Chapter Text
The new Casita still smelled of fresh wood and paint. It was the scent of a new beginning, a perfume that everyone in the Madrigal family tried to inhale as if it were fresh air after a long drowning.
For Camilo, however, the smell was just one more new thing in a world that had been turned upside down.
He watched from above, hidden in the rafters of the newly built courtyard. He was in one of his favorite forms: a small chameleon, perfectly blended with the color of the dark wood.
From there, he could see everything. He could see Luisa laughing as she tried to teach a donkey to dance, refusing to simply lift it. He could see Isabela, with her short hair dyed with colorful pollen, creating black orchids that entwined with thorny cacti, a beautifully dangerous garden that Abuela now looked upon with a hesitant but genuine smile.
And he could see his Tío Bruno.
Bruno had been the center of his attention for weeks. The stories his mother used to tell about him—a seven-foot frame, rats along his back, a sinister gaze that brought misfortune—had dissolved like smoke.
The real Bruno was... disappointing, in a strangely captivating way.
He wasn't that tall. In fact, he was slightly hunched, as if he still expected the ceiling to be too low. He was always in his green poncho, fidgeting with his fingers and muttering to the rats that followed him like a small royal guard.
At that moment, Bruno was trying to help fix a rocking chair in the corner of the courtyard. His movements were clumsy and uncertain, he dropped a hammer, startled himself with the noise, and apologized... to a chair.
Camilo suppressed a laugh, feeling the chameleon's body ripple. It was ridiculous. This was the man who had haunted his childhood nightmares? This was the herald of doom?
And thats when something changed. Agustín approached, tripped over his own feet as usual, and hit his head on the chair Bruno was holding. With a quick instinct, Bruno dropped his tools, steadied his brother-in-law, and with an agility Camilo didn't expect, checked the bump forming on his forehead.
"Julieta!" Bruno called out, his voice hoarse from disuse but surprisingly firm. "Your food, please. quick!"
From Camilo's perspective, the scene was mundane. But he found himself mesmerized by the way Bruno's hands moved, the long, thin fingers hovering over Agustín's forehead with genuine concern. He noticed the intensity in Bruno's green eyes, the same green as his emerald visions, focused not on the future, but on the now, on the present.
A strange warmth crept up Camilo's neck. He felt like an intruder, as if he were spying on something intensely private. The chameleon form suddenly felt tight, and he shifted back into himself, crouching in the rafters.
"Camilo? What are you doing up there?"
The voice was Mirabel's. She was below, looking up at him with her hands on her hips and an amused smile. Beside her, a girl from the village, Cecilia, who helped tend to Isabela's new flowers, giggled.
Camilo felt his face grow hot, and for a moment, his hair flickered between its natural red and the black of Cecilia's hair. Get a grip, he thought.
"Oh, just... checking the structural integrity!" he said, in a pompous voice, briefly shifting into an old carpenter before leaping down to the floor with a flourish. "Everything is in order, cousin!"
Mirabel rolled her eyes, but the affection was clear. "Abuela is calling for lunch..." she lowered her voice and whispered, then, "...And stop spying on Tío Bruno."
Camilo froze. "I wasn't spying!"
"Your right ear twitches when you lie," Dolores said, walking past them with a soft "hm," without even glancing at them.
Camilo clapped a hand over his ear, outraged.
He looked back to where Bruno was. Julieta was already tending to Agustín, and Bruno had retreated to the shadows near the wall, watching the family scene from a safe distance, eyes glowing an almost neon green. His rats were climbing up his poncho. For an instant, his eyes met Camilo's.
There was no malice. There was just... a melancholy, a dark prophecy, a loneliness so deep that Camilo felt a shiver... and, perhaps, a flash of recognition, as if he knew exactly what Camilo was doing up there, watching.
Camilo's heart raced. He wasn't scared. It was something else, something he couldn't name. He was the first to look away, feeling exposed, as if his uncle hadn't just seen a curious boy, but something inside him that not even he himself understood yet.
Later, on the way to the dinner table, he couldn't get the image of Bruno's eyes out of his head. And for the first time, Camilo's thoughts about his uncle weren't about rats or prophecies, but about the loneliness of a man who lived in the shadows and, perhaps, saw more than just the future.