#encantober

“Please, please, please. Whoever’s listening out there, give me a sign that I made the right choice.” Bruno sighed, resting his chin in his hand as he looked out the window in his room at the starry night sky. 

The youngest of the children he had stolen from the dreaded isle he almost got sent to years ago, a blond haired baby named Rory, lying fast asleep in his lap. Drooling on his ruana and gripping the fabric tightly in his little fist. 

Completely unaware that he was not where he should be. 

Completely unaware that he was cuddling up to his kidnapper. 

The familia was freaking out. 

All worried that at any moment officials from Auradon would be swarming the Encanto to take him and the children back to the isle. 

All worried that there would be an angry villain beating down their door when they awoke, having somehow escaped the isle to get their “property” back. Because it was evident that that was all the children were to their only known parents— Governor Ratcliffe for Rick, Rachel, and Rory & Judge Claude Frollo for the other four children— based on Bruno's vision and the state they'd all been in when they'd arrived back in the Encanto. Bruised, burned.  Hair matted. Teeth falling out. Skin bleached. 

The children all terrified and on guard. 

“Please. I'm not asking for much. I just… please tell me I made the right choice—”

Suddenly, a star signed bright in sky. Then it went dull. Then bright again. 

It repeated three times. 

“Mami, story? Please.” Little Julieta asked in her doorway, chewing on her bottom lip nervously as she tugged on her sleep braids. Eyes wide and pleading as she looked up at her in her little teal nightgown. “Bruno can’t sleep.”

Alma sighed, setting the candle down. “I’ll be right there, cariño.”

The five year old beamed at her, before bolting out of the room and to her room where undoubtedly her siblings were waiting to hear the news. 

“No running in the house, hija! You’re gonna hurt yourself!” Truth be told, Alma didn’t want to tell them a story. In fact, she wanted nothing more than to tell all three of her children to go to bed because it was late—so late that it was way past their bedtime—but the matriarch didn’t. Couldn’t. Not with the candle there to remind her that her husband, who’d been so excited to be a father, wasn’t there and that she was—that she was the only parent they had and they needed her to do all the things she and Pedro had planned.

Which meant that if the triplets wanted a bedtime story, they were going to get one. Even if Alma was beyond exhausted from trying to manage the town and three now superpowered children (one who could heal via food and needed supervision anytime she wanted to use her gift, one whose emotions controlled the weather, and one rat loving seer who saw things no child should) all by herself.

But nobody had to know that.

No, it would just be her and Casita’s little secret. 

One of the many secrets Alma would never tell her children.

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Alma would never tell the triplets how their father had written stories for them that they would now never get to read because they’d been left behind when their family had fled from the burning remains of what had been their home. 

Would never tell them how Pedro had run a shop that he had planned to hand down to them and their children and their children’s children, or that he’d had a brother named Benito who’d worked at the shop with him who had been so excited to be a tío that he’d fallen out the window and dropped a hammer on his foot when trying to make them their first toys. 

Alma would never tell Pepa how she’d gotten her red hair from Pedro’s mother, Rosa, and her temper from her own mother, Alba.

Would never tell Julieta how she could pass as her abuela Alba’s twin.

She’d never tell Bruno how he has his abuelos’ (Andre and Fernando) black curls and how he reminded her of his grandfathers, his grandmother Rosa, and both her brother, Raimi, and Pedro’s brother, Hernado. 

She’d never tell her babies of where they’d came from or how their father, Pedro, hadn’t been the only one to die so they could escape. 

Bruno, Pepa, and Julieta would never know what they’d lost. 

Who’d they lost. 

They wouldn’t know of their tía Alejandra, who’d turned into a giant red panda and grabbed her sword and screamed at Alma and Pedro and Bentio and Raimi to go and take the niños.

They wouldn’t know of their grandparents who’d fallen behind in the crowd or their tíos who’d run off with their primas who weren’t that far in age from them. 

The Madrigal Triplets would grow up not knowing what their mother had lost and the secrets of the family would die with her, if Alma had anything to say about it, and they would be safe. Even if Alma had to give smile and grit her teeth the whole way, and appease the village on her deathbed. 

They deserved that much.