Chapter Five – Love of the Encanto

5.1

Isabela saw some dirt had cracked against the ground and there was a large and twisted looking piece of wood in front of the door of Carlos's so-called workshop. She stared at it and lifted her hand but felt Carlos grab her wrist.

"Leave it alone," he whispered and Isabela looked at him and then to her wrist. She made a hum of displeasure and Carlos laughed at that. "I'll let you go if you promise that you won't interfere with the landscape."

Isabella stared at him and bit her top lip before rolling her eyes.

"Do you promise, princess?" Carlos asked her in a very playful manner and Isabella stuck her tongue out at him which made him laugh. "You surprise me. I thought you were going to talk to me about how rude I was to you and how no one should treat the perfect princess from the Madrigal family in such a manner," he said mocking her with his voice as he said that.

Isabella smiled to him and lifted her chin, "Actually. I find it quite refreshing. It's hard to find somebody who will scold me, I've always been my abuela's favorite and it's exhausting."

Carlos looked her over. "Do you hear yourself?" he asked and Isabella groaned. "Come on, princess. You aren't deceiving anyone. How could anyone think that the amazing Isabella isn't wonderful with flowers coming out of your butt."

"You should talk to my sister," Isabella smiled before Carlos opened the door to the work room where his pots and potters wheel was as well as a lot of other items for his profession. Isabella came to a window where there were some small seedlings growing.

"Don't touch those," Carlos said as he pointed a finger at her. "Don't touch them," he said before pointing to a stool on the other side of the room. "Sit, there, and don't touch."

Isabella sighed and sat down. She looked over the pots. There was some flaw in all of them and she wondered whether this was actually intentional. Maybe this man had a desire to show that nothing was perfect and if that was his goal then she was all for it. She didn't want to live in a perfect world again and be the perfect family members. She very much wanted to see what else she could do.

"Your pottery is beautiful," she told him before looking over at the seedlings. "If you could let me help I could have those big enough for you to put in the plants."

"And take away from me the pleasure of raising them until they are plants that have a voice and a nature and a personality," Carlos replied and Isabella looked away. She knew how much of a personality could be found inside of a plant and he was acting as if all of this was a foreign concept to her.

"How did you choose to come here anyway?" Isabella asked and Carlos turned from her. "I mean, the Encanto isn't really something that a cartographer would know about. It's said that the Encanto is supposed to protect us and that if we were to leave we might lose our way back and never return."

"Well I'm an explorer," Carlos said before he took a deep breath in. "My grandfather, mi abuelito, always spoke of people in a town that he knew, where he had lived and one of those people was a man named Pedro Madrigal who is your grandfather, princess."

"I know who my grandfather is," Isabella said and Carlos sighed with a shrug.

"My grandfather always felt regret that the people he had known when he was young had come to vanish and disappear but studies told that the group of people who fled that day were killed and the evidence would never be found and a story like that. I felt that there had to be something buried inside and I wanted to use that story to create pottery to tell the story."

"The story of my family fleeing their home," Isabella said and Carlos walked to the side of the room and picked up a plate with some bread on it. He walked over to her and offered her a piece. She took it and looked at it thoughtfully as she turned it.

"Everything acceptable to you, princessa?" he teased and Isabella bit into it before smiling, glad that it tasted so nice. "I know that you might think I'm a demon for thinking this but as long as you look upon it with respect, tragic stories can make the most beautiful artwork, you just need to appreciate what is gone."

"Yes," Isabella nodded before taking another bite. "I'm starting to finally understand that."

5.2

Luisa walked by the school as she tried to avoid getting asked to do so many tasks on her day off. She was always doing something for someone and she had promised herself that she would take at least a little time for herself each day. It was hard to relax when you had felt that you needed to fit something into each part of her day.

"Luisa, can you push my house back up?" a man said and Luisa smiled before nodding and went over to push it back before going to the school and pushed her hand up her forehead. Maybe it was just too much being out here and maybe she should think about just turning around and heading home. She sighed before seeing a place where she could be hidden from sight.

If she could just collect herself then - she walked over to the spot before feeling something hitting her and looked down to see a shorter man there. That was the probability these days, she did tower above a lot of men.

"So-Sorry," the man said before turning back to look at her. "Luisa. It's been…it's been a while," he laughed and Luisa nodded as she looked around the schoolhouse. She turned to the man again and her eyes widened as she realized that this wasn't just a stranger she had seen, this was Mateo, he had been her classmate when growing up but she had lost contact with him when she was six and her gift took a hold of her. Well, at first he had been there supporting her before she could hear the taunts from the other children about her being stronger than him and now as that memory returned it just felt awkward.

"Ye-yeah, it has. How are you, Mateo?" Luisa asked very awkwardly as she turned her body to the side. She bowed her head and took slow breaths to avoid looking in his direction.

"You remember, huh?" Mateo said awkwardly. "I mean, I never blamed you for it. Kids are kids and I think they were just jealous of you and Dolores and Isabella. How about we leave what happened in the past," he said before offering his hand to her. "And just enjoy the present."

"Enjoy the present," Isabella nodded. "I think that I can handle that."

Mateo chuckled at that before looking to the school. "I'm training to be a teacher. I think it's quite a rewarding task but of course I'm only teaching the younger kids now. I think that with my age it'll be a while until I'm actually able to become a real teacher."

"Well, the Encanto just keeps getting bigger," Luisa laughed. "I could bore you to death telling you about the problems with the missing donkeys and the houses that slide into the mud, not to mention the countless other problems people here suffer from," she sighed and Mateo grinned playfully.

"Go on and tell me," he coaxed her.

"Well, I uh…no..no that's fine, I don't want to complain, I just meant that it's a lot…a lot of people and…and" Luisa started looking around nervously but Mateo held onto her hand,

"Do you remember when we were kids you sometimes would get panicked about not knowing what gift you were going to get and we would take guesses and you wanted to do something like control color," he said and Luisa nodded. "And I said because you were always helping everyone else that you were going to get a gift to help everyone."

"And then I became the super strong freak girl," Luisa commented and Mateo looked at her sympathetically. "And people didn't know what that meant. They were scared that my gift would be bad if I didn't know how to control my strength," Luisa added. "And you told them to be quiet and that I hadn't changed."

"Look…the past is the past but I still believe that you have an innate goodness in you," Mateo said and Luisa nodded. She bit her top lip to talk about how she had told Mateo that she didn't like him because he didn't have a gift and that she needed to be strong and alone like a wolf but she hadn't really wanted to experience all of that loneliness.

"So you're a teacher, huh?" she asked choosing to follow that conversation thread instead. "Or teacher-in-training."

"Our Encanto needs to have people to teach others but the scary thing is that we might need to leave the Encanto to find those lessons that are really worth teaching," Mateo stated and Luisa nodded.

"But if you leave the Encanto you might not be able to find your way back," she told him and Mateo nodded.

"That's the real question, is it worth it?"

5.3

Mirabel left her room early in the morning with the feeling that something had happened and as she left her room she knew what. Reflected on the wall was the door to open to see her abuelito and yet, if Pedro only had a limited amount of time, it was Alma whom he should share it with. Mirabel heard hurried footsteps in the hallway and opened the door of her wing to find her grandmother pacing.

"The door just opened up again so I feel that Abuelito Pedro will be able to see us," she said and Alma's grip tightened around the key she was wearing. She had believed that it would be months or years before she would see him again and it hadn't even been a week. Mirabel put her hand to her grandmother's shoulder.

"Abuelita, you go in there first, I want to see if my mother is up. What time is it?" she asked and Alma nodded.

"It's five, Julieta is already in the kitchen making sure that the ingredients are good to be used in today's cooking," Alma said. "I'll wait for you here," she said and Mirabel smiled before dashing out. She ran to the kitchen and where Julieta was about to start work.

"Mama, do you want to come with Abuelita and me, we can see Abuelito Pedro," she said excitedly before seeing her mother smile.

Well, this definitely beat waking up from a dream where she believed she was a part of some legal or police team in New York, a city she had only heard whispers about.

End of Chapter Five

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