"This feels like cheating," Dolores said as her and her Tio Bruno walked down to the small stream that lay just outside of the village proper, a picnic basket in her hands.

"Your abuela asked us to check to see if there was anything that needed our attention."

"I don't think she meant for you to use your visions to confirm there wasn't so we could relax the rest of the day."

"Then she should have been more specific," Bruno said with a sly little smile. "Would you like to turn off those little discs of yours and focus on hearing everything for the rest of the day?"

"...so what did Tia Julieta pack?"

Bruno laughed as they came to a perfect tree to sit under, removing the blanket he had tucked under his arm and spreading it out while Dolores pulled out the sandwiches that her Tia had packed for them.

"Mama certainly has whipped up a nice day for us," Dolores said, looking up at the sky. "Thank you by the way for helping here."

"With... oh, you mean the meditation?" Bruno blushed, rubbing the back of his head. "It wasn't a big deal."

"For her it is. For me as well... for the entire family. I haven't seen her that peaceful in... ever." She sighed as she unwrapped her sandwich, folding the paper so it didn't blow away. "I just wish we'd thought of it sooner."

"Sometimes it takes an outside viewpoint to notice things you've missed."

"Still, I am so glad you and Mirabel... I don't know, spent weeks planning how to help all of us."

"Yeah... sure kid," Bruno teased, "we had nothing better to do than plot how to improve your lives."

~Two Weeks Before Bruno and Mirabel Came To the Valley ~

"Okay, what about this," Mirabel said, staring at the wall that was covered in bits of paper, all with scribbles about how to help the family, thread tired to pushpins representing how one action could affect other people. She turned to Bruno, a manic look in her eyes. "We use a spell so no one ever needs to eat again! Then mama doesn't need to cook!"

Bruno slowly turned towards the door. "Uh, Gahoole?"

"Yes?"

"Could you please come in here?"

The Owlkin ambled in only to sigh. "I warned you this would happen."

"I know, I know."

"But then what would we use the toilets for?" Mirabel murmured to herself, looking at her wall. "Maybe we don't need to eat but still poop?"

"Dryft!" Gahoole shouted. "Could you get the sedative?"

"Regular on enema?"

"Regular! It will never be an enema!"

~MC ~ GF ~ MC ~ GF ~

"So that meditation... that is what helped you master your gift?"

"One of the things," Bruno stated. "The monks that taught me... well, it was less about showing me what I was doing wrong and more helping me relearn how to... well... live." Dolores frowned and Bruno waved his hand about. "Okay, so imagine that when you were 5 mama decided that you should write with your left hand instead of your right."

Dolores could sadly see her abuela doing just that but rather than say as much she just took a bite of her sandwich and nodded.

"So you are writing like that for years, even though that isn't your dominate hand. So you can write... but it isn't the best. Its always a touch more awkward than it should be. Takes you just a bit longer. And then one day someone comes up to you and declares, "You are doing it all wrong!" It wasn't the writing that was the problem. You can write... you just learned the wrong way." He grabbed a thermos of chilled fruit juice and poured himself a cup. "That's how it was for me."

"You learned wrong."

"Yeah," Bruno said. "The monks were very understanding... they were amazed with no formal training I managed as well as I did. But there were problems. I don't know if you remember but I had this entire ritual. Knocking on wood, throwing sugar over my shoulder, pouring sand in a certain shape... that works but..." He frowned. "It's hard to explain."

"It would be like before I focused on listening to someone I had to do a little dance? Not needed to focus but that's the only way I knew how and if I didn't-"

"It messed you up!" Bruno said, delighted she was following. "That's exactly right kid!" He took a bite of his sandwich. "So I had all these extra steps. And even when I did do it I was forcing the visions. They want to be seen but I was stressing myself out and that was giving me the headaches afterwards and the panic attacks before. I had to learn how to clear away the clutter. Master Shi Fu, who taught me how to fight, heard about it all and said it was like I had crammed a closet full of junk and then complained when I had to dig through to find my shoes."

"And now you can use your visions properly?"

"Yes but not in the way I think your abuela would like me to," Bruno admitted with a sigh. "See... mama has this idea in her head that I can sit in casita and every morning tell her all that is going to go wrong for the next 30 years and how we can prevent it. But that's not how my visions work."

Dolores leaned towards him, intrigued. "How do they work then?"

"Okay... so..." Bruno thought it over. "The future... imagine it is the river. Every foot is an hour or a day. What is right next to us we can see really good. The stones under the water, the fish swimming, so on. But as you get further out the details get lost."

"Right," Dolores said softly. "You told me that once. The further you look the harder it is to get the full picture." She paused.

"Exactly," Bruno said. He paused, eyes flaring green, and a tablet appeared in his lap showing Dolores sipping her juice. "That is 30 seconds from now. We can understand exactly why that happened."

"Do you always need to make the tablet?"

"Not anymore but sometimes it helps to explain things. If the party was short on cash I would make some of buildings and sell them." He paused. "So that's thirty seconds..." Dolores looked down, seeing that without even thinking she'd grabbed her juice. She gave her Tio a smile and drank it. "But I make another tablet..." He made enough tablet and that one showed her and Bruno... standing next to Mariano.

"We see what will happen but aren't for sure what leads to it," she said softly.

"Yes... but no.," She frowned, glancing at him. "That isn't what I wanted to explain. The real difference is how I can change the future." He stood up and walked to the river. "Now, right here is the present. The river's flow? That is the passage of time. Except with time I can't paddle to move quicker... it flows as fast as it wants. So I can easily splash water out of the river right here and affect it-" He cupped his hands and gathered some water, tossing it to the side, "-very easily. But it gets harder to affect what is further out..."

"Until you can't," Dolores said softly.

"Right. My powers are strongest the closest to the present I look. When in battle I can look a few seconds ahead of time and that lets me predict the moves of my opponents and see just what counters will let me defeat them." He moved to sit next to Dolores, picking up his sandwich. "But that wasn't what you were asking about, was it kid?"

"...so your visions are set in stone?" she asked. "There is nothing that can change them?"

Bruno sighed. "I should have never answered your question."

"I asked-"

"I meant the one when you were 7," Bruno said.

"You... you remember?" Dolores whispered.

"I never forgot," he admitted and that made Dolores tear up because she had always assumed Tio Bruno had given her the answer and moved on. But the way he was looking at her, clearly bothered by what had happened... "Listen kid... I caused you a lot of grief back then and I want to make it right."

"It doesn't matter," Dolores said, sniffing. "You're right... the vision is set in stone."

"Except it isn't unless you make it that way."

"...huh?"

Tio Bruno gestured towards the river again. "We just talked about it... you can't see the details. Just get a vague sense of the river. I might get a vision that say there will be a fire in the valley in a year. It could be a fire that burns everything down... or a campfire and we are all roasting marshmallows."

Dolores though wasn't convinced. "You... you said that the man of my dreams would just out of reach, betrothed to another."

"...and that could mean all sorts of things," Bruno pointed out. "Man of your dreams... doesn't mean that it is someone you love, you know, romantically. Maybe it's a friend who you have dreams about and they are getting married." Dolores shook her head, lips pressed together. "Yeah, that was stretching. Okay, maybe it's a bad thing. Dreams and nightmares... trust me, I've dealt with Dream Wizards... they can be real vile."

Dolores filed that one away for later but returned to the topic at hand. "Tio... the man of my dreams is Marianno."

"Who mama is pressing Isabella to marry," Bruno said with a groan.

"Yes... he's out of reach! Engaged to my cousin! I will never-"

"How long?"

"What?"

Bruno's face lit up. "How long did I say he would be out of reach?"

"I... forever."

"Nooooo," he said with a grin, walking his fingers up her arm and flicking her earlobe. "I said "The man of your dreams will be out of reach, engaged to another". I didn't say he'd be out of reach forever."

"I would... I would never do that to Isabella!"

"What? You... no! No no no!" he waved his hands rapidly. "I mean... engaged isn't married."

Dolores blinked at that. She... she had never considered that. All these years she had thought the prophecy meant that the man of her dreams would be lost to her forever and she would die alone. But... Bruno had never said the man of her dreams would be MARRIED to another. Engaged.

Engaged was an entirely different thing.

"So," he said with a smile. "Man of your dreams?"

"Eep!" Dolores whimpered, realizing she'd said far too much. "Uh, could I-?"

"Not a chance. Talk to your tio."

Dolores let out a sigh. "He... I hear him practicing his poetry and it is SO good! But he doesn't think it's good at all but I just want to tell him it's lovely. He's so nervous about it. And he loves his mama and just wants to help her and..." she licked her lips. "he... hates flowers."

"...and he's going to be engaged to Isabella?"

"Our family... it... well... you know."

"Yeah," Bruno said before standing up and grabbing the basket and blanket.

"What are you doing?"

"Going to find out what his intentions are for my sobrinas. Both of them."

"...Tio Bruno, no!" Dolores exclaimed but Bruno began to run off, cackling the entire time and Dolores was forced to chase after him, pleading for him not to, begging him to just let it go, it was perfectly fine and-

"Dolores?"

"EEP!" Her eyes went wide when she realized that Bruno had stumbled upon Marianno sitting outside the village himself, working away in a small notebook that he quickly hid.

"Were... were you talking... out loud?" He frowned. "I mean, you always could it's just... and am I talking too loud-"

"Mirabel made something so she can hear without wincing, it's a thing now," Bruno said breezily. "Listen, I wanted you to settle a bet for me. Do you feel that poetry works better if it follows a rhyming structure or is free flow?"

"Tio Bruno-" Dolores began, mortified.

"Oh, free form!" Marianno said excitedly. "It makes it far more of a challenge! Yes, one must be careful picking out words that rhyme but when it is in free form verse you must sculpt your art carefully, making use of every word so they flow, one after another."

Dolores couldn't stop herself. "I've thought as much. Each word is a link in a chain."

Marianno's eyes widened in delight. "Exactly! You must make sure that each link is strong! Why-"

They talked like that for another twenty minutes and for Dolores it was the most wonderful 20 minutes of her life. Her and Marianno shared their thoughts of verse and structure and... and it was so wondrous words failed her to describe it. And when they left Marianno begged her to come have lunch some time with him so time so they could discuss more poetry. He hadn't admitted he wrote some himself but... it was a step...

"Dolores," Bruno said softly, "Marianno... he's always lived in the valley, right?"

"Yes, he has. Why?"

Bruno frowned. "It's just... I sensed while talking with him…"

"What?"

He licked his lips.

"I think he might be a half breed."

~MC~GF~MC~GF~

Mr. Chaos Note: The analogy of forcing someone who is left handed to write with the right? True. That happened to my brother and my mom didn't find out until it was far too late. She was ENRAGED at his teacher… they never confirmed it but I believe she almost got the bitch fired. He is left handed but still can only write with his right because of that woman.