"Dios mio," Bruno groans, immediately regretting his attempt at getting up.

He's been awake for probably an hour now, his back screaming at him to get up off the hard floor, his other joints and limbs joining in the protest the longer he lays there without moving.

Except now that he's tried to do just that, every muscle in his body, every bone, every inch of him, it feels like, is now screaming at him even more loudly to quit doing whatever it was he just did.

He's moved maybe an inch.

It hurts to move. It hurts to stay still. Logically he knows he's been in worse pain than this, but he's also stiff, the muscles in his body so tight, that he almost wishes someone would just hit him in the back of his head hard enough to put him out of his misery.

"Tío Bruno?"

Dolores is awake.

His niece is awake, and Bruno has no idea whether or not he can even get up off the floor. Or move his face out of his pillow so he can at least try to convince her he's fine.

And he is, mostly. It's just that it hurts to move, and his back is sore from sleeping on the floor. That's all. No big deal.

"Tío?" Mirabel's awake too.

Bruno takes as deep a breath as he can with a face full of pillow, and forces himself to move.

Or maybe he doesn't. Maybe he just stays where he is.

He manages to pull his face out of the pillow. Even that sends waves of agony down his spine.

"Hi," he says, grimacing.

"You okay?" Mirabel asks, and because it's Mirabel, he answers honestly.

"It hurts to move." He groans. "I might just stay here forever."

He can feel them both staring at him.

"We could roll you over." Mirabel offers uncertainly.

"No thanks," he says, lowering his face back into the pillow. His back is killing him.

"Probably shouldn't have climbed that tree yesterday." Dolores offers, and Bruno feels obligated to raise his head once more.

"It wasn't the climbing," he insists. He sounds petulant, he knows. "It was the falling."

"Technically it would have been the landing, not the falling." Mirabel says. "Sorry, Tío."

"What if we each grabbed an armpit and lifted?" He's almost certain Dolores is teasing.

Bruno could stay there bantering with his nieces all morning and not mind in the least, at least until he remembers the rat he's taking care of, and then he's scrambling onto his hands and knees, ignoring the way his body practically shrieks in agony, looking for the box.

"Tío?" Mirabel takes a step back, startled, but Bruno has already found what he's looking for. He sits back, taking the lid of the box and searching his pockets for some crumbs.

He comes up empty and abruptly realizes he missed lunch and dinner yesterday, and that he ran out of his stash from breakfast that evening.

"Here," Dolores appears from the kitchen, part of a still warm arepa in one hand, a cup of coffee in the other.

Bruno accepts gratefully and turns his attention to feeding the albino rat-he's decided to call her Bianca. A little on the nose, perhaps, but he likes it.

Dolores turns her attention to drinking her coffee. Mirabel is left watching the rat eat, still a little creeped out by the animal, but she doesn't say anything, so neither does Bruno.

"So you'll get up for a rat, but not your sobrinas," Dolores says, once she's finished her coffee. Mirabel snickers. Bruno feels himself blush, but neither of the girls actually seem offended.

Dolores insists on doing his hair again, and Bruno lets her. He can't really raise his arms above shoulder level at the moment anyway. He decides to enjoy the attention (it really does feel nice, he can feel himself relaxing) and settles down to get better acquainted with Bianca.

Breakfast is ready by the time Dolores is finished (this time she's pulled his hair back, tying one of her scarves to make a ponytail at the base of his neck), and there is hot coffee, and arepas with chincharrón, and changua. Bruno fills up on coffee and soup, preferring to save the arepas for later, but there's still a lot of soup left by the time he's full, and he hopes Señora Garcia doesn't think he doesn't like her cooking, just because he can't finish a meal.

Camilo is helping Señor Rodriguez. He's been doing it for a few days now, and he thinks Señor Rodriguez likes having him help out. At the very least, he likes to think the man enjoys having someone around to talk to.

He's not really listening at the moment though, because he's still thinking about last night.

The things his uncle said.

And the things he didn't say.

Sure, he sort of had a better idea of how Bruno's gift worked, back when he still had it. Kind of. It was all very confusing, and Camilo got the feeling that Bruno himself wasn't entirely sure how it all worked.

He also had some idea of why people might not have liked Bruno's gift. Except not really, because it felt more like people blamed him for making the things happen rather than simply seeing them. It also sounded like people had asked for him to see things for them, and then blamed him when it wasn't what they wanted.

None of that sounded fair to Camilo.

What his uncle hadn't said was that he disagreed with any of the things people thought about him. He didn't say that people were wrong to blame him. He didn't say they were wrong to be angry, or to want to avoid him, for the things he saw.

He also never actually said that no one had ever hurt him. It's an important omission to Camilo, because normally if someone asked him if he were hurt, or if someone hurt him, and he wasn't hurt, he would be very quick to point that out. He suspects Bruno would do the same.

The fact that he had not cleared that up almost immediately, if for no other reason than to reassure his nephew, was telling.

"Did you know Tío Bruno, before?" he asks abruptly, and Señor Rodriguez drops the tool he was holding.

"Why do you ask?" The man asks, looking around for whatever he just dropped. He looks worried, but his voice is steady.

Camilo shrugs. "Just wondering. I was, like, five. I don't remember much. You know, what he was like? Before he came back I thought he was seven feet tall."

Señor Rodriguez chuckles, but it's a nervous sort of laugh. "He's never been very tall," he admits.

Camilo shrugs. "I got the rats right, at least."

The man is silent for a moment, thinking. "I didn't know him that well, really. He's probably twelve, thirteen years older than I am, so he was almost an adult by the time I was five. He always seemed kind of quiet and withdrawn, unless he was telling someone what he had seen. Then he just seemed really solemn.

"I guess by the time I was twenty he was-in his early thirties? He didn't come into town much by then, and never alone. He might tag along with one of his sisters, but he always stayed close, and he rarely spoke. He always looked kind of nervous when I saw him." Señor Rodriguez looks thoughtful.

"Were people mean to him?" Camilo asks. Señor Rodriguez looks at him carefully, his expression neutral.

"What do you mean?" he asks, and Camilo thinks he's on to something. He also thinks the man is afraid of saying too much.

That's okay, he can set the tone.

"People used to avoid him, because of his gift." Señor Rodriguez nods reluctantly. "They blamed him for what they saw. Did they ever do anything to hurt him? Mirabel said they ran in Señor Perez the other day."

It's not subtle, but the way the man flinches and looks away answers Camilo's question.

"What has your uncle told you?" he asks, his voice low.

Camilo figures Bruno wouldn't have been hanging around the man if he had once done something to him, never mind leave him alone with his nephew, but Señor Rodriguez obviously feels guilty anyway.

For letting it happen? For simply knowing that it happened?

He shrugs and waits. Most adults start talking eventually, if he can wait long enough.

Señor Rodriguez sighs and runs a hand through his hair. "Look, it's obvious, watching him now, that he loves you kids. A lot. But when he was younger-imagine if every time your tío showed up he told you something bad what going to happen, and then it did. He scared people. Especially when his eyes would start to glow, and he'd just-crumple, like something hit him. And then he'd come out of it, sometimes carrying on like a madman."

"He was having a vision," Camilo says. "He couldn't always control when they happened. It was probably far worse for him than it was for anybody watching."

Señor Rodriguez looks away for a moment, conceding the point.

"Maybe so," he says, his voice soft. "But we didn't really understand. It's not an excuse, I know. But he was so strange the rest of the time, so reserved and stand-offish, and maybe that was because of his gift too, but it-made people uncomfortable. And then people-some people-started getting it into their heads that he made things happen, as if keeping quiet about the things he saw would keep them from happening."

He shakes his head. "Well, he was gone for ten years, and bad things still happened during that time." The man shrugs. He looks ashamed. "Some of them used to talk about how it ought to be stopped. How he ought to be stopped. I never thought it was more than just talk, and I never took part in it, understand, but..." trails off, and frowns at Camilo, eyeing him sharply, as if he's only just realized he's telling all this to a fifteen-year-old, and that the ending might not be appropriate for someone his age.

"I need to get back to work," he says, and Camilo knows that's the end of it. He's not going to get anything else out of the man.

Still, it's more than he had. And Camilo is certain, now, that people in the village have hurt his uncle in the past.

They're halfway between Señora Garcia's home and the building site.

Is it home if it's still being built? Is it even Casita anymore?

Mirabel pushes the thought away. Bruno is moving slowly, but he's moving. He's still carrying his new rat around in its box. She's still too hurt, he explains. He doesn't want to cause her pain by moving her too soon. The more she can rest, the better she'll heal.

Mirabel has figured out that, even though Dolores knows the names of a good number of his rats, and knows enough about them to ask after them, and can tell all of the ones they've seen so far apart, she actually doesn't like the things either. Her interest in them is based solely on the fact that they're her uncle's rats, and he loves them.

Mirabel wonders if love is perhaps too strong a word, but then again she did catch him feeding Rosalita in his lap at the table this morning, safely out of sight of Señora Garcia, so she wouldn't feel left out while Fernando and Alejandro were out having adventures and she was stuck with him.

Mirabel wonders if he knows that Dolores doesn't like them. After all, he's never actually tried to offer her one, no matter how many times she asks about them. And he's never tried to offer Mirable one either, now that she thinks about it, so maybe he knows she doesn't care for them either.

She hopes it doesn't hurt his feelings.

Mirabel waves to the girl looking out the upstairs window of her home as they pass by and goes back to considering the rats.

Rosalita is currently riding Bruno's shoulder, watching everything and everyone around them with interest. Mirabel cannot deny it-they're definitely smart, Bruno's rats. And truthfully, Bruno seems to take great care in keeping them clean, and fed. And they do seem pretty well mannered.

Mirabel still doesn't care for them. She's glad they make her uncle happy, though.

And they do seem to love him back.

"Mierda."

Bruno freezes mid-step, his eyes suddenly huge, the dawning horror of realization replacing the tired but content expression he was wearing before.

He wordlessly shoves his box of rat into Dolores's hands, and Rosalita jumps from his shoulder to the girl's. Mirabel is impressed: Dolores flinches but takes the box anyway, and doesn't scream as the rat lands right next to her face.

Bruno turns and bolts, tearing back the way he came as if his life depended on it. Mirabel looks helplessly at her cousin for a second.

"Go," Dolores tells her.

She leaves her prima to deal with the rats and takes off after their tío, suddenly remembering how fast he can be, when he wants.

Even if she hadn't fallen, she never would have caught him back when she was chasing him through Casita's walls. He moved that quickly. And for all that he was moving stiffly before, he's moving almost that quickly now.

Mirabel finds herself falling behind.

Erratic movement catches her eye; it's the girl from the window, only now she's leaning out past the window frame, practically hanging half out of the window. It looks like she's losing her balance.

The girl is going to fall.

There's nothing she can do. Mirabel watches helplessly as the child slips, grabs desperately for the sill, and misses, plummeting toward the ground. She screams, and the girl screams, and Mirabel wants to look away but can't.

"No!"

Bruno puts on a final burst of speed and lunges forward, catching the girl in his arms. Her weight and momentum throw him off balance, and he goes down, catching himself and rolling a bit before coming to a stop, the girl pressed to his chest and still screaming. His arms are locked around her, and Mirabel realizes, as she reaches them, that he must have cushioned her body with his when they hit the ground, because he's looking a bit battered, but the girl seems scared but otherwise fine.

He looks slightly dazed as Mirabel bends down and starts disentangling the girl from his arms, as if he's not entirely certain what just happened, and she wonders if he hit his head when he fell.

The girl's parents have made it outside by now and are panicking. Her mother scoops her up, out of Mirabel and Bruno's grasp, and demands to know what happens. Mirabel is in the middle of trying to explain when Bruno sits up and lets out a loud, slightly strangled laugh.

It sounds more than a little mad, and when it keeps going, the girl's parents back away, staring.

"I think he might have hit his head," Mirabel admits. "After he caught your daughter they fell. I think she's all right, but..."

They thank her, and ask her to thank Bruno, but they don't offer to help with her potentially injured tío, instead hurrying back inside the house. Mirabel is pretty sure she hears the click of a lock turning after they close the door.

"Tío Bruno?" Mirabel asks, kneeling down beside him, trying to get him to look her in the eyes. He's still guffawing like a madman, but he does seem to realize she's there, and even manages to focus on her for a moment before the next fit of laughter hits him.

He's still laughing when Dolores catches up with him, though not quite as loudly, and something about Mirabel's oldest cousin always seems to settle him, just a bit.

"Hi," he manages. Taking a deep breath, he tries to pull himself back together. "Sorry-it's just-twenty-seven years-I thought it was just a nightmare-I had that same vision every night for a month."

Dolores wordlessly offers him Rosalita, and he accepts, stroking her gently before allowing her to climb back up onto his shoulder. She holds on to the box, for now.

Mirabel looks him over. "Are you okay?" she asks, because she really thought he was losing it for a minute there, and she's still not entirely convinced she was mistaken.

Bruno lets out a huff of air, but doesn't seem annoyed. "Sorry," he says again. "Just a few more bruises to add to the collection, I think."

"You didn't hit your head?" she asks, and he gives her a look that's almost disgruntled.

"No." He looks at her, then at Dolores, before chuckling. "No, I just-" He pauses, trying to figure out how to explain. "I saw her. That girl."

"In a vision. Twenty-seven years ago." Mirabel says, to be certain she understands. Bruno nods.

"Except I didn't realize it was a vision. I thought it was just a recurring dream. Or nightmare, I guess. They don't usually repeat themselves like that."

"But this one did."

"Every night for a month," he agrees. "I'd forgotten all about it until we reached the corner up there. Thought I was going to be too late."

Mirabel frowns. "You remembered a vision from twenty-seven years ago, even though you thought it was a dream at the time? How old were you then, twenty-three?"

Bruno shrugs.

"But twenty-seven years ago?" She's impressed, really. She wonders if he remembers all his visions that easily.

He looks away.

"Hard to forget," he murmurs, his voice suddenly quiet. "The end result of a small child falling from a second-story window to land on hard stone, every night, for a month."

Mirabel feels her mouth go dry. "Oh."

He smiles at her. "But it didn't happen. I changed it." There's something vulnerable in the way he says it, and something that suggests he doesn't quite believe it, even though it just happened.

Mirabel climbs to her feet, and then helps Bruno up, because he looks like might just stay there all day otherwise. Once back on his feet he brushes himself off and checks to make sure Rosalita's still with him, then takes his other rat (still in her box) back from Dolores.

"Thank you," he says. Dolores nods, but doesn't say anything. Their uncle doesn't seem to mind.

Antonio finds Camilo, wide-eyed and trying not to cry, and he wonders what's wrong with his baby brother until he sees the red spot on his hand that is very clearly a rat-bite.

"Let me see," he says, reaching out for his brother's hand, but Antonio draws away.

"No!" He looks up at his brother, suddenly desperate. "I need to find Tío. It's important."

"Because one of his rats bit you." Camilo's a little angry about that. He hates seeing Antonio hurt or upset.

"Yes. No. It's important. Look!" He holds up a rat, one Camilo doesn't recognize. "He's scared. That's why he bit me. He only calmed down when I promised to help him find el hombre-rata."

Camilo blinks. He knows exactly who his hermano is talking about; there's only one person that can be. He just doesn't think the nickname is going to go over well in certain circles. Their mamá, for certain, is not going to like it.

"And you don't know which rat this is?" he asks. Antonio shakes his head. "How did you find him?"

"He found me."

They find Bruno talking to Mirabel and Dolores, a small wooden box in his hands. Camilo thinks he looks like he's already had a rough morning, but it's more a physical dishevelment than emotional or mental, and for that, Camilo's grateful.

He wonders if he should resent the fact that he feels the need to uncle-sit just a little bit after all, but figures that someone needs to keep an eye on him. After all he's apparently been through, he deserves a little extra looking after.

The new rat screams and leaps at Bruno as soon as he's in range, scrambling up his body and nearly bowling over Rosalita in the process. Bruno turns and looks at the animal quizzically for a moment, until it darts forward and bites down on his ear.

Bruno doesn't so much as bat an eye.

"Manners," he scolds gently, reaching up and carefully dislodging teeth from his ear. The bite is deep enough to have drawn blood. "What is it? What's wrong?" The rat nips sharply at his hand this time. "Show me."

He sets the rat down, groaning as he straightens back up and absently accepting a handkerchief from Mirabel. He presses it carefully to his ear, his eyes still on the rat, who runs in a circle twice before darting off in one direction only to come straight back and nip at Bruno's sandaled toes.

"Come on, then." Bruno says, and the rat races up his pant leg, up his ruana, settling on Bruno's other shoulder. Bruno sets off in the direction the animal started off in as if it's perfectly normal to take directions from screaming, biting rats.

Camilo follows him. "It bit Antonio," he says.

"I'm okay." The kid is following as well. Mirabel and Dolores are not far behind them.

"Any blood?" Bruno wants to know. Antonio shakes his head.

"It's a little red," Camilo adds.

"It doesn't hurt anymore," Antonio insists. "Is he okay? I think he was scared."

"Something's wrong," Bruno admits. "He's okay. He came to get help. He doesn't usually like being around people."

"Do you think one of the others is hurt?" Antonio wants to know.

"Maybe." Bruno is not being particularly reassuring at the moment. Camilo wishes he would say something to make Antonio feel better. "He knew who to go to for help, though."

Abruptly the rat starts shrieking again, and scampers down Bruno without warning. Camilo's tío stops, watches the rat for a moment, then gets on his hands and knees, looking for something in the nearby vegetation.

"Ah." he says, disappearing halfway under a bush. "Oh."

It's not a good sort of sound. If anything, Bruno sounds as if someone just told him he had to go back to live in the walls again, this time for the rest of his life.

"Well, this sort of thing happens, you know." His voice is low, and Camilo realizes the new rat has climbed back onto his shoulder. "It's part of life, unfortunately. Part of nature. Doesn't make it feel any better."

He's talking to the rat on his shoulder, and Camilo wonders what, exactly, he feels he has to explain to the creature, that is 'part of life.' He's not sure he's going to like the answer.

"I think they'll be okay, though. They're tiny, but they seem healthy enough. Just need to keep them warm, keep them fed. We'll see how it goes, no?" There's definite sadness in the man's voice, but Camilo feels like he would only be intruding, if he said something.

Mirabel feels no such thing. "Tío?" she asks, her voice gentle.

"Just a minute, Mirabel." Bruno's voice is calm enough, so they wait.

He backs awkwardly out of the bushes several minutes later, one hand carefully cradled against his chest. The rat remains perched on his shoulder.

"What happened?" Antonio asks, once Bruno has turned himself around and made it partially upright. He's still on his knees as he turns and holds out his hand.

"Ew!" Mirabel can't stop herself in time. In his hand are three of the tiniest, ugliest, naked-looking things Camilo's ever seen.

Bruno chuckles even as his niece slaps a hand over her mouth in horror. "They don't look like much at this stage, do they?"

Antonio stares at them in awe. "Are those baby rats?" He asks, and Bruno nods. "That's why he was so scared! He didn't want something to happen to the babies." Antonio frowns and looks up at his uncle. "But what about their mamá? Should she take care of them?"

Bruno looks away for a moment before answering. "She didn't make it, Toñito. I'm sorry."

Antonio's soft "oh" sounds a lot like Bruno's did earlier. "It was Ophelia, wasn't it?" he asks, and Bruno nods again. The boy looks as if he might cry. His uncle doesn't look too far from it either.

"Lo siento, mijo," he says. He hesitates a moment before adding. "She did leave behind three babies that need taking care of, though."

Antonio nods, and sniffs, suddenly determined. "I can help, if you show me what to do."

"We need to find your Tía."

Lord help her, her brother was headed her way, for children in tow, hand cradled against his chest, rat on either shoulder.

Julieta knew that look.

"Augustín, I need a small box with enough scraps of cloth in it to make a nest," she says, and to his credit, her husband doesn't ask. He just goes.

They manage to get a hold of some milk. Finding someone willing to let them bring rats into their kitchen is a little more work, but finally Mariano Guzman somehow manages to convince his mother to let them use hers.

The woman eyes Bruno and his rats skeptically and shakes her head at all of them before leaving them to it, and Dolores follows her out, thanking her and making sure she knows how much they appreciate it, and promising that none of her tío's rats will get into the cupboards-they're much better behaved than that.

Julieta sends Mirabel off to watch for Augustín and starts warming the milk. "How many this time?" she asks her brother, who will not quite meet her eyes. He knows she doesn't like the rats, and he knows she's doing this anyway, even though the idea of them even being in the kitchen disgusts her.

"Four."

"Newborn?"

"Maybe an hour ago."

It doesn't take long to get the milk warm enough, though apparently it takes long enough that one of the rats sitting on her brother's shoulder bites him on the neck. Not hard enough to draw blood, but hard enough to leave a mark. Bruno rolls his eyes at the rat and scolds him, but there's no actual heat to the lecture.

Julieta retreats to the far side of the kitchen because she's seen her brother feed baby rats before and it makes her skin crawl to see them suckling droplets of warm milk from one of his fingers.

Antonio is fascinated by the process, however, and Bruno is soon engaged in showing him how to do it, and it's heartwarming to watch the two interact because it's obvious how much they love each other. Bruno adores his nephew, and Antonio loves him in turn with all of his little heart.

Camilo is also interested, to her surprise-he never seemed to like the rats much when he was younger. Of course, Pepa always made a fuss when Bruno brought them out, so maybe that had something to do with it.

He's learning to feed them right alongside Antonio, though, and while the relationship between her brother and their older nephew is different, it's still quite clear that they care for each other.

Augustín returns, Mirabel in tow, and sets the box on the counter where Bruno can get to it more easily, right next to another box that one of them must have been carrying earlier.

This box is also rat-sized. Julieta tries not to shudder.

Augustín joins her, content to watch from afar while comforting his wife. Mirabel joins Bruno and the others, though she does not ask about feeding any of the babies, and her uncle does not offer to let her.

"Do they know those things have to be fed every two hours?" Julieta asks her brother, and Camilo looks up briefly as if he thinks she's joking.

She isn't.

They're going to be here all day. For the next week, at least. Then they can switch to feeding them every three or four hours. As long as none of them die.

She hopes none of them die. She still remembers the last time he came home with a handful of baby rats, already troubled because they had been on their own for too long.

They had nursed those babies around the clock, neither of them sleeping, Bruno constantly reminding both of them that they were already so weak, it was unlikely they would make it, that really, they were fighting a losing battle.

She had helped anyway, because how could she have done anything else?

For two days they had nursed them, watching as they got weaker instead of stronger, both of them bracing themselves for the most likely outcome.

And when it had finally happened, and the last one had grown cold and still, they had sneaked out into the back yard and buried them in the garden. Bruno had swallowed once, shoved his hands in his pockets, and said, "At least we tried."

They had returned to the kitchen and cleaned up their mess.

And then Bruno had collapsed to the floor, bawling over those tiny, naked things, even though he had known there was almost no chance of saving them, even though he had told her-and himself-that the best they could hope for was for the newborn rats to die warm and fed and cared for.

She hadn't understood how he could get so attached so quickly even when he knew it was a lost cause, but she had stayed with up with him anyway, holding her thirty-five-year-old brother as he sobbed, his heart broken over a couple of rodents that never had much of a chance to begin with.

Julieta really hopes this litter makes it, and it seems likely, based on the way Bruno's interacting with them. She knows he's done this successfully more than a few times, and that if the babies were healthy and strong when they were born and he got to them quick enough, they have a high chance of surviving under his care.

He is going to be feeding the things around the clock for the next couple weeks, though.

Luisa finds them and wants to see the babies, and Julieta doesn't know whether to laugh or cry when she says, "Aw, they're so ugly!" because they truly are hideous, but her middle child sounds taken with them all the same.

Antonio promises they'll teach her how to feed them next time, which is only a couple hours away.

Bruno collects the newborns, settling them in the box Augustín found, frowning the entire time. He's thinking, Julieta knows, because they both know the rats need to be kept warm, but finding another rat to foster them can be difficult. Sometimes grown rats-or any animals, really-don't take well to babies that aren't their own.

He reaches into his ruana and pulls out a cinnamon-colored rat that Julieta didn't even know he was carrying. He sets her carefully in the box with the babies, watching carefully. After a moment he relaxes, and Julieta can only assume that the cinnamon-colored rat has accepted them.

"Who's that?" Antonio asks. "I don't know her."

"That's Cecilia. She's very gentle. She'll keep them safe and warm until they get big enough to go off on their own.

"Why are her eyes like that?" The child asks, making Julieta curious in spite of herself. "They're all cloudy."

"She's blind, mijo," Bruno says it softly. "She can't see."

"She's pretty. Can I pet her?"

"Not right now, Toñito. She's not used to moving around much, and she just adopted four baby ratas. Too much change at once-I don't want to stress her out."

"I'll wait, then, if that's okay. I don't want to stress her either."

Julieta offers to cook dinner for the Guzmans, since they're using their kitchen, but the woman politely declines, saying they're going to have dinner with her sister tonight. She does tell Julieta to help herself to the kitchen, pointing out several things she can make to feed the members of the Madrigal family that are currently taking over it, and Julieta can't properly express her gratitude, even if the woman shoots another critical look over in Bruno's direction before leaving.

She's pretty sure the woman is critical of the rats in her kitchen, not her brother, however, so she lets it alone.

Mirabel leaves at some point, only to return in time for the next feeding with the news that Señora Garcia, who has been hosting her, Bruno and Dolores in her home, has no problem with them continuing their rat nursing efforts in her home, for as long as is needed.

Julieta is relieved, and is sure Señora Guzman will be as well.

Mirabel also offers to take over milk warming duties from her mother. Julieta agrees, stating that she will at least supervise the next round, to make sure Mirabel knows not to get the milk too hot.

"Stay and help me clean up?" she asks, as they finish feeding the rats once more and prepare to change houses. Mirabel agrees, but seems to realize there's something on her mamá's mind.

Thankfully, she waits until everyone else is gone to broach the subject.

"Do you think Antonio will understand, if they don't make it even after everything we've done?" she asks. Julieta smiles down at her daughter, who has always been compassionate and thoughtful of others.

"I'm more worried about how Bruno will take it, if it comes to that. He was a mess last time, even though he knew they probably wouldn't make it." She pulls her youngest into a hug. "This time, though, they have a pretty good chance. Your tío knows what he's doing."

Her mood sobers, and she looks down at Mirabel solemnly. "Do not, under any circumstances, leave your uncle unsupervised around the stove. Entiendes, mija?"

Mirabel's brow furrows in confusion; she was not expecting the conversation to go this way. "Okay..." she agrees, willingly enough. "But why? I mean, he's an adult..."

"I've seen him burn water trying to make tea." Julieta tells her. "I've seen him burn himself trying to heat water for tea. I've seen him set himself on fire without realizing it, while trying to heat water for tea. Should I go on?"

Mirabel laughs, then realizes she's serious. "Okay, but he's not incompetent. Or helpless, or anything."

"He gets distracted." Julieta says, shrugging. "Starts staring off into the distance, or forgets what he was doing. Not all the time, but most often when he's trying to cook, for some reason. Keep him away from the stove," she admonishes her daughter.

It's late when Pepa shows up looking for Antonio, and only Bruno begging him to take Rosalita, Fernando, and Alejandro for the night so they can get some rest convinces him to go without a tantrum, because he's only five and it's way past his bedtime and he is very, very tired.

Bianca stays in her box, because she's still injured, and Maurice, the new rat, stays with Bruno because he apparently bites. Their uncle has marks all over his hands, ears, and neck by now, but keeps insisting that the rat doesn't do well around people even when he doesn't have baby rats to worry about.

Cecilia stays with the baby rats, acting as a surrogate mother.

All in all, Bruno currently has seven rats to deal with without the three Antonio takes with him.

Camilo is allowed to stay for the next feeding, and that only because Pepa doesn't want to fight with them both at the same time, and then he is expected to go to bed as well.

It's either very late or very early when Bruno insists on sending Mirabel, Luisa, and Dolores to get some sleep. Mirabel remembers what her mother says about leaving her uncle unsupervised, and exchanges a look with her cousin and sister, wondering if they know anything about it.

"Get some rest." Dolores says to her. "I'll stay and help Tío, that way we can take turns napping in between feedings while whoever's awake keeps an eye on the babies."

Bruno agrees, but just barely, but he does it with a slight huff and a roll of his eyes. Dolores elbows him teasingly, and he shakes his head, chuckling.

"Fine, then," he says, and it's settled.

Author's note: Rats, rats, everywhere! So many rats.

Disclaimer: Disney's Encanto does not belong to me.