Not The Only Ones

Chapter 3 - Who Are You?

"It's hottttt." Camilo droned trailing behind the others. Even though they had left early in the morning, the sun was high in the sky now and with that came the Summer heat.

"Maybe we should take a break for a little while?" Mirabel asked. She was sitting on Luisa's shoulders already and was debating cutting her hair off with the bread knife she brought with them to go with their food. "We haven't found anything yet, but we've made a lot of progress on the overall area we've searched. We deserve it??".

Luisa reached above and brought her sister down setting her on rock by a large tree. She adjusted her glasses for her. "We're taking a break." she decided firmly turning to the other two. "Lets eat."

Bruno and Camilo sat with them without a word of argument. They ate the food that Julieta packed for them and laid out one of Mateo's maps. Despite seeming like a jungle man who prefers to spend his time isolated from everyone in the forest, he was actually very helpful. He would spend most of his time learning the terrain surrounding the Encanto. Then came mapping it and teaching it to the town. New streams, fishing spots, potential landslide prone areas that are best to be avoided, identifiable landmarks if one were to get lost, and even just safe trails for the explorers of the village. It was no wonder Isa who had a new love for being wild fell for him quickly. With some help from Antonio of course who occasionally came with him to help translate things from the wildlife.

"Well, we've checked here, here, here, there, aaaaaaand...here." Tio Bruno said marking everything on the map as he spoke. They originally started at the river in the same location he saw the person standing at but there were zero signs of anyone. Which made sense. It'd been 60 years at that point after all. Camilo stood up and stretched as always . He had terrible posture and would often times get forcibly corrected by the family. Now that he had started standing straighter, his usual slouched posture was beginning to hurt if he maintained it for too long. "My backs killing me, we've searched miles and miles along the river and towards the Encanto and we still haven't found anything." He began taking his sarape off and shoved it into his bag. He then started rolling his sleeves up and bent over to cuff his pants. "Not only that, but its been ages since anyone was last seen here and even when you tried to look into the future to see if you could get anymore clues... you saw nothing." He sighed, resting his hands on his hips and looking down at his Tio. "So what now? Im sure the answer is somewhere but Im not exactly the brains here. Whats the next move?" .

Mirabel and Luisa looked over towards their uncle as well. He just sat with his eyes closed trying to come up with something. Luisa got up stretched as well and changed her level. She hadnt changed much in the last few years, her hair got longer but she always cut it shorter to keep it out of the way for work. In this level she was much leaner now, still extremely muscular, but much smaller. She preferred changing her body type to match her tasks nowadays. She could change her size to be as strong as the men in town while helping them, so that way the work load was even and she felt like she was a member of a team versus being THE Luisa Madrigal. Mover of churches, mountain crumbler, and donkey rounder.

She adjusted her clothing as well. Mirabel had sewn adjustable clothing for her so as she changed her body she would just have to rewrap her skirt and tighten her blouse at the sleeves and waist. It was wonderful to see her droop her shoulders down and sigh almost as if a weight (literally and figuratively) had been lifted. "Should we just head back in a couple hours? I dont think we'll find anything else out here but we can at least check it off the list of things we've done. Maybe we'd be better off asking the older members of the town if they saw anything like Abuela did." she said cleaning up her mess and dusting her hands.

The rest of them did the same. Tio Bruno finally spoke "Y-yeah I think thats for the best. Thank you for coming with me. Im sorry I couldn't see more to give a definite answer." He rubbed the back of his neck looking down. He stopped and imagined little Manny staring up at him. He straightened his back and looked back up. "But Luisa's right. We should ask around t-town. Maybe they know something. We'll finish looking around for a bit and then head home." Mirabel looked at her uncle and smiled "Sounds good Tio. Lets go."