Isabela was glad to get away from her parents and grandmother after breakfast. They were discussing what to do about her skin, and their voices had lost precious little of the fear they'd had since she'd come to the dining room. While she could understand their worry, it frustrated her that they believed they had to worry. Why weren't they listening to her? What good was being allowed to voice her innermost thoughts if they were just going to go unheard by those who "knew better?"
Isa made her way upstairs to Bruno's tower. Bruno and Mirabel were already waiting.
"You ready?" Bruno asked.
Isa nodded. "Of course."
"Well...come on in." Bruno opened his door and gestured for his nieces to enter ahead of him.
"I see the sand...waterfall...thing is still here," Mirabel observed.
"Yeah, it doesn't really turn off," Bruno said. "But it does part." He held a hand up to the curtain of falling sand, which split down the middle and swept to either side, allowing the occupants to step through. "Watch your step," Bruno warned.
Mirabel hopped lightly down onto the dune beneath her and turned to check on Isa, who also gently dropped to the dune. Bruno followed, and the three half-slid down the dune to the floor of the cavern.
"Not so many stairs this time," Mirabel said. "And they're in a lot better shape."
"Yeah, and Casita added a new feature," Bruno said. "Come on, I'll show you!"
He led the girls to the staircase and had them position themselves on the steps behind him.
"Brace yourselves," he said. He then clapped his hands twice and the stairs started to move upward.
The sudden motion caught the girls off guard for a moment, but they quickly recovered. Casita did things like this all the time.
"They can move now?" Mirabel laughed. "Well, it's about time!"
"They couldn't move before?" Isa asked.
"No, they were pretty solid," Bruno said. "The-the house's interactions with the family are really limited beyond each person's door, you know, but this time around, I can turn the stairs on and off. I-I think it's limited to just me, though, so anyone who wants to get to my vision cave has to climb the old fashioned way, or get me to get the stairs moving."
"Funny, Casita is basically my roommate," Mirabel said.
"Well, for you, that makes sense. I mean, with you being, you know, the one Casita chose to take care of the miracle after your abuela passes and all."
"Point is, the stairs are much easier to get up and down," Isa said. "But I really hope this doesn't mean you had to climb these things every night to sleep since you were five."
"Oh no, just every night for 35 years, until I got tired of it and went to live in the walls," Bruno joked with a chuckle. "Actually, my bed's downstairs. Out of the way. Always has been."
Once they reached the top of the stairs, Mirabel was pleased to see that the remainder of their path was solid earth rather than a gap they'd have to swing over. She couldn't help but make other observations as they entered the cave.
"Nicer aesthetic. Everything's smoother and brighter. I like the white with black banding."
"Yeah, it's gneiss," Bruno said, rapping his knuckle on the wall.
"That's what I said."
"No, I mean it's gneiss as in the rock. Metamorphic granite. Granite's where most sand ultimately comes from, and the stuff that doesn't get eroded gets pressed and turned into gneiss."
"Wow, Tío, I never would've taken you for a geologist," Isa said.
Bruno shrugged. "I dabble. I've even gotten into conversations with Luisa about it."
They arrived at the door separating Bruno's ritualistic vision cave from the entryway. Bruno pulled the door open and gestured for the girls to step inside.
As they did so, both Mirabel and Isa gasped as they looked up. The walls and ceiling were covered in glowing green crystals, which glinted in the artificial sunlight streaming in from the doorway.
"It's like being in a geode!" Isa said in wonderment.
"Yeah, it basically is," Bruno affirmed. "Except these are prasiolite crystals, not amethyst."
"I'm just gonna pretend I know what that is," Mirabel said. "Seriously, though, this is too cool, Tío! But on the other hand, I'm glad it didn't look like this when it was collapsing on me."
"Yeah, that would've been messy," Bruno replied, beckoning his nieces over to the sandy circle in the middle of the cave.
The girls sat while Bruno collected kindling and matches, then set up his ritual. He sat down in front of them and lit each pile of leaves between them, then held out his hands.
"Alright, fair warning to first time viewers, this can get pretty intense," he said, closing his eyes momentarily and opening them to reveal their magical green glow.
Wind started to pick up around the trio as the girls each grasped their tío's hands, then one another's remaining hand. Isa gasped as the sand whipping around them began to manifest green images. Mirabel, having experienced this before, wore a look of total concentration. Clearly she was searching for something specific.
Isa watched as the images around her flashed and echoed with conversations yet to be held. Her parents conversing in worried tones. Her grandmother urging her to try something in a small vial. Camilo rather comically complaining about supposedly being punished for something that had nothing to do with him as he picked at a plate of food.
And then Isa saw herself, older, rubbing her knuckles and clearly in pain. The skin of her hands and arms looked more irritated than she recalled seeing it in Bruno's tablet. She heard her own voice, which sounded almost foreign in her ears: "It's no one's fault but mine. I should've taken better care of this when I was young. But I was also proud."
"This is where my vision first ended," Bruno announced.
"Then this is where we keep pushing," Mirabel said. "We need something specific to focus on. Maybe...maybe find someone famous in the future who has what Isa has?"
Bruno nodded and focused his power. The sands seemed to shift direction slightly, and images whipped past at a much greater speed. Isa could've sworn she saw herself again, the age she was now, or close to it, talking to a bespectacled young man who said something about his sister.
As Bruno surged further into the future, everything about the people seemed to change. Fashion noticeably changed. Hair changed. Bruno focused on some sort of event going on that appeared to deal with the topic of fashion. Isa couldn't tell where it was taking place, but there were cameras. Really fancy cameras, unlike any Isa had ever seen. A woman with patchy skin posed for the cameras, responding to cues from the photographers. She was clearly a model. Isa's eyes widened in admiration. This was a woman who was gladly showing off her imperfect skin. The image shifted to one of a magazine cover featuring the woman. Across the cover were printed the woman's name and her claim to fame: "Living and modeling with vitiligo." The final word was enlarged and bold, indicating its significance.
Mirabel was just about to point the unfamiliar word out and ask Bruno to follow it when he dropped the girls' hands and allowed the vision to collapse. Sand coalesced into a glowing tablet the color of emerald, and Bruno grabbed it with one hand while holding his head with the other.
"I-I'm sorry, girls, I need to stop. I haven't had a vision that long or that far into the future in...well, I can't remember how long. The longer or further I go, the bigger the headache."
"I didn't...realize these visions gave you headaches," Mirabel said, concerned. "Do we need to get Mamá?"
"No, I'll be fine," Bruno replied. He looked up and blinked a few times to adjust his eyes. He then looked at the tablet, which had the image of the magazine etched into it. He handed it to Isa. "Here's your famous person with your condition," he said. "We can try to go further, in a bit, after I've had a break."
Isa studied the image. "Take your time, Tío," she said. "This...is the best lead we have so far, and it's so much more than I could've hoped for."
"Definitely," Mirabel agreed. "At least we have a name for it now. So while Tío Bruno rests, we've gotta see if we can figure out what, exactly, is vitiligo."