Incandescent Irises

Bruno with glasses, my beloved 👁️👄👁️💚

He grinned, despite himself, then considered his response.

What was he doing? Well. That was a loaded question. What he was doing, was hiding behind a chair in lesser-used corner of la sala with a stolen sewing kit and torn ruana. What he was doing was trying to mend the tear’s rough and fraying edges before either of his hermanas saw the damage and descended on him with questions that he didn’t want to answer. What he was doing, was catching his metaphorical breath after another terrible, bungled vision, one that sent him skulking into town to try to patch a holed fence before the chickens within escaped and scratched up the newly sprouted seedlings in the nearby field. Big surprise!... it hadn’t worked. Why did he think it would work? All he’d managed to do was get caught by the farmer just as the chickens made a break for it, likely solidifying in el Señor Cabrera’s mind that he was in fact cursing the chickens and his land—aaaand probably bringing down a famine upon the Encanto, just as an added bonus.

Cabrera had shouted ¡Oye! ¿Que estas haciendo?! and begun to stride toward toward the coop, and Bruno had stumbled backwards in alarm, snagging his ruana on the bent wire. Ooooof course.

Sweating, stumbling, feathers flying everywhere, he’d managed to flee without having to face the farmer…but only barely. He’d limped home, kicking mud from his sandals as he went and berating himself under his breath for even thinking he could somehow solve this. Had he not learned his lesson by now? Tonto. Certainly the rumor mill was already packaging up the story for Ma. Caray, why did he even leave his tower? 

He’d managed to sneak into Julieta’ s room and grab Gus’ sewing kit before hunkering down in the shadows of a place where he would least likely be found these days—which was pretty much anywhere except his room. 

There he sat, poking and prodding at the fabric with the vain hope that he might somehow mend the morning’s tonteria along with the ruana. Unlikely.

So…so… what was he doing? 

“I’m…sewing,” he said. 

Mirabel’s eyes widened with interest, and she proceeded to crawl without hesitation into his lap. Bruno quickly sat up straight and pulled the fabric up and out of her way, huffing out a puff of breath to chase her springy curls away from his mouth as she settled in expectantly. Once she had somewhat stilled, he lowered the ruana back down, splayed across their legs. 

Mirabel spread her small hands over the rough fabric, her fingers wandering curiously across the woven landscape until they reached the place where the ends frayed in an ugly cut. Her chubby finger poked at the couple messy stitches he’d managed to accomplish thus far. 

“Can I watch?” she asked, her now voice quieted in imitation of his. A chuckle escaped him at the belated request. 

“Sure, kid,” he whispered warmly. And he began again. 

It was a little harder, with her in his lap. Half the time, he couldn’t even see past her head, as she leaned as close to the fabric as she could manage to watch with crossed eyes as the needle weaved in and out, in and out. After a few passes, he let her take turns holding the needle and pulling the thread through, stretching her short arm as high as it would go to tighten the stitch. He kept having to jostle her with his knees to make her lean back so he wouldn’t accidentally prick either of them with the needle—an act that made her giggle with delight. 

She was loud. Someone would probably hear her and discover his makeshift hiding place—-but, but somehow, suddenly, he really didn’t seem to care. 

“There!” he pronounced, lifting the finished product into the air before them. “Good as new.” 

The stitching careened down the crooked tear like a dropped pile of sticks rolling down a hill, graceless and stumbling. He winced. At least it wasn’t torn anymore.

“Wow!” Mirabel exclaimed, clapping her hands together. “You fixed it, Tío!”

“Yeah,” he smiled. Huh. It felt good, to fix something, as haphazard as it was. Fixing wasn’t really in his wheelhouse, after all. Breaking was more his thing. Messing. Ruining. Eh...the change was nice. 

Or–or maybe it just felt good to have someone else to share in the mending with. Could be.

“Will you teach me?” she asked, breaking him from his thoughts. She twisted in his lap to look up at him, through round rims and sweet brown eyes. 

He opened his mouth to respond, but at that moment, he heard Casita creak open the front door from across the patio. Casita’s doors didn’t normally creak. A warning. 

“Uh,” he stammered, suddenly rising to his knees, clumsily lifting Mirabel back to her feet as he went. He kept his hands around her small shoulders, pathetically half-hiding behind her as he looked desperately around for his next hiding spot. “Uh, yeah, kid. Yeah. I’d love to. Not right now, though. S-soon…”

“Soon?” she prompted, spinning in place to follow him as he inched his way toward the shadows of the stairwell. 

“Y-yeah. Soon. Maybe after your birthday, huh? After your…your ceremony.” 

“Okay,” she replied politely, but the disappointment was evident in her voice. He paused, escape cut short, and looked down at her. She was still staring at the fresh stitches in his ruana. 

You fixed it, she’d said. 

You fixed it, he thought.

In hindsight, perhaps it was not the best decision, to give an almost-five-year-old a sharp sewing implement. Maybe she was too young to wield the needle and thread, maybe she’d prick her finger, or poke her eye, or hurt herself in any number of (un)foreseeable ways…all things that occasionally haunted him in the weeks that came, when he no longer had the choice to take it back, or to make good on his promise to teach her to sew, for that matter. 

But…as time passed along, within and without the walls of Casita, his worries about the issue gradually faded, almost without his notice. If she did prick her finger, it didn’t seem to deter her. If her padres took issue with the sudden appearance of messy stitches on her neat little dresses, they didn’t voice them. 

On occasion, in years to come, he’d hear a chair scrape out from the table in the kitchen beyond. Eye to the crack in the wall, he’d see her sitting there, feet propped up on a yellow chair, tongue out the side of her mouth, as she embroidered this or mended that. 

“Good as new,” she sometimes muttered, as she finished.

Spanish translations:

Tonto - dummy

tonteria - idiocy

Caray - sheez! An exclamation