Cocooned

Nightmares

Alma blinked, looking up at her bedroom ceiling. She turned to greet her husband as usual but found the bed empty.

"He must've gotten up early," Alma mumbled, shrugging off the strange, but not unusual thing. After she had gotten ready for the day she stepped outside her room, and stopped short. It was still dark outside. But the window in her room had shown daytime...Cautiously, she stepped forward. Casita hadn't even moved. Looking down, her breath hitched at the sight below.

The family was frozen in time. That horrible day. Before Casita fell. Before they left her. They were all frozen in place. Pedro wasn't there, and Alma herself wasn't either. Looking around, Alma could see the cracks within Casita, the ones she refused to acknowledge. She still hated herself for that.

Rushing down, she moved to each family member, looking at their scared or worried faces. They looked miserable. Turning, she faced Mirabel. She looked like she was about to cry, she was in the middle of yelling. Alma moved a bit closer, and suddenly everything resumed. Pepa's thunder cracked while the Casita continued to break.

"You're the one who doesn't care!" Mirabel screamed and Alma looked at her like she had been betrayed.

"No...no, I-I," Alma couldn't find her words when suddenly everything started falling again. It was happening again. Had everything been a lie, had it all been a dream? Had her Pedro never come back? Was she delusional?

She felt Luisa grab her and go running out the door, just. Like. Last time. Alma hit the ground, rolling slightly. She kept her eyes closed, whispering prayers that this wasn't happening. Her hands shook as she crossed herself and prayed to God that this wasn't real.

Once she opened her eyes, she realized she wasn't in the same place as before. There wasn't debris everywhere, no broken pieces of Casita. She didn't hear screaming and crying, no desperate attempts at trying to pull apart the rubble to look for her grandchildren.

Standing up, she looked around. A flower field. Full of daffodils, chrysanthemums and...roses. Red roses.

"What..." She touched them, they felt real. But...there were no flower fields like this in the Encanto. Isabela didn't even make flowers like this. And Alma, she would never fall asleep out here. And she swore she was on the ground, outside of a falling Casita.

Walking forward, she looked around more. No people, no houses, nothing. Just flowers for miles. She called, but got no answer. Alma walked for a moment more, becoming worried.

"Abuela," Alma turned at the voice, that was Luisa! Finally someone she know, now maybe she could get some an-

Alma stopped. It was Luisa but...something was wrong. For one, she wasn't 9 anymore, she was 19, like before. Secondly, she looked...off. Not uncanny or disfigured, just a little dirty.

"Lu...Luisa?" Alma asked carefully, deciding to not call her 'Lulu' like before. She stepped forward a single step. Luisa frowned deeply. It was unsettling to Alma. Sure she had seen the girl frown, but for some reason it felt...weird this time. Like Alma had committed the worst crime and Luisa was expressing disappointment.

"Why didn't you believe her?" Luisa asked simply, stepping forward towards Alma. The elderly woman's eyes widened.

"What?" Alma whispered. Luisa's form suddenly shifted for a moment and now it was Dolores.

"About the cracks. I know you saw them," Dolores said, stepping forward again.

"I...I don't know," Alma mumbled, stepping away from...whoever that was. "Camilo th-this isn't funny."

The form shifted to Camilo at his name. "I don't know isn't an answer, remember? So I'll ask again-why didn't you believe her?"

Alma remembers saying that. She hated it whenever someone said that they didn't know. So she said 'I don't know isn't an answer'. She had long since stopped now, but she flinched when 'Camilo' said it.