#delabel

Isamira, obligated Hanahaki

⚠️tw MAJOR CHARACTER DEATH, Hanahaki, ISAMIRA,⚠️

Isabella kept finding flowers. Ones she knew weren’t from Mariano- and after a long day of interrogations, no one in the village.

Camellias. Pinks and reds. Only the blossoms and sometimes covered in dark red stains.

Perfection, longing, desire, love. But from who!? And why were there no stems, why were there red splotches!? What is going on!?

Hidden away as she kept searching, after all, Abuela needs perfect. The flowers weren’t perfect. But they were hers.

Day in and day out, between pestering Dolores or trying to keep the act for Abuela she combed through what must have been the entire town.

Eventually they stopped showing up. Which was good. After all, she had more important things to attend to. Antonio’s gift ceremony and her own proposal and wedding were coming up. Everything had to be perfect.

But a part of her wanted to know, to know so badly who these were from.

“What else can I do?” She created a cactus, Mirabel was there and they were fighting and she created something… new.

She doesn’t notice how Mirabel stares down, how her sisters hands cover her mouth until she sees the other running for the door, coughing, no hacking something up.

“Mirabel?! Mirabel? What’s wrong!” She calls as she chases her sister down, new plants growing around to help her catch the younger.

She throws down a bed of flowers when Mirabel trips and lands on the pile with her. “Mirabel?”

“G-go! Go aw-away!” Mirabel shouts in between coughs and Isabella is pushed out of the way as Dolores runs over, Alma not far behind.

“Mirabel!” Alma shouts, a stern tone. Said girl was hunched over, still coughing and grasping at her neck. Dolores knelt beside her, whispering.

“Mirabel!” Abuela shout again, her voice tinged with anger. “MIRABEL, NOW.” The woman bellowed.

“Knock it off! Don’t you see she’s sick? She’s hurt! And you want to scold her? Right now?” Dolores snaps at the elder woman.

“Dolores- go over to you mother right-!”

“NO! MY PRIMA IS DYING! AND SHE HAS BEEN BUT YOU ALL HAVE BEEN TOO BLIND TO SEE IT.” Dolores shouts over the matriarch. The woman and the bystanders all step back. “I am not, I will not, in what could very well be my cousins last moments let her be scolded by a hag who’s stuck in the past!” Pepa let’s put a small ‘Dolores?’ As clouds begin to gather.

“It- it’s okay, Dee.” Mirabel says once the flowers are out. Isabella stares at the camellias she watched the other cough out, blood trailing from her lips. “They… they didn’t know.”

“How many Mirabel. How many flowers this time.” Dolores asked, quick to change the subject.

“Those are… you said you didn’t… Mirabel?”

“Two…”

Everyone looked around as the house started breaking, the candle flickering.

“CASITA GET ME UP THERE.”

“Mirabel!”

Camilo and Isabella started chasing after, trying to get to the candle.

Casita starts pushing the rest of them out once the doors go out as Mirabel kept climbing.

As she’s reaching for the candle she starts coughing again.

“Mirabel! MIRABEL!”

Casita covers her.

—————-

Dolores yawned as she went to her door. ‘Just to the kitchen and back. Everyone is asleep. No noise.’ She opened the door, and immediately heard coughing. “What?” Distractedly, she went to the sound and saw Mirabel coughing out a flower. One of the camellias she saw Isabella hiding in her room. “Mirabel?”

The younger girl jumped and turned around, casita trying to help her hide the flowers. “Uh, oh, hola Delores. W-what’s up?”

“You have Hanahaki. For Isabella.”

“You can’t tell anyone! Please! Please Delores.”

——————————-

Mirabel disappears right after the miracle burns out, leaving a flower and a half in her place.

“We need to find her!”

-

She brought Bruno home. Her baby cousin. The town helps rebuild the house. And Delores has kept track of the petals.

Mirabel takes the handle, and Casita returns. Delores offers up a small smile and they all take a picture.

She hears the petals gathering.

Mirabel finally goes over to Isabella. A final full flower. “Here Isa…”

“Huh, wait Mirabel why are you giving me this?”

“I love you Isa…”

“Mira? You’re really pale, MOM! Help!”

“Even if you hate me.”

“MOM!”

Delores wants to scream. She wants to cry. Mirabel’s heart stops, the flowers keeping her heart from beating. And at the same moment a flower starts to grow in Isabella’s. She falls to her knees and her shoulders shake as she finally reaches the stage to cough up her own flower too.

She lets out a shaky laugh as she cradled the first flower to come up, another on its way.

A white camellia. Remembrance.

Ame Strong “Tout est bleu” ( François Kevorkian remix) (Delabel 1997)