The darkness surrounded him, dust and debris flying from the walls as they shook. Bruno's breath was tinny in his ears, his feet slamming against the ground as he ran, but he couldn't tell where he was.

Why was everything so dark?

Panic and the desperation to leave, Bruno hit a wall. Quite literally. Pain, a tumble. The walls thundered down around him. Or behind him? Of course, he'd never find out, as the dream ended.

Pulling himself out of bed, Bruno plucked his sweaty shirt from his skin.

What the dream meant, it was lost on him, but Bruno knew to record it. His eyes were tender like a hangover, heavy as he picked up his pencil and journal. The low-grade lead smudged across the paper, mapping out the dream until his mind finally let him be.

Bruno scoffed at the chicken scratch in his hands. "Really? I bust through a wall like a bat out of Hell, and a blob of darkness is all I can see?"

Further into the town, a rooster crowed for sunrise. Breakfast was almost ready, and therefore his mother's daily debriefing; he'd have to return to this later.

"Okay," he sighed. "Time to get going."

He stared up at his "ceiling" as he redressed, trailing the circling condors. When he was five years old, he delighted in their giant forms, high above his room. Like everything, he soon learned to admire them from afar, their presence merely an illusion. Feared by many, appreciated by some, the birds reminded Bruno of his gift. Perhaps that was the house's intention, all along—to give the family gifts to use as they saw fit, not to shoehorn into the townspeople's lives.

Easter had come and gone, punctuating the loud festivities of Holy Week. In the quiet left behind, the courtyard filled with his siblings' grumbling. Félix followed Pepa around with his tiple, punctuating her antics with music, while Julieta worked tirelessly to cook both breakfast and the day's ration of healing foods. For his part, Bruno slipped away to the nursery.

He sat on the floor, spreading the papers out before him.

"No peeking, Isabela," he said to the crib beside him. The baby cooed at the ceiling, quite unaware.

Bruno supposed he'd make the excuse of watching his niece today, but really, he had to think hard on what he could show Conchita. Some of these drawings were quite upsetting, others boring or too personal. In the scrawls of his childhood, some were no longer able to be deciphered. He wasn't much better now, but certainly, he never drew a dog with a human face.

"Ay, is that the Quiroga's missing dog?"

Bruno jumped at his mother's voice behind him. "Good God! I mean, yeah... Bobo got eaten by a jaguar."

"Shame you never showed them this, then."

"Didn't know how to tell them, back then, bein' six and all."

He turned around on his knees to face her. To his surprise, his mother held out a plate of pastries. He shrank back a little as he took the plate. "I missed breakfast, didn't I?"

Alma walked to lift Isabela from the crib. "I'm used to it," she said, letting Bruno kiss the baby. "I wanted to bring up your last meeting with Señor Orozco, but it's fine."

"Mamá…"

"I said it's fine, Bruno."

"All I told him was the truth. His wife even—"

"Your gift is to predict the future. You can't just say whatever you want; think of how our family will look," Alma said. "Now get off the floor; Señorita Navarro is here for you."

As she walked off with Isabela, Alma left the door open.

Bruno didn't know whether to get up or wait. So he got up and waited. His mother's voice gibbered down the hall, "Isa-Misa-Palisa-Pobreti-ti-ti-tita, little perfect girl…," until her espadrilles softened to the bootsteps of another.

After a small moment, Conchita peeked past the nursery door. Bruno watched as Conchita hauled a small man in her arms. "Ah, we found him, Papi," she said. "Bruno, meet my father, Irineo."

She gently sat her father on a chair, adjusting the man's blankets in his lap. Frail and sallow, the man no less carried himself with dignity, and appeared far younger than Bruno expected.

Not knowing what to say, Bruno looked down at his hands. Very quickly, he realized he was still holding the plate of pastries. "Pan de yuca?" he offered. "I wasn't, ahem, expecting company, Concita."

Conchita shook her head and smiled. "Did you forget about coming to the shop?"

"Well, that's on Sunday," Bruno countered.

Irineo snorted, though not with malice. "It's Monday. This kid sees the future, but can't keep a calendar?" he chuckled.

Conchita knelt to pick up the drawings, rolling an egg from under the crib as she saw it. Everybody went quiet as they sat together on the bed. Conchita flipped through the pages, reading the notes of a new Madrigal due in December, down to a military breach at the Putumayo.

"Well, Papi, it's time to move again," Conchita joked, holding the last one out for her father. "The government found you."

That sketch had been a long and gentle dream. A few Peruvian soldiers stood talking on the banks of the Putumayo, a river in the Amazon Basin. Most of what they said was forgotten: he didn't know who President Sánchez was, he didn't know what "Leticia" meant, but he did know that the soldiers noted their date as September of 1932, "for the recovery of the port".

Bruno remembered to mind his wording. "Don't worry about that one," Bruno said. "I didn't feel anything bad coming from it. Just something to keep in mind around 1932."

Bruno picked the egg up off the floor, bouncing it in his hand. "The Encanto closes the mountains around it, like an eggshell. Mamá always told me that an egg absorbs all the bad... vibes, I guess, in a house. And this house is like an egg, in that sense. It took all the bad luck of the past and made something good of it, protected us. And if my mother thinks the magic is strong, I think so, too."

Conchita nodded, her hand resting on her father's. "I just wish the magic could heal Papi; we came all the way from the coast for it."

"We are here for a reason, María Concepción. We stick it out," said Irineo. The man's rheumy eyes held tight to Bruno as he handed the papers back. "Bruno, you talk like Shakespeare was shredded in a coffee grinder and stepped on. But, you can map out a scene like a professional, and I think my daughter understood that. Did you know we volunteer for the theater?"


Notes:

Tiple- an instrument in the guitar family, and one that the Encanto creators originally envisioned that Félix (and Dolores) plays
Pan de yuca- a common snack or breakfast item, a bread roll made of cassava flour and cheese.

The use of chicken eggs in Latin American folk religion is interesting. In a superstitious home, an egg is scanned across someone's body, hidden under a loved one's bed, etc. in order to dispel demons and the evil eye.
Lastly, the Putumayo River event is in reference to Peruvian forces overtaking trade ships in the port city of Leticia, which would lead to the short-lived Colombia-Peru War between 1932 and 1933. It never extended far into either country.