you know? They were mine. Well. Hers. They were hers. Hers and her mothers.” 

Coco looks up. Girl. Girl. Like- “daughter.”

“Si. She was young, when I left. And I meant to come back. I’d been a fool. To leave, in the first place. They needed me, and I let me pride…” he cursed softly down to his hands. “I try to visit every year, you know? I’d have sung her her song, if I could. Even if she couldn’t hear it. Just…” And he scrubbed his face. “I’d have given anything to let her know her Papá was trying to come home.” 

The song comes out, softly. The first few lines. They’re warbled. And a little out of practice. 

Coco had always been more of a dancer than a singer, and her voice isn’t spectacular or wonderful. But she doesn’t think of that when the words come out of her, from a memory she didn’t even know she’d had vaulted away. 

Of sepia light and warm, large hands cradling her chin, and her fat, small fingers tracing the nose and eyes and ears. She remembered him leaving. She remembered waiting for him to return. She remembered-

“Papá-” the word is choked. There’s a decades worth of grief trapped inside her. A decades worth of waiting outside houses. 

She fits in his arms too well, and when he gathers her up first, and her arms fall around him second, they don’t think much about anything else. 

“I waited,” she’d sniffle. 

“Lo siento…” he says. “I tried… Papá tried…” each little half phrase said between a peppering of kisses to her cheeks, her forehead, her nose. 

Keeping himself alive doesn’t matter as much anymore. He’s seen her. He can go. Happily, he can go. 

But she deftly refuses the marigold and sets her face into a scowl that would have made Imelda proud. She wipes off her face, smearing tears and clumping her hair to her face and neck. “We’re going to get that picture,” she snarls. “And we’re going to get that guitar. And we’re going to destroy Ernesto, tonight.” 

“Mija-”

“No arguing, Papá. This is my curse. I’ll deal with it how I want.” 

okay so i think i found the article op's (and me in my tags) talking about. being exposed to over 40 celsius (120 farenheit or so) for the whole day means youre sweating a LOT (the article says rashid- the farmer at the centre of the text- drinks around 17 liters a Day. humans usually only need 3, so i presume the rest is mostly used for sweat). so much so that the organizm reroutes water from other parts of itself to not die of heatstroke - salivary glands included, which means that 1. they have very little saliva in comparison to a healthy human being 2. what little their bodies DO produce is incredibly acidic, falling to ~5.5 ph from the ideal of 7ph. Teeth dissolve. Quickly. There's a mention of someone losing 8 teeth in two years

im not reading the whole article now (headache -_-), but later on the author of the article says about 30 million people (employed in agriculture) are at risk for extreme dental health problems. 30 million people at risk of not being able to eat solid food. 30 million people at risk of not being able to find work. being able to marry. being able to be part of their community. being able to speak clearly