Pepa loved her family, but they were hard to deal with sometimes. She was known as the sensitive one, just because she couldn't hide how she was feeling. She tried. She spent her entire life trying and failing to conceal her emotions. She wasn't very good at it, and not just because of the constant storm clouds. But even though she wasn't good at it she could recognize when her family struggled.
They all had their tells. Dolores squeaked and her eyes went wide when she had a secret that she was trying not to share. Camilo shifted when he was shocked. Isabella's flowers were odd colors when she was upset, though she was getting better and better at hiding away that part. Luisa felt the need to work harder when she was stressed, and she struggled to sleep because of it. Mirabel liked things to be clean and organized, and she was always brushing off her clothes when she was upset.
Felíx didn't exactly have tells like this. He always wore his heart on his sleeve. That was part of why Pepa had been attracted to him in the first place, because a part of her wanted to be able to have that same confidence in her emotions, even though she understood why she couldn't.
Agustín could speak rather quickly when he was nervous or hiding something. It didn't happen often, but it was there. As for Pepa's mother, she was great at hiding her emotions. It was something that Pepa was both jealous and resentful of. But when she was having a particularly bad day she always wore her black mourning shawl. Always.
Julieta cooked when she was worried. Yes, she cooked all the time, but this was different, and Pepa could always tell when there was something more going on. It usually sorted itself out, but Pepa had seen Julieta struggle with these nerves of hers for a few days now, and it didn't seem to be easing up.
Julieta was tense. Agustín was hiding from the rest of the family, and Pepa didn't believe the story about him being sick for one second. She didn't think her mother believed it either. So all of the adults were tense and trying really hard to pretend that they weren't, and that was the kind of thing that the children picked up on.
So everybody was nervous, and all of that anxious energy made Pepa feel like even just a breath out of place would cause her to make a tempest. She was so unstable at the moment that even her mother thought that it would probably be for the best if she went home and tried to relax rather than cause a natural disaster. So Pepa reluctantly made her way home, her face burning and a thunder storm following her as she went. She felt like a child who was being sent home from school early because they had an outburst and couldn't be calmed down, and they were just a distraction for the other kids.
It was just as humiliating now as it had been when she was seven years old. She used to get sent home all the time. Nearly as often as…well, at the time it had been a relief to not be the only one, even if their mother was very unimpressed with the two of them when she had to pick them up.
Pepa tried to take a few calming breaths. She shouldn't be upset. She didn't necessarily want to be in town right now and interacting with people. She needed a break from the chaos of town, and also a small break from her family. She felt so bad about it, but it was incredibly overwhelming. She needed to get away from the town's and her mother's expectations. She needed just five minutes where she didn't need to reassure one of the kids that Agustín was just fine when she wasn't even sure if that was the case at all. And she needed to not be suspicious of and concerned about Julieta.
She just needed the chance to breathe.
She approached the doors to Casita, ready to fling them open, only to fumble a bit when the doors remained firmly closed no matter how hard she pulled on them. Pepa groaned and felt her stomach twist in knots as her storm cloud rumbled with thunder and finally started raining. It had been a while since Casita had kept her out of the house when she was storming.
Casita didn't normally mind bad weather in the house, but there were times when it seemed to hate it. It hadn't happened in years. Mostly it seemed to happen when Bru…when someone was having a bad day. Her storms always seemed to make hi…them jumpy. Casita had always liked them better than her, seeming to take pride in the fact that it was one of his few safe spaces. Pepa didn't usually mind it. She was usually happy that their home was so protective of their family. But she didn't appreciate being kept out of her home.
After all, wasn't it supposed to be her safe space too? Why did his sense of security always get prioritized over hers?
Well, Pepa wasn't going to sit out here and mope just because the house was being ridiculous. She had come here to relax inside, and she was determined to do just that. If Casita wouldn't let her in the house then she would find another way in.
She went to the other side of the house where the windows to the kitchen were. Her winds were always blowing the shutters open, whether Casita wanted them to or not. She would just go inside through the windows and retreat into her room before she upset Casita.
She felt absolutely ridiculous. But between being sent home by her mother, and locked out of the house because she just couldn't get a grip on her emotions, she felt like she was a teenager again. Well, if she felt like a child, and she was being treated like she was, then she might as well act like it again.
Pepa had no control of her weather, but sometimes it could do what she wanted. She saw the window shutters shaking and shuddering as she walked past them. She stopped next to one of the larger windows, and her wind blew it wide open. Thank goodness for that. Huffing to herself, Pepa stepped towards the window, only to freeze in her steps when she looked inside.
"Bruno." She said breathlessly. Her voice was drowned out by the whirling winds and deafening thunder. She couldn't even hear herself. She didn't hear Felíx as he tried to talk to her, probably to try to calm her. She didn't hear Agustín as he leaned towards her brother and seemed to try to calm him.
Though she couldn't hear it, she could see Bruno staring at her with wide panic-filled eyes. She could see him breathing harshly, practically hyperventilating. He looked terrified out of his mind. More scared than she had ever seen him before.
She had so many emotions whirling around her, and it showed in her storms. The wind picked up even more than it had been before. The wind had been strong, and now it was hurricane level. It wasn't raining in the house, but with the wind blowing the rain through the windows it might as well have been. She knew without looking that her storm clouds were getting bigger and darker. Everybody in town could probably see her storm.
She was far too overwhelmed with her emotions of anger, fear, relief, joy, betrayal, concern, and so much confusion. She couldn't handle worrying about what the people in the town or her family would think about her storm.
Well, almost everybody in the family.
A strike of lightning struck just a little too close to her. She wasn't afraid of the lightning, but she saw Bruno flinch violently and draw away. He was trembling as he got to his feet and tried to back away. Agustín and Felíx both looked nearly panicked. Agustín grabbed Bruno's arm, physically keeping him from moving.
That was what scared Pepa. Bruno being nervous was nothing new, but Agustín didn't get anxious easily. He was always so good at calming Bruno, and preventing him from moving when he desperately wanted to was not a good way of doing that. If Agustín wasn't doing this to calm or comfort Bruno, then he was doing it to protect him or prevent him from doing something Agustín thought he would regret.
Bruno was trying to get away. He was trying to leave. Again.
Pepa didn't know why he was here, and her emotions were too all over the place for her to figure out how she felt about it. All she knew was that she was scared of him disappearing on her again. Especially since it would be because of her this time.
No matter how she felt about her brother, she didn't want to scare him. She didn't want to make him feel unsafe. She wasn't trying to, but she couldn't help it. Her storm wasn't calming down. If it wasn't going to go away, and she didn't want Bruno to be the one to leave, then she needed to be the one to walk away.
She choked on a sob and ran away from the window. She couldn't bear to look at Bruno's frightened expression anymore. She had no plans of where she was going, but she knew she needed to be alone so her out of control emotions didn't harm anybody else. As she ran past the front door she saw it open for her, almost timidly. Casita was inviting her in.
She probably shouldn't. This was Bruno's safe place and she had already ruined it. But her bedroom really was the safest place for her to be. So Pepa ran inside, pointedly not looking towards the kitchen. She ran up the stairs, into her room, and slammed the door closed as she finally let out a scream.
Pepa fell to her knees, her legs refusing to support her anymore. She wrapped her arms around herself and just cried. She didn't know what she was feeling. She didn't know what she was thinking. All she knew was that she couldn't keep it in, and in her bedroom she didn't have to.
The small room prevented the storm from growing too large, so even though her emotions were as strong and all over the place as before the storm became more contained. The wind still blew, and the rain still soaked her, but the thunder quieted.
She drew her legs close to her chest and sobbed into her knees, her breath hitching as she tried and failed to calm down. She didn't know what was wrong with her. Why couldn't she just be happy to see her brother home and safe after all these years? Why couldn't she just yell at him and finally do what she'd been wanting to do since he disappeared and scold him for being so selfish and worrying them like this? Why did she have to sit here and cry, like she had any right to?
It was quiet enough now that she could hear the door open. She grew tense and held her breath as she waited to be left alone again. Whoever was there, likely Felíx, had to know that this wasn't the best time. It would be better for everybody if he focused on calming Bruno and making sure that he didn't run away again.
For a long minute there were no other sounds. The door wasn't closed, but nobody talked to her either. Pepa cautiously began to hope that she had been left alone after all when she heard quiet, almost inaudible, footsteps approach her. They were slow and cautious, sounding more like shuffling than anything. Felíx didn't walk like that. Neither did Agustín.
There was a rumble of thunder as her stomach dropped. She stiffened even more, her grip around herself so tight that it bordered on painful. She tried to force herself to relax, because if she didn't calm down then the storm would just get worse and she would scare away her brother. Trying to calm down just made her feel worse. How did people do this?
She heard rustling and felt some pressure next to her. Her breath hitched in her throat when she felt a gentle poke on her arm.
"Plop." Bruno's quiet voice said. Pepa's emotions were difficult to pin down, but now she felt more confused than anything. What was her brother doing?
She felt another soft poke, this time on her leg, and then a poke at the top of her head. "Plop plop."
He went on like this for several minutes before Pepa pulled away slightly and gave her brother a confused look. "What are you doing?"
Bruno blinked. He looked a little confused himself. Pepa thought it was probably because he had a tendency to not realize that what was so obvious to him was not always clear to others. "The, uh, the rain. I feel it so much that I don't really feel it anymore." Pepa understood the feeling well. At some point raindrops stopped feeling like drops and everything just felt like a culmination of being wet.
"But sometimes there's a drop that's bigger, or heavier, or it hits harder, and I feel it." Bruno said. He poked his own nose. "Like that. Just there." As though she could see it. He just looked like a drowned rat.
Bruno poked her nose. "Plop."
"So you're poking me to show me where the rain is hitting you?" Pepa didn't understand her brother? "Why? So I'll know how annoying it is." She already knew the rain was annoying, thank you very much. She didn't need a reminder.
"No." Bruno said plainly. "So you'll know how harmless it is." He poked her shoulder. "Plop." He drew back and looked at her. "See? That didn't hurt, did it?"
"Of course not." Pepa scoffed.
"It didn't hurt me either." Bruno said. "Your storm isn't going to hurt me. Or you. Or Julieta. Or anybody in town. M-maybe it's a little scary. Maybe it's hard to deal with sometimes, which I know you know better than anybody. But it's not going to hurt anybody. It's fine. I'm fine. You're fine."
Pepa felt her walls, as weak as they were, crumble. Bruno had always been afraid of her storms, but hearing him now she remembered that he had never scolded her for her emotions or her storms. He didn't try to remind her to have better control. If her storms were overwhelming for him he would just go somewhere else, because he accepted that the winds and rain couldn't be forced away. The storm needed to be waited out. Sometimes he escaped to his own room, taking shelter until she was able to find clear skies again. Sometimes though he would sit with her and just let the rain fall.
She didn't like her own storms. The rain was exhausting, but she couldn't get away from it. She didn't want to make anybody else suffer with her, but it was nice to have someone sit with her so she wouldn't have to be lonely as well as miserable.
"I'm still upset." Pepa said. That was an understatement. She had a lot of feelings about Bruno, and trying to think about what they all meant would just make the storm worse and give her a headache.
"I can see that." Bruno gave the cloud a pointed look. She rolled her eyes and gave him a small push. He gave her a sheepish smile that looked just a little bit forced. "T-to be honest, I'm still a little scared. So how about we just don't talk about that stuff? We can just sit and wait for the skies to clear, and then…then we'll talk." He sounded just as worried about it as she felt. She wasn't sure why she was nervous though. She wondered if he wasn't quite sure either.
"You won't leave?" Pepa asked.
"Not unless you want me to." Bruno said. He gave her a careful look. "Do you want me to?" Pepa shook her head. "Then I won't."
Pepa felt like a weight was lifted off her chest. She didn't know how to say 'thank you', so she didn't. Instead when she felt a particularly cold drop of water land on her forehead and fall down her face she decided that turnabout was fair play. She poked Bruno's forehead and then trailed her finger down his face, following the path of the rain.
"Plop." She said. Bruno let out a shaky breath and closed his eyes. From anybody else she would think that he was in pain. She knew what Bruno looked like when he was scared and upset, and this wasn't it. He looked cautious, but content. That was just how she felt.
She closed her own eyes and leaned against her brother for the first time since she could remember. She didn't feel at peace, the rain still falling made that much clear, but Bruno was right. She was fine. He was safe. It wasn't perfect, and as soon as she knew how she felt she would want so much more, but for now this was what she needed, and she thought this was what he needed too.