#la traes

Here's the next chapter!

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“She doesn’t really like that guy anyway,” Bruno was saying. Oh. Alma peaked past the doorway edge, curiosity raising her brow.  Bruno was leaning on the kitchen counter across from Julieta, who was chopping something briskly.

“We know this,” he continued, face resting in his hand. He scratched absently at the back of his leg with one sandaled foot as he gestured loftily with the other arm. “She, she, she likes his hair. Hair is not a personality trait.”

Julieta snorted, amused. “Yes, Brunito. We both know he’s—”

“—a loser,” Bruno finished.

“¡Calla! ...he's not a good match—” [Hush!]

“—a bum.”

“—for Pepa—”

“—a rapscallion!”

“—ay, Bruno!” Julieta exclaimed, brandishing her knife at him in mock threat as he leaned obnoxiously far across the counter to snag a slice of radish from her growing pile. “All that might be true...but it is still not up to us to decide for her, okay?”

Bruno crunched loudly on his prize. “Why not?” he shrugged. “I’m her brother. W-who knows her better than us? Mm, plus, there's no way Mamá is ever going to let you guys move out of Casita. Too many rooms. So, that means I’m gonna have to live with whatever you two decide to drag home at the end of the day. That's gotta count for something.”

Julieta rolled her eyes. Bruno finished the last of his radish slice, then pointed alarmingly at the window behind Julieta, only to snag another piece while her back was briefly turned. 

She huffed at him, and he grinned, “It just seems like I should have a say.” 

Julieta just scowled, pushing a couple whole radishes in his direction. Bruno hummed happily. 

“Having a say is different than getting in the middle of it, Arenoso.”

“Ay, I didn’t do anything, really,” he said, mouth full as he once again leaned heavily on his elbows. “I just…confirmed some existing biases. Allowed for a little misdirection, yaknow? I didn’t say it was a vision, technically. So, if she assumes…”

Julieta shook her head at the cutting board, raising her eyebrows knowingly. “Pepa is not going to like it when she finds out,” she sang.

“Hm. If she finds out.” Bruno tipped a half-eaten radish toward his sister. “Look who's predicting the future now?”

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Walk in the Rain

More art for La Traes written by @usedtobeguest123​ - this time for chapter six.

I already did art for other chapters of this story:

Chapter one: Picnic scene

Chapter three: Reading poems in a mango tree

The picture above is actually just a detail of the full image which is under the cut below. I think I like the detail more than the full image, the messed up proportions of the umbrella are even more glaringly obvious there😬 but I am still satisfied with the overall result. And I will be more careful with umbrellas in the future 🙂

La ere, la traes, pilla pilla, la mancha, la pinta, o como sea que lo llamen en tu país. Este juego es muy popular entre pequeños, pero se ha vuelto un deporte profesional y es uno de los mejor remunerados.

I went back and finished up a half-written chapter I've had floating around for the last year. I'm planning to post it at some point today or tomorrow, if anyone else is still reading it! It features this poem by Rafael Pombo, which I love.

El Buho y El Palomo por Rafael Pombo Érase un búho, dechado de egoísmo el más perfecto, de todo siempre esquivado, cual si diera resfriado su agrio, antipático aspecto. “¿Por qué me aborrecerán?” Dijo irritado y confuso a un palomito galán. —"Por culpa tuya", él repuso: “Ama, oh, búho y te amarán”.

Mirabel felt sudden trepidation flutter in her chest. It was this again…that same unspoken something that she kept catching when he thought she wasn't looking, that mysterious weight that he kept trying to keep hidden. She looked up at her Tío, who was now pulling anxiously at his collar, and still avoiding her eyes.

She took a fortifying breath.

“Hey.”

Mirabel tipped her head down, waving out her hand toward him to catch his gaze with her own. When he finally looked up at her, she let her arm drop.

“Whatever it is, it’s okay, really. You can tell me…or you can not,” she shrugged, willing more certainty into those words than she felt. “I trust you, Tío.”

His mouth tightened and his face grew grave. He nodded.

“I know you do.”

He turned then and shuffled toward his desk, kneeling to pull something from a drawer. Mirabel craned her neck to try to peek around him, though in her heart she already knew what it was.

He took a shaky breath, then stood and slowly turned back around. Over his cupped hands was draped a cloth, within which was cradled a hundred tiny shards of emerald green glass. Mirabel breathed out a shaky oh, feeling a prickle of apprehension and anticipation make its way through her arms.

“I had a vision of you, months ago. You, heh, you probably remember.” He gradually walked toward her again. “I’m sorry I took so long to…to…um. Anyway, it seems like I can’t, um, I can’t stop having this vision, and I don’t know why. The first one, that day in the forest, the glass broke, so I thought, okay, maybe I need to find the pieces and that will help, but….but i-it didn’t.”

He sat down on the edge of the low table, holding the glass close in his lap and staring at it despondently.

“All the sand everywhere….” she whispered, guilt pooling as she connected the dots. “All your vision dreams. Tío, was it because of this?”

He glanced up at her sadly, then looked away. He adjusted his hold on the bundle, freeing one of his hands to pick up a larger splinter front the pile. He turned it carefully in the light, then held it out to her.

“There’s no fixing this one,” he sighed, “so I-I think you’re just going to have to take my word for it. This vision, it’s…. uh, it’s complicated.”

“Like, bad complicated? Or…”

Mirabel stared at the small shard now resting in her palm, no longer than five centimeters and no thicker than her little finger. Incomprehensible shapes shifted in the glass, as unknown as her future now.

But it didn’t have to be—not with Tío Bruno.

Can you believe I could not find a gif of the kids playing with sparklers in Encanto? Ah well. I can't believe I finished a chapter. To whomever may read it, enjoy!

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“Were you going to eat Chico?” Andrés asked.

“W-what?”

Bruno choked on air, his spiral of guilt coming to a screeching halt. Andrés stared up at him curiously. 

“It's just…I’ve heard that you feast on the dreams of children who don’t listen to their parents, and you feed the leftovers to your rats. But Chico’s pretty good, for a baby, except when he wanders off. But I thought, maybe if you got really hungry…”

He shrugged, and his words trailed off as he gave Bruno another appraising look. Bruno gaped at him.

“You didn’t look like you were going to eat him.”

“I-I wasn’t!”

“Oh. Okay, that’s good.” 

Bruno nodded, trying to school the incredulity from his face. Ay, how bad had the rumors gotten? The bringer of bad luck? Yeah, he’d been that. A harbinger of evil? Sure, occasionally. Disappointing failure? His greatest role. But an eater of children? 

Well. That was a new one. 

“You seem nice, actually,” Andrés continued, apparently sufficiently assured by Bruno’s answer that he was not about to be consumed. “And Pa says el idiota se lo cree, or something like that. Plus, Chico likes you.”  [the fool believes it]

Bruno looked down at the baby, who’d sat down at his feet to again play with the tassels of his ruana. Despite it all, he huffed a small laugh. 

“I like him, too,” Bruno muttered.

“Do you have magic, too? Like the other Madrigals?” Andrés asked.

“Oh. Um, yes.”

“Can you show me?”

“I..uh, I don’t think that’s a good idea, kid.”

“Why?”

“I..uh…I don't…”

“Does your magic eat people?”

“No.”

“Oh. Okay.”

An uneasy silence fell between them. Bruno glanced at the boy, who watched his brother with a disappointed expression on his face. 

“I do have rats, though,” Bruno offered quietly. 

Andrés looked up, his face now bright and eager. “You do?”

“Yeah. Here, uh,” he reached through the collar of his ruana and found the soft, round body in his shirt pocket. “This is Manolo. S-say hi, Manolo.”

Andrés squealed with delight and drew closer to Bruno’s lowered hand, while Chico pulled insistently at the edge of his ruana, demanding wordlessly to be included. Bruno looked around, considering for a moment what the adults in the square to their left might think. Then he looked again at Andrés, who was grinning ear to ear at the small rat squeaking in his hand. 

Bruno smiled. He let himself fall into a seat on the ground beside them. 

Bruno stepped his bare feet down onto the wood of his bedroom floor. He stood from his bed and padded to the center of the room. The air was thick with salt and brine, filling his nose with the sharp, wet scent. He could taste the saltiness on his tongue. The tide pushed in across the floorboards, the chilling foam washing over his bare feet, thinning as it went until it was just a film across the wood behind him. As the water pulled back, it carried grains of wood with it like sand, and Bruno's heels sank slowly into the floor, leaving him standing just a little deeper than he'd begun.  He'd never been to the beach. He'd read about it, but being here was different. The saltiness tasted different than salt tossed into the air, than the rush of dry sand. It all felt thicker, heavier. He used to daydream as a child of visiting the beach, and here he was. How funny that all he had to do this whole time was step out of bed.  Ahead of him Mirabel and Antonio splashed and played in the wake, seagulls dipping down to greet them with harsh calls. Deeper in, Luisa and Camilo swam amidst the waves. Antonio was almost as tall as Mirabel. When had he gotten so tall? ... It was a sunset. Or was it a sunrise? Wait--hadn't it just been night, hadn't he just been in bed? As the last of the orange sun slipped below the line of water, a flash of green raced out like a gunshot, pulsing toward him faster than the tide. WOOSH. He squeezed his eyes shut as it pushed past. Everything tasted green, salt and brine.

For @encantober-official Day 1, I took inspiration from a vision-dream that Bruno has in chapter 13 of my fic La Traes. His reimagined bedroom is from my other fic Bruno from Before; you can find its description below the cut!