It was shortly after waking up that Héctor realised he couldn't see. He blinked. Waved a hand in front of his face. Tapped up his nose with his fingertips and winced when he realised his eyelids were, indeed, open. The sun was warm on his skin, so he knew it was light, and he could hear muffled voices carried on the wind from the nearby plaza. Overhead, the tree he was sleeping beneath rattled its branches in the breeze.

"Zalli? Are you awake?" he asked in a low whisper, knowing the answer. There was a soft 'peu' sound in response, his dæmon fluttering her wings as she scrabbled on the ground near her. "We're blind, huh?"

"Yes it would appear so." Zalli hopped onto his chest, her beak lightly touching the curve of his cheek. He put his hand over her, holding her close to his heart, and she nestled against him. Soft down fluffed up beneath his fingertips, while the long strong flight feathers on her wings dug into his palm. He could feel her heartbeat and the tiny fluttering of her breathing. It had only been a few days since she had settled into her little songbird form, and he could almost feel the disappointment radiating off her feathers. "No flying for me, I guess…"

"I guess not. I'm sorry, Zalli." He bent his head, kissed the soft feathers of her brow, closed his sightless eyes. Totally secure in his grip, she fluttered her wings and pushed the point of her beak into his chest. "Any clue why we can't see?"

"Nope. What do we do now?"

"I guess we get help." He sat up, reached out with the hand not covering her, and scrambling unsteadily to his feet. For a moment he wondered how his eyes looked, and pulled his singlet up in a makeshift blindfold. "Hey, Zal, where would we get help?"

She scoffed and whistled again, a slurred string of notes. "Ernesto would help. He's a good friend."

"Sure, but would his parents?"

The answer, they both knew, was no. Ernesto de la Cruz's parents did not approve of the lanky street rat who, in their own mind, was corrupting their son. They thought he was the reason Ernesto loved music so, that he had decided against working on their farm. As though the music had not always lived in Ernesto's heart, as though he was not the one who had introduced Héctor to the guitar.

With a huff, Héctor pushed out his lower lip, then froze, his cheeks warming with a flush and his heart pounding hard against his ribs. Feeling the change, Zalli rubbed her cheek against his thumb. "Really, Héctor? You can't be serious. Let's go to Ernesto's, he can hide us out in his closet until he can contact a doctor. We'll be safe there."

"She'll help, I know she will." A dopey smile spread over his face, as it always did when Imelda Rivera came up. They had only had one date, an evening at the Plaza a few weeks prior, but he was utterly captivated by her.

"We haven't even had the guts to talk to her since our date," Zalli pointed out, much to Héctor's chagrin. "Why do you think she'd help if you show up on her doorstep? Blind, no less?"

"Because," he said, knowing that was not an answer at all. "Come! Off we go!"

He started forward, moving confidently, then tripped over something—considering his sleeping place beneath a tree in the park, a root seemed most likely—and crashed face first into the ground. There was a sharp spike of pain and the taste of blood on his tongue. Zalli soared out of his hand, perching uncertainly on his head, and pecked at his hair. "Are you okay? Héctor?"

"Yep. Just peachy." He rolled over, sightless eyes squeezed shut with pain, and spat on the grass. The blood taste was huge and coppery, coating his tongue, and he grimaced as the tip probed the empty socket in the front of his mouth. "Ouch."

"We can't go to Imelda's now," Zalli said, a little panicked. "Covered in blood? What will they think?"

"I'm sure Pepita will still like you." A swipe at his mouth, a palmful of warm liquid shaken onto the grass, a frustrated growl. "Perfect, just great." He paused for a second, then said, "I'm still going to the Rivera hacienda."

Zalli, annoyed, whistled low in the back of her throat and dug her claws into his shoulder when he sat up for the second time that morning. This time he was a lot more cautious in his first steps, sliding his foot along the uneven ground and picking it up over the offending root. He almost tripped over the small retaining wall of the park, but caught himself before he overbalanced.

"Zalli, could you scout ahead a ways? Whistle out a path?"

"I'm not risking my wings for you. I may be blind, but I'm not a bat." She preened herself, making her annoyance clear. The pissed off flicking of her flight feathers against his cheek was apparently hilarious, because he started to laugh despite the pain in his mouth.

"Fine, slow and steady we go."

And they were indeed slow. The cobbled streets of Santa Cecilia were uneven and, in some areas where kids had pried them up for ammunition, missing significant patches of stones. Héctor navigated these with increasing confidence. If anyone had asked him even a week prior, he would have claimed to know these streets like the back of his hand, that every shortcut, long way, scar and patch were as familiar as the branching vessels in the inner aspect of his wrist. He would, clearly, be full of it. Without his sight to guide him, he had no clue where he was. Drawing a sketchy map in his mind, he positioned the park and the Rivera hacienda with a variety of possible routes between them.

The easiest was down main street and then around the plaza. Around ten minutes on a normal day. Actually walking that path took him the better path of several hours, keeping his head down and flinching away from the occasional murmur of gossip around him, Zalli quailing against his neck. The words 'blood' and 'urchin' and 'deserved' came up more than once.

He finally got there. At least, he was about 95 percent sure of it. There was the whirring of sewing machines coming from somewhere nearby. Or the rough buzzing of angry hornets. It was sometimes hard to differentiate. He tapped his way up to the door the sound was coming from, hoping it was the workshop and not the front of house.

"What do you think, Malli?" came a little female voice, soft and curious.

"I don't know, Malma. Some kind of blood-soaked boy on our doorstep," replied a male voice, this one warm with amusement. Whoever they were, they seemed to be positioned well above eye level, looking down at him.

Héctor directed his most charming smile up towards them, hoping the blood didn't detract from the effect. "Good…day, fine friends. I was wondering, is this the Rivera hacienda? Is Imelda in?"

"I think it's the boy from the plaza," said the chittering voice, the one belonging to Malma. She was positioned on the left, it appeared, and Héctor blindly oscillated between them.

"I think you're right," said Malli.

It took a second more, where the two of them started to giggle together, before Héctor put the pieces together. The night in the plaza, being stopped by the two older boys with an otter and ferret respectively. "Oh! You're Imelda's brother's dæmons!"

"Smarter than he looks," said Malli. "Can we ask what your business is with our sister?"

Héctor flushed, glad the tank-top blindfold would mostly obscure this from the two dæmons, and said, "I was hoping she could help me…"

A long pause. It was utterly silent, if they were conversing at all it wasn't verbally. He kept his smile trained up at them anyway, increasingly aware of the gap the longer the quiet reigned. Long after he was certain that they had left at some stage and he was just smiling up at the roof like an idiot.

He was pleasantly surprised when Malli said, "Alright, wait here." The pitter patter of tiny feet, scratching claws on wood, and then a whoosh as a door swung open and he was being pulled inside and into a conversation between the same voice.

"Call the doctor."

"On it. Get him into the lounge."

"Alright." Then, apparently directed at him, "Are you okay? What happened?"

Slightly overwhelmed, Héctor shrugged even as he was guided into a cool room and then into a soft chair. "I'm not sure. You're Imelda's brother, right? The twin…s?"

A soft laugh, then a cold damp cloth pressed into his hand. "Clean yourself up, I'll go get Imelda."

"Yes. I can do that." When the brother, whose name Héctor had been trying to ask and failing, left the room, he lifted the cloth and scrubbed it over his cheeks and chin. Hopefully that would get the worst of the blood off. He really had no way of checking.

Then there was a quick tapping of running footsteps and a crash as the door flew open again.

"Oh, dios mío, Héctor!" Hearing Imelda's voice sent a deep warm jolt through Héctor's stomach, and he smiled dopily in the general direction it had come from. This was met with a horrified gasp. "Your tooth!"

"Ay, it's not too bad." He fought the urge to cover his mouth, hoping that the blood was all gone. There was a soft sound as she approached and then her hands on his cheeks. They were warm, gentle, and his heart fluttered. On his shoulder, Zalli whistled and turned her head back and forth. Pepita leapt onto the back of the seat, the dip of her weight and whisper of her claws the only sign she was in the room. He caught Imelda's wrists before she could lift up his blindfold, treasuring the feeling of her smooth skin beneath his fingertips. "Don't do that, Imelda."

"Don't tell me what to do," she said back, immediately, and though her tone was sharp her hands were gentle when they pulled free and raised the cloth. He winced, squeezing his eyes shut tight. Only able to imagine the horror of how they must look. There was a brief silence and then she asked, "Are you blind, Héctor?"

"Yes. I don't know what happened. I woke up and couldn't see." He opened his eyes slowly, hesitatingly, not wanting her to react with horror as she had before. Instead of gasps or screams, there was a huff of breath against his face and one hand lifting from his cheek. "I don't look too bad I hope."

"Not at all." He grinned, relieved, then flushed when her hand was replaced by a gentle kiss on his cheek. "A tooth is easily fixed. And your eyes look fine." There was a further moment of silence where her hands dropped away from his face and he had to stop himself from reaching out for her. "Why did you never call around? After our date? I thought you liked me."

"I do." He chewed on his lips, eyes darting uselessly back and forth.

"He was too chicken," Pepita said coolly from behind him.

Zalli whistled and fluttered her wings, then said softly, "We were half convinced you were a dream." Héctor put his hand over her, smoothing the ruffled feathers down her back. That had been partly true. Also, Ernesto had been fairly vocal at proclaiming how out of his depth he had been.

There was another long silence. He fidgeted, biting back the apologies that rose in his throat, wishing for even a moment he could see. He would give anything to see the expression on her face, to get a hint of what she was thinking. With her breathing as regular as it was, her being as still as she was, it was impossible. He had no information to go on.

The silence was interrupted by the door opening again. More footsteps than he could count entered, and then a hand on his arm. "Sir? My name is Doctor Rodriguez, I'm here to help. What happened?"

"I woke up and couldn't see," he said. There was movement all around him now, a low hissing sound beneath it all, with Imelda's voice slinking into the background and joining her brothers. "Then I tripped and hit my face, that's where the blood came from."

"I see. Any pain?" There was a click, then a cold disc sitting on his bare chest.

"Not in my eyes? My tooth hurts a bit." Héctor bit his lip when the doctor 'shh'ed him, taking breaths as ordered.

It seemed to take forever to be checked out, before the doctor said, "Okay, I can't find anything wrong. Whatever happened, perhaps it will reverse itself. I'll organise a replacement tooth for you and come back to see you in a day or so."

"Sounds good." Héctor smiled and flashed a thumbs up in roughly the direction that the doctor's voice was coming from. "Thank you, señor."

He left. The door clicked shut. Then Imelda was beside him again, Pepita leaping back onto the cushion behind him. When she spoke, he felt his skin prickle into goosebumps. "I promise I'll take care of you until your vision comes back."

"And if it doesn't?" he asked, heart beating in his chest. He was vaguely aware that Zalli had hopped from his shoulder onto the back of the chair, inching her way closer to where the cushion was weighed down, and that Pepita had begun to purr.

Imelda brushed his hair away from his forehead, warm fingertips trailing the curve of his cheek. "Then I guess I'll have to look after you forever." He caught her hand, pressing a kiss into the cup of her palm. Heat baked off his cheeks, and he wondered for a moment if she was blushing too.

"Hey, Imelda," he said, softly, keeping his voice low.

"Yes, Héctor?" The 'r' rolled off her tongue, sending shivers down his spine. She was very close to him now, her breath fanning across his face in fluttering little bursts. Behind him, Pepita was purring like a well-oiled engine, and Zalli was nestling beneath her chin.

"What are your brothers' names?"

She snorted, then leaned forward and kissed him lightly, the pressure enough to make him painfully aware of how swollen his lips were. "Óscar and Felipe. But I'm not going to tell you which one is which."

He laughed. She joined him. Their dæmons remained curled together, a comfortable embrace. And Héctor wished he would never get his sight back.