Heyo! This chapter is in your P.O.V. and nothing heated happens. Enjoy!
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“Oh.” Tío Bruno looks down, giving his head a slight shake and resting the bucket against his hip. “Oh, no I-I couldn’t. I mean, how would the family react, y’know?” He shrugs, chuckling down at the ground. He sets the bucket down on a table and flops back down on the chair.
“But, I found this vision.” I tell him, finding a pile of the vision pieces next to rats using a human sized hairbrush.
“Yeah. That. Abuela saw it the night you got your gift and flipped out. That’s when I decided to leave.”
“But you’ve been here the whole time.” Antonio looks up at him and Bruno lifts him, placing him down on his lap. “How do you keep yourself entertained? It’s so boring in here.” He whines softly, looking around at the plain room.
“Well.” A smile comes to tío’s face as he stands, lifting Antonio once again and setting him down in the chair softly. “Depends on what kind of TV you guys like.” He takes two rats and puts them on a stand, fitting their heads into cardboard cutouts. “Sports.” He flips that cutout down, revealing another. “Game shows!” He says excitedly, flipping it down. “Telenovelas.” One rat scampers away and another takes its place. Bruno leans up against the table they’re on, sighing wishfully. “Their love could never be.”
“I don’t get it.” Antonio slouches down in the chair.
“Oh, well, you see, she’s his aunt but she has amnesia so she doesn’t remember she’s his aunt, so it’s a very forbidden kind of--”
“I love that one!” Dolores bursts through the dining room ‘wall’, effectively scaring the shit out of me.
“Jesus, Dolores!” I shout and she shushes me.
“Don’t wake up the family.” She turns to Bruno. “I brought you dinner.” She smiles, setting the plate down on his placemat.
“You knew he was here?” I gape.
“Oh, yeah.” She shrugs. “We hang all the time. I bring him food, we watch rat telenovelas.” I turn to Bruno and he smiles sheepishly.
“Surprise.” He does little jazz hands.
“Why didn’t you tell anyone?” I look at Dolores with genuine hurt.
“Well, he asked me not to. He seemed really upset, so I didn’t question it.” She shrugs, taking a bite of an arepa.
“A member of our family and our community has been missing for ten years and all you’ve been doing is feeding him? Dolores!” I scold. “We missed him so much and you’ve just been hiding him?”
“No one misses me.” Bruno sighs. “I said I hear everything in this house through these walls. Nobody here misses me.”
“We miss you.” I turn my attention to him. “Mirabel, Camlio and I have missed you so much. You were the best tío a kid could ask for.” I tell him softly and his eyes well up. He clears his throat and claps his hands together, quickly blinking back his tears.
“You guys should probably go now. I don’t have a good reason but if I did, you’d be like, ‘that’s a good reason, we should go.’” He chuckles lightly.
“But what about the vision?” I ask frantically, quickly assembling it.
“No one was ever supposed to see that. Not even your Abuela.” He panics, quickly snatching it away from me.
“But what does it mean?” I move to take it back from him. He tries to hold it above his head to keep it away from me but he’s pretty short and I take it immediately.
“Man, you got taller in the last ten years.” He pouts. “Look, if I knew, I would tell you but I don’t so goodnight.” He picks Antonio up and tries to shove us out of the painting next to his ‘table.’
“Alright. Thanks, I guess.” I shrug. He pushes us out and before leaving, he looks at us solemnly.
“I’m sorry, kids. I wish I coulda helped more.” He goes back into the painting and I can hear him chatting softly with Dolores.
“Yeah.” I sigh softly. Wait. Mirabel wouldn’t take no for an answer. I shouldn’t either. “Yeah!” I burst back through the painting and Antonio immediately starts cuddling with Bruno’s rats again. “You wish you could’ve helped more, so do it! Have another vision, let me know what I need to do to fix that one!” Bruno yelps in surprise.
“Oh, no. No, no, no. I don’t do visions anymore.” He crosses his hands in front of himself, backing away from me as I continue to get closer to him.
“You need to, I need to fix this.”
“Yeesh.” Dolores says from across the room and we both look over to her. She’s put the vision together on Bruno’s table. “Now you really gotta have another vision. (Y/N), look at this.” I walk over and she’s tilting it from side to side. For a moment, I see the vision I have been since I found it but when she shifts it, the house is normal without any cracks.
“What?” I ask softly. Bruno walks over to us, taking the vision apart again and hiding them in his pockets.
“If I did still have visions, which I don’t, (Y/N) wrecked my vision cave. I can’t have visions without open spaces.” He shakes his head.
“You can use my room.” Antonio pipes up and our attentions snap to him. He’s in a big cuddle puddle with the rats, brushing them out and snuggling them. We beg and prod Bruno a bit more until he gives in and gathers our small group in Antonio’s room. I’m sitting criss-cross applesauce on the floor while Bruno pours a circle of sand around us. He sits down across from me and takes a deep breath, readying himself. Soon, panic crosses his face.
“What if I show you something worse?” He asks, pushing a few loitering animals out of the circle. “If I see something that you don’t like, you’re gonna be all, ‘Bruno makes bad things happen. Oh, he’s creepy and his vision killed my goldfish.’”
“No, I won’t. Your visions aren’t your fault. I just need to know what happens.” I try to comfort him.
“You can do this.” Antonio carefully pads over to us and hands Bruno his stuffed tiger. “For the nerves.” He leans onto his jaguar and I envy him. That five year old has more gender than I do.
“I can do this. I can do this, I can do this, I can do this.” He shakes his hands out and takes a small handful of salt out of his ruana and throws it over his shoulder. He lights a match and uses it to like the biggest of five piles of dry leaves between us. He takes a stick and lights the other four, setting it down quickly.
The room darkens and a moderate wind rustles my hair. Bruno cracks his knuckles and takes another deep breath, extending his hands out to me as his eyes glow a radiant green. “You might wanna hang on.” As soon as I take his hands, the sand around us traps us in a dome as wild wind blows my hair and clothes all over the place. Some of the sand turns the same green as his eyes, forming grainy pictures. My life events appear in the sand and I swallow thickly. My family fighting, my uncle in my room, Mirabel’s ceremony, our joint birthday parties. Some new images appear and I focus more heavily on them.
Another party. We share a bottle of alcohol. It cuts harshly to the next morning where I sit up woozily, looking a bit different but I can’t make out exactly what it is that’s changed about me. It goes back to the picture from the vision and Bruno groans. “It’s just the same thing. I gotta stop!”
“No, please! I have to know which way the vision goes!” I plead.
“You’re looking at the same thing I am. If there was something else…” He trails off and I look around, trying to find anything that could help.
“There! Over there!” I point to a glowing yellow butterfly in the sand and he stands, leading us over to it.
“Butterfly! Follow the butterfly!” He shouts excitedly. As we get closer, it glows brighter and starts fluttering through the air. Eventually, it lands on the back of my hand in its picture. Sand me smiles at it and places a small and delicate kiss on the back of one of its wings. “It’s all outta order!” Bruno groans and the image switches. The candle shows up in place of the butterfly and it blows a bright, vibrant yellow. “It’s the candle. The candle’s getting brighter! I think you’re gonna help the candle!”
“How?” I ask and he moves closer to it.
“Uh, there’s someone with you. And you… you fight them! There’s fireworks and you fight them!”
“What?”
“Wait, no, no. Is that a hug?”
“Am I fighting or hugging?”
“Um… A kiss! It’s a kiss! To make the candle bright, you have to kiss them when fireworks go off!”
“Kiss who?” I shout to him over the wind, staring at the image intently as it gets clearer.
“Oh… almost there.”
“Who is it?”
“Almost there. Oh, oh. I got it!” First, it’s Mirabel. Then it switches to Camilo. “No… no I don’t?” Bruno says confusedly as the image keeps switching between Mirabel and Camilo. Soon, the sand dome falls and he’s holding a glowing green tablet. He hands it to me and I look it over. When I tilt it, the image switches between my friends just like it did with the cracks on the old vision.
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Word Count: 1,632
Thanks so much for reading, I hope you enjoyed! Stay safe, my dudes <3
Published: (2/6/22) (Month/Day/Year)
Final Word Count: 1,660