Archive of Our Own ^beta

There were a lot of things Bruno missed about living outside of the walls of Casita. Sunlight, fresh air, a warm meal, a hot bath, a proper bed, not having to hide in isolation from your family that was only two feet away and suppress the constant feeling of loneliness and depression caused by your self-imposed exile, the list went on.

Surprisingly, one thing he hadn’t thought about was a haircut. A proper one, done by someone else who could actually see the back of his head, and who knew how to take care of his mop of curls better than he ever could. A chunk of time where he could entrust his head to someone else and just enjoy the sensation of someone taking care of him. Yes, he missed getting haircuts.

And now, he was no longer living in the walls or in isolation. So, it followed that, on a bright, sunny afternoon, Bruno found himself sitting in a chair in the yard, a towel wrapped around his shoulders, preparing for his first haircut in ten years.

And behind him, Agustín prepared as well. With combs, brushes, blades, and scissors of all kinds laid out on a table and ready for action. There was also an assortment of sprays, tonics, oils, creams, and waxes that he could use to revitalize his brother-in-law’s neglected and damaged hair.

Félix placed a basin of water and a towel close by Agustín before taking a seat by the table of tools, ready to help in any way he could. Pepa and Julieta stood on the patio by the doors that led to the dining room, watching from a distance.

All was prepared for a well-needed grooming session.

Perhaps some would find it odd that it was clumsy Agustín Madrigal who was doing Bruno's hair. In fact, there were plenty of people who feared the idea of such a notoriously accident-prone man approaching their head with a pair of scissors in hand.

But in truth, Agustín all but transformed into a completely different man when wielding scissors. He was, in fact, one of the best hairdressers in the little village of Encanto, and it was he who had approached Bruno about fixing up his hair after the resurrection of Casita.

“Just a trim,” he had said, “to clean up the ends and all that.”

But Bruno could see his brother-in-law’s darting eyes and fidgeting hands. Most likely, the state of neglect his hair was in was driving the poor man up the walls. So, Bruno quickly agreed to have a haircut and Agustín was delighted. Pepa gave them nice weather the very next day and Agustín was excitedly setting up his table in the yard after breakfast.

They started with a well-needed wash, getting dirt, rat fur, crumbs, and dried spackle out of his locks. Then, with his hair still damp, Agustín began to cut and trim away.

He combed out matted and tangled hair, cut off split ends, and evened out edges. Then he gently dried his hair, adding some sprays and oils where needed, and went back in with his scissors to make smaller, more detailed cuts.

The final result had Bruno’s head feeling lighter and cleaner than it had in years and took at least five years off his looks.

With his hair done, Agustín quickly moved onto his beard, which was patchy in some places and definitely uneven. There was soap and cream on his bread and a blade to his cheek and neck, but Bruno tilted his head back obediently and trusted Agustín completely. It was done in a few minutes, and he had come out looking sharper and neater than ever.

As Bruno sat in the chair with a mirror, looking at himself and for once not cringing away, he heard something from the house. He glanced over and saw his sisters standing side by side, smiling at him. But it wasn’t an “I’m so happy for you, you look great” kind of smile, but a “nope I’m most definitely not laughing, I’m just happy for you, don’t worry” kind of smile.

“Oh,” Pepa said, doing a terrible job at keeping her giggles down, “is that it? He’s not going to cut off more? Maybe go for an even younger look like before?”

Bruno swerved in his seat and stared down at his sisters.

“Are you serious?” he cried, involuntary laughter bubbling up in his stomach. He half-heartedly glared at his giggling sisters and chanced to see Isabela walking by behind them.

“Isabela!” he called. Surprised, Isabela jumped a bit at her tío’s unusually loud voice.

“Yes?” she replied.

“How old are you?”

“21, I’ll be 22 in a few months.” She gives a slight tilt to her head, confused and hoping for an explanation. But Bruno gave her none as he directed his attention back to his sisters.

“It’s been 16," he pointed an accusing finger at them, "almost 17 years since that happened and you’re still going to bring that up?” Bruno cried.

“I’ll stop bringing it up when I’m dead.” Pepa laughed, a rainbow shimmering behind her. Beside her, Julieta hid her mouth behind her hand, but couldn’t help the shake of her shoulders. She gave a weak shove to her sister with her elbow, but it only spurred on more laughter.

At the sound of their bickering and laughing, the children of the house begin to wander over, curious what the commotion was. When they looked to Isabela for an explanation, she could only shrug in equal confusion.

Bruno stomped over towards them from his chair, leaving Agustín and Félix to clean up. He gave a limp swipe at Pepa, which she easily dodged with a light-hearted twirl towards the table.

She pulled out a chair and flopped down, a bright smile on her face and an even brighter rainbow behind her head. Bruno followed her in and took a seat beside her, gently setting down the hand mirror on the table and running a hand through his hair. Julieta shuffled after the two and took a seat on the other side of Bruno.

Curious eyes watched the family triplets, taken aback by their seemingly childish behavior. Pepa was all smiles and snark, Bruno exasperated and embarrassed, Julieta desperately trying to calm herself and stamp down her laughter. None of the Madrigal kids had ever seen their parents like this before.

“So,” began Camilo, “is anyone going to share the joke?"

"What is going on, I’m so confused," muttered Luisa.

“We’re just remembering a little something that happened years ago,” Pepa explained as she waved her hand.

“16 years ago,” Bruno corrected, elbows on the table and head in his hands, “and it wasn’t little. If it was little, I wouldn’t have been stuck in the bathroom for three hours,” he hissed. Pepa gave out a burst of laughter, leaning back in her chair. Julieta gave a forced cough before sitting up straight.

“It all happened before many of you were born.” Julieta explained, “Back when Isabela and Dolores were still five.”

“They were four,” Bruno corrected again, “it happened two weeks before Isabela’s fifth birthday.”

At this point, the kids began to take their seats at the table, sitting across from the adults. It was apparently storytime now, and everyone was eager to listen to the story that dragged out such varying reactions from the adults.

Antonio sat on Mirabel’s lap, rats on their heads and shoulders, all of them watching tío Bruno run his hands through his newly cut hair. Isabela and Dolores sat front and center, curious about this story from their childhood neither could remember. Especially Isabela, who had no real memories of her tío Bruno outside of getting one vision.

Camilo sat beside Dolores, staring at his beaming mother, and next to him sat Luisa, who couldn’t stop watching her chuckling mother. And soon enough, Félix and Agustín joined as well, sitting beside their respective wives.

Aside from Abuela Alma, who was at the local market likely picking passive-aggressive fights with the other elderly ladies of their village, the whole family was assembled and ready for a trip down memory lane.

Reluctant, but a storyteller at heart, Bruno took up the tale with comments added in by his sisters along the way.

--

The event had taken place nearly 16 years ago, two weeks before Isabela’s fifth birthday. Tensions were high and the house was in silent chaos.

The triplets had received their gifts at five, so it was reasonable to believe that their kids would get their gifts at five as well. But there was the question about whether or not the kids would get gifts at all. This sadly meant that no one knew how big they ought to plan the party.

They could throw Isabela a huge party for both her birthday and her gift celebration. But then what if she didn’t get a gift? The disappointment would be overwhelming, and a party of that scope would be overkill for just a birthday. It would make the Madrigals look arrogant and tarnish their reputation.

But if they planned a party for just her birthday and then she did get a gift, the party would be underwhelming, and the resulting news would be catastrophic. People would likely flock to the Madrigal residence to see the new door and they wouldn’t be prepared to host so many people at once.

That’s what happened for the triplets all those years ago and Abuela Alma was determined not to go through that Hell again. Once was enough.

And either way they went, it could end up with things being highly unfair to Dolores, whose birthday would be next, and would expect a party similar to Isabela’s in scale. If they planned a big party and Isabela didn’t get her gift, they’d naturally downsize the party for Dolores, and that would be unfair to Dolores. But if Isabela had a small party and did get a gift, then it would be unfair to Isabela when Dolores got a bigger party that accommodated both occasions.

And they couldn’t wait for the door to appear because no one knew when the door would appear. If it was based on what happened with the triplets, it would mean that the door would appear the day of their birth, and a single day wouldn’t be enough time to plan and prepare a party.

Put shortly, it was a mess.

For that particular day, everyone was out doing their part in the community while also preparing for the party, making contingency plan after contingency plan. And with everyone busy, Bruno had been tasked with keeping an eye out on the girls.

The event in question transpired in the nursery after they had just had lunch.

Isabela was showing off her newly acquired white dress for the party, holding it up to her chest and twirling around. Meanwhile, Dolores was showing Bruno all of her drawings and the ideas she had for her dress.

Then, somewhere down the line, Isabela had asked her tío,

“What are you going to wear to my birthday, tío Bruno?”

Her eyes were wide and sparkled with excitement and curiosity. After all, her mother had promised her she wouldn’t wear her apron the whole party and her father would wear the flower broach she had made him. To her, it only made sense that the rest of the family would dress up as well.

“Me?” Bruno had laughed nervously, “I’m going to wear what I always wear. I can’t outshine our princesa on her big day,” he joked. It was a reasonable excuse, but Isabela wasn’t having it, and nor was Dolores.

They had pouted and whined and argued with him. Bruno must look nice at the party! There would be people in the house, and Abuela always said you should look presentable in front of others.

To this day, Bruno wasn’t quite sure which one had brought up the idea, but he had settled on resenting both nieces equally for what happened next.

The girls had come to the conclusion that they must dress up tío Bruno for the party.

To that end, they set about the room to find things to dress him up with and conversed between each other their plan of action. Meanwhile, while their backs were turned, Bruno made the quick decision to put Isabela’s white dress away.

He stuffed it into its box and hid the box on top of the closet out of their reach. If this was going to get as messy as he thought it would, he needed to at least protect the dress, lest Julieta slaughter him like a pig for dinner. He also shoved Dolores’ drawings up there too, lest he be zapped by Pepa for upsetting her daughter.

If only he could have hidden himself up there too.

Their conversing done, the girls then dragged their tío onto the floor and had him sit with his back to the only mirror in the room, which stood next to the door, effectively having him stare out the window and watch the day go by.

They had pulled out their hairbrushes and began pulling and yanking at his hair. Ribbons, hair clips, and scarves went through their small hands and tangled with his curls. It was painful to some degree, but he couldn’t bring himself to stop them. They were just so happy and having so much fun. And anyway, it was just clips and ribbons, they’d come out eventually. It was fine.

Oh, if only that was all they used.

It was likely a combination of having his back to the door, the pain all over his head, and some level of dissociating needed to endure this kind of play that Bruno hadn’t noticed what happened during their playtime.

At some point, one of the girls, probably both at different points in time, had slipped out of the room and into their mothers’ room and Abuela's room. From there, they had grabbed anything and everything that looked like it could be used to tame tío Bruno’s wild mane.

This included combs, hair clips, ribbons, earrings, and broaches that could be used to pin up his hair. But also, Agustín’s pomade, his shoe polish, shaving cream and soap, Félix’s hair oil, his skin cream, and the wax used to waterproof jackets and bags. Also, Abuela’s sewing box and a tin of buttons.

Every single one of these things ended up in Bruno’s hair.

As time went on, the weight of his head was becoming harder and harder to bear. It was right when he was about to question his nieces that they proclaimed that they were finished.

This was when Bruno finally awoke from his stupor and looked at the mess the room was in. His stomach didn’t just drop to his feet but went through the floor and down to the first floor of Casita.

The room looked like a hurricane twice the size as the one at Pepa and Félix’s wedding had been in the room. Fabric, ribbons, buttons, pins, and jewelry adhered to every available flat surface within the reach of his nieces. Dark splotches of unidentified substances covered the floor, the walls, the blankets, the desk, the nightstands, and pretty much everything else in the room. Empty boxes and metal tins laid dead on the floor by the feet of his adorably destructive nieces.

--
“I’m going to be honest; I felt a little bit like crying.”
--

And as Bruno struggled to find the appropriate words to say to his nieces, Julieta had called for dinner just as the stomachs of both girls growled. In a flash, the girls had taken their tío’s hands and dragged him out of the room, down the stairs, and to the archway to the dining room and kitchen.

Julieta had been in the middle of making some extra dough for some arepas. The dough was still sticky and just beginning to form a ball when she looked up.

She had been about to ask them to set the table, but what ended up coming out of her mouth was a strangled sputtering noise and a wheeze.

Beneath the arch that connected the inner courtyard to the kitchen and dining room, Bruno stood, hunched over and defeated, and wore an expression that said, “I am ready to die.”

His hair valiantly defied gravity, made up into twisted and bent spikes, like a splintered tree that was struck by lightning. His hair glistened and shined under the setting sunlight that spilled into the room, reminiscent of sticky motor oil.

A curtain of colorful and dirty ribbons dangled from his head, some tangled and glued together, others decorated with buttons and safety pins. Buttons could also be found in his hair, tangled up in what could only be called his antlers, bunched together like wilting, colorful flowers. And somewhere deep inside his nest of crusty hair were scarves that pulled at his scalp, earrings to pin them down and make his head itch, and confetti.

--
“It wasn’t just vertical, it was horizontal!”

“Julieta, that sentence barely makes any sense.”

“It doesn’t make sense, just like your hair that day! I’m tearing up just thinking about it.”
--

Unable to breathe, Julieta took her sticky hands out of the bowl and braced her arms against the island counter, determined to keep her kitchen clean. It was about the last thing she could do as she bent over and let out another strangled cry. She coughed and gasped, and let out a series of breathless, wheezing laughs as tears pricked at her eyes.

“Girls!” she called, “What did you do!?”

“We dressed him up!” Dolores replied.

“Yeah, he’s ready for the party now!” Isabela added, shining with pride.

Julieta looked up once more, their words so adorable yet their work so painful to look at. But in the end, the sight of her daughter and niece, both beaming and proud, standing beside an absolutely exhausted and dead-looking Bruno had her losing her mind. It took every bit of concentration she had left to keep herself upright as she let her head fall and hit the table.

“Julieta! Is something wrong?” It was Pepa, coming home from a day in the fields. Bruno looked up at the ceiling and prayed quietly, though he knew he’d be ignored,

“Please let this be over. Just end me now.”

“Brun-HA!”

She didn’t even make it inside. Instead, Pepa staggered and clutched the frame of the door that connected the patio to the dining room. Her full-belly laugh rose up into her chest and fizzled out, leaving her a gasping mess like her sister in the kitchen.

--
“You couldn’t even make it to the dining room. You saw me and just died on the spot.”

“Can you blame me? You looked insane! I’m more surprised I caught myself at all!”
--

A cloud quickly formed above Pepa’s head. From it, sunlight shined and lit up both the room and Bruno’s greasy, waxy hair. Hail began to fall, clattering against the tile to match her laughter.

“Wha-ah ha ha HA- What happened!?” Pepa just barely managed to ask as she clutched her aching stomach.

“We made him prettier! Look!”

“No- Wait, stop!”

Bruno’s pleas fell on unhearing ears as he was tugged forward by his nieces. He took the two steps to the dining room at once, resulting in a loud thud. He had managed to stay upright, but the painful impact of the sudden drop went right through his foot and up his spine and to his head.

A collection of buttons and confetti fell from his hair and onto the floor.

Whatever sense or calmness or self-control either sister had been able to collect vanished once again.

Julieta wheezed and cried and laughed as she fell to her knees, arms still braced on the counter. She was on the verge of hyperventilating as her stomach began to cramp from laughing.

Pepa too laughed until she cried, tears streaming down her face as she slid down onto the floor. She snorted and clucked like a hen, each laugh shaking her whole body.

Behind her, Félix approached to see what the commotion was. But before he could reach his wife, he saw Bruno and staggered back.

“Oh no! Bruno! What happened?”

At least he was more coherent than his wife, but even then, his words were laced with laughter, and he was soon bent over, clutching his knees.

Before Bruno could even answer, Agustín came in from the front door.

In much the same fashion as Félix, Agustín was taken aback by the sight of his painfully colorful brother-in-law. Bruno could hear him sputtering and coughing behind him, trying desperately to keep his composure.

“Your daughter and your niece happened. Please take full responsibility.” Bruno muttered.

“Don’t worry,” Agustín assured as he approached, clearing his throat. “Félix and I will take care of yo- oh you’re sticky, why are you sticky?”

--
“He was sticky!”

“Julieta, honey, darling, breathe.”

“I can’t! He was sticky. Ngh-”

“Pepa, you’re making it snow.”

“I know! I can’t help it! Sticky Bruno! I just can’t- HA!”
--

Agustín had tried to clap him on the back as a show of support but was quick to pull his hand away in horror, his hand now covered in something dark, gooey and sticky.

Both women were now completely on the floor, laughing and crying.

Julieta had given up on keeping herself upright and now sat on the floor of her kitchen. Her doughy hands were now crusty and dry, and she held them to her chest as she wheezed and rocked back and forth. She took in a nasally breath, and let out a series of hiccupping, sob-like laughs that bounced her whole body and just vaguely sounded like words.

Similarly, Pepa was down for the count in the doorway, curled up laughing and coughing as she choked on each laugh, spit running down her chin. The floor around her was becoming white as more hail began to fall and pile up around her. Above her stormy gray cloud was sunlight and rainbows that wavered with each shuddering breath she took.

The three men watched in silence as the two women lost their minds. It was then that the Madrigal matriarch decided to make her entrance. Her steps were hurried, rushing up the hill to see what the commotion was.

There were plenty of things she wanted to say, things to ask and demand. But the sight of her disgruntled son looking like a possessed half-beaten piñata and her two daughters laughing themselves into the grave made the words die in her throat.

She held a hand to her mouth, brows knit together, as her mind struggled to figure out what exactly she was feeling. She reached out to touch her son, but Agustín held out a hand and shook his head, showing her his own sticky hand.

Abuela Alma pulled her hand back, took a breath, and said,

“Bruno, go take a bath.”

“Awesome, great, they’re your problem now, goodbye.” And with that, Bruno turned on his heel, ribbons fluttering around him, and he silently went upstairs.

“Feel free to use our bathroom," Agustín called after him, "there should be some oil on the shelves and scissors in the left-hand drawer of the vanity.” There was a muffled reply from Bruno and the sound of a door closing.

It was Isabela who then pulled on her father’s trouser leg.

“We dressed Bruno up for my party. Is he going to wash everything away?” Her lower lip wobbled in distress.

“But we worked so hard!” Dolores continued, her lip beginning to wobble as well.

“Oh, mija, it’s okay,” Félix replied, stepping around his cry-laughing wife on the floor and approaching his daughter.

“That’s right,” Agustín followed, crouching down to meet his own daughter’s gaze. “And anyway, your birthday isn’t for another two weeks. You’re a bit early to dress him up.”

As the fathers counseled their daughters, Alma looked around to assess the damage. It was obvious they weren’t going to have dinner any time soon, as whatever Julieta had left in the oven was beginning to burn and she wasn’t making any movement to get it out. Pepa too was in no condition for company as weather anomalies swirled around her as she came down from her laughter.

“Girls,” she proclaimed, looking down at her granddaughters, “why don’t you two and I take a trip to the market and find something for us to eat. It seems Julieta is too tired to make us anything tonight.” The girls looked up at their Abuela, then nodded. Taking their hands, Abuela Alma walked them to the front door. Over her shoulder, she called back,

“Try and clean up as much as you can before we get back.” And with that, the three were gone.

--
“Oh, how my body filled with dread when I heard Abuela say that.”

“We hadn’t even done anything yet and I was already tired.”
--

As the front door closed, Julieta’s door opened, and a very wet and sheepish-looking Bruno peeked out from behind the door from the second floor.

“Bruno, is something wrong?” Agustín called up.

“Yeah, uh, it’s not coming out,” Bruno replied.

“What?” Félix asked.

“I don’t know what they put in my hair, but it’s not washing out. I think I’m going to have to cut it. Could one of you come help me?”

“I’ll be right up.” Agustín took the stairs by two and rushed up to the second floor and to his wife's room. Félix followed up behind him but headed towards the nursery instead to assess the damage.

Back in the kitchen, Julieta heaved herself up and off the floor, turned off the heat on her stove, and pulled out a very burnt arroz con pollo from the oven. With that now out and cooling, Julieta hobbled over to the dining room table, taking a seat beside her sister who had dragged herself over from the floor.

There was a beat of silence before Julieta seized up and began to laugh again.

“Poor Bruno- Pfft-“ Julieta covered her mouth and pressed her forehead to the table.

“ Julieta!” Pepa cried before she slammed her fist down on the table as she tried desperately to keep her laughter in this time. Hail continued to fall around them.

Up above them, they heard the bang of a door and Félix’s hurried steps.

“Agustín! They used your shoe polish! And my waterproof wax!”

“What!?”

Thunder cracked and the hail turned to fluffy snow. Winds began to blow and the snow, hail, and Bruno’s buttons and confetti began spinning in a mini hurricane. Pepa pounded her fist on the table and Julieta nearly fell off her chair, tears streaming down both of their faces.

An hour and a half later, the two women somehow calmed themselves down and cleaned up the dining room and kitchen. Soon after, Alma and the girls arrived home. They had baked sweets and takeout from the local restaurant for the rest of the family, having dined together earlier.

Leaving the food in the kitchen, Alma escorted the two girls up the stairs, ready to put them to bed. But as she arrived at the top of the stairs, she had to stop and avert her eyes. The door to the nursery was wide open, and even without approaching, she could see the Hellish mess the nursey was in.

Putting on a smile, she bent down to her granddaughters.

“Why don’t you two come sleep with me tonight?”

“A sleepover?” Dolores asked with hope and delight in her eyes. Isabela too looked expectantly at her Abuela.

“That’s right. Now, come with me,” and then Alma guided her granddaughters to her room.

It would be another hour and a half later before she would emerge from her room.

Unlike Bruno, who could spin the most fantastical, wonderous stories that could grab any child’s wandering attention, it had taken a while to get them to focus on her. It took even longer to get them to settle in, unlike Félix or Julieta, who were champions at getting fussy children to calm down. Then it took multiple stories before they fell asleep, as the two girls were too used to Pepa or Agustín’s style of storytelling, which was filled with extra details, interactive side quests for them and the characters, and little tickles and kisses for them throughout the story.

By the time they had fallen asleep, Alma was quite ready to go to bed herself. But she chose to check in on her family one more time before calling it a day.

As she exited to the hall, her daughters had just finished climbing the stairs and were heading to Julieta’s door.

“Has everyone eaten?” Alma asked.

“No,” Julieta shook her head, “the boys haven’t come out since you left for the market.”

“We were just about to check in on them,” Pepa explained.

Alma sighed; she was very ready for the day to be over. She quietly gestured for her daughter to open her door and Julieta led them into her room. As they entered Julieta’s room of expansive drawers, shelves, cupboards, and pantries, they soon found the boys.

In the middle of the room, sitting on a stool surrounded by towels, Bruno sat with a mirror in his hand, running his fingers through his hair. Agustín was just beginning to put his tools away as Félix began to sweep up a fat baby capybara’s worth of black hair off the floor.

They had put in a valiant effort in their cleaning efforts to salvage Bruno's hair. But, in the end, they had failed to remove all of the junk. And with the myriad of strange things they had put into it, Agustín had determined that the best course of action was to cut most of it off.

Bruno was obviously not happy about this, he enjoyed having his hair long as it hid his face, but he gave himself up to the professional and obediently sat still as Agustín went to work. After all, he wasn't interested in finding more buttons and confetti in his hair. He had enough sand to deal with as it is.

And so, Agustín hacked off most of Bruno's hair, leaving him with close-cropped hair that left his neck, ears, and forehead exposed. In an effort to make it look at least a bit intentional and planned, Agustín had styled his hair a little, allowing Bruno's hair to lay in such a way that it made the cut more natural-looking and to cover up any uneven spots.

Alma walked over with a gentle smile on her lips. She reached out and gently touched the side of her son’s head.

“Oh, Brunito, you look just like you did when you got your gift.”

It was perhaps the sweetest thing she had said to him in years, and Bruno couldn’t help but smile up at his mother.

The moment did not last very long.

Behind her, Pepa sputtered and cackled.

“You look five years old!” Pepa cried out, doubled over, laughing. Beside her, Julieta smacked her arm hard, but she too went down with her, collapsing on top of her sister, laughing once again.

“Pepa! Julieta!”

“I hate you both!”

“Bruno!”

--

“And that, my dear nieces and nephews, is the story of why I’m not in any of the celebration photos from Isabela or Dolores’ fifth birthdays and why your mothers are the worst,” Bruno concluded.

There was a beat of silence as the kids stared with open mouths. On either side of Bruno, Pepa and Julieta were being comforted by their spouses as they had both collapsed from laughter during the course of the retelling. Bits of hail and snow now littered the floor. Then all of the children began to talk at once.

“Are you sure there aren’t any photos of you from back then?”

“I wish I had been born sooner; I want to see you with greasy gravity-defying hair!"

"Maybe we can recreate it! Let's do it again!”

“Tío Bruno, you should cut your hair like that again. You’d look great!”

“Is that why some of the floorboards in the nursery are different colors? Because you had to replace them?”

“Was the ceremonial dress okay? What about the drawings?”

"Are you sure it was a fat baby capybara's worth of hair? Because that's a lot of hair."

Among all of the chatter, Isabela and Dolores remained silent. Instead, the two sat shoulder to shoulder, hidden among palm leaves that Isabela had sprouted during the storytelling. Both were hot with embarrassment, as neither could remember the events being recounted, yet were the central destructive force in the tale. It was Isabela who spoke first,

“Tío Bruno, I’m so sorry.” She could barely bring herself to meet his eyes as more leaves grew around her. There was some laughter there, but mostly, she was just embarrassed and a bit mortified.

“It’s okay,” he reassured, “you two were still really little. And luckily, my haircut satisfied you both, so you didn’t demand another round of dress-up for your birthday parties. Otherwise, I think we would have had to cut off all of my hair.”

“I don’t remember this,” Dolores muttered, head in her hands and rocking gently back and forth. “I don’t remember this at all. And you still treated me so nicely after too! You saved me during my ceremony when I got my gift and I got overloaded by all the noise. Even though we hurt you and put weird things in your hair and forced you to have a haircut.”

“Well,” Bruno waved his hand, “it may have hurt a little, but I promise you it will take much more to make me hate you. And anyway, I wasn’t about to abandon either of you over something silly like forcing me to get a well-needed haircut when you were five.” Dolores groaned, but eventually scooted away from the leaves and smiled up at her Tío. They shared a knowing look, and soon the family was filled with soft chuckles.

“Then,” Isabela muttered, “if you didn’t abandon us, why don’t I have any more memories of you? I don’t remember you at all growing up.” Her words weren’t accusing or angry, just a tad hurt and confused.

“Isabela,” Bruno said softly, reaching across the table and gently taking her hand, “you don't have any memories of me because your Abuela monopolized all of your time after you got your gift. I couldn’t spend time with you even if I wanted to, and I promise you, I did.” He gave her hand a little squeeze, “If you want, we can start spending time together now since we’re all back together.”

Flowers and succulents began to grow around her, obscuring her more, but eventually, Isabela gave a gentle, “yeah, okay,” before taking her hand back.

There were gentle laughs and smiles all around. After a while, Julieta stood from her chair and stretched.

“Wow, I haven’t laughed that hard in a while. Time to make dinner.”

Pepa stood also, shaking out her arms as she followed her sister into the kitchen.

“I’ll help. That was great, we should do more family storytimes like that. Anyone else going to help?” she called back.

Luisa, Camilo, Antonio, and Mirabel all got up and followed their mothers into the kitchen.

Then, Casita's tiles began to clatter. From the kitchen, Mirabel called out.

"Casita says that Abuela's coming up the path. Someone go help her with her bags."

"We've got it," Agustín said, standing up with Félix, who waved Luisa down as she had taken some steps to go help. Her father gave her a pat on the shoulder, "You stay and have some fun." and with that, Luisa returned to the kitchen, and the two fathers left.

This left Dolores, Isabela, and Bruno at the table. The two girls glanced at each other, then smiled at Bruno.

Smiling back, Bruno hummed and leaned back into his chair and said, to no one in particular, “I think I’m going to stay right here and maybe talk to my precious sobrinas. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”