Book 1- The Outsider to Encanto

Chapter Nine: Behold the Future

"You know, Bruno," Catherine said as she stood opposite him at the table. Though they could hear movement on the floor above as the family readied for bed, they were alone. "You're the only Madrigal who hasn't shown me their gift."

"You don't want to see mine. It's not as impressive as controlling the weather, or, shapeshifting," Bruno muttered.

"You see the future."

Bruno slowly nodded.

"I'm curious."

"Everyone always is." Bruno sighed. "But the future is never what anyone wants it to be and then next thing you know, 'Oh, it's all Bruno's fault. He's a bad guy who makes bad things happen! Bruno's vision made me fat! Bruno's vision made me cheat on my wife'."

"Really?"

Bruno shrugged and went back to feeding the rats.

"But time doesn't work like that," Catherine continued. "It's always changing. Same as the future, it's never fully set in stone. It's more... written in glass."

Bruno looked up wondering if she knew that aspect of his gift.

"It's susceptible to breaking so it can be rebuilt and rewritten. You could predict that I could cut all my hair off. And it could be written in glass, except I may change my mind, suddenly decide that I like my long hair, and decide to not cut it and then that glass future that you had is now not going to happen."

"There are some things that are certain," Bruno said and muttered. He couldn't take his eyes off her. How she spoke of the future...

"I believe that fixed points in time, fixed events in time, are at the mercy of time. There are always going to be things we cannot control though we wish we could. Those are events of time, such as death, which is inevitable for everything, products of some grand design like genetics, or situations that have been produced by past actions. Walk along a path long enough and your destination starts becoming a bit more certain."

Bruno finally looked away, he pet his rat though for some reason he could no longer remember the name he gave it. His head and chest felt fuzzy, light and warm. And immediately wanted to kick himself. She was so young!

"Bruno?"

He made the mistake of looking up into her blue eyes. Blue, like the clear skies before clouds rolled in. She reached for his hand on the table. Her touch was warm. The small touch sent a shock up both of their arms, but instead of drawing them apart the shock only wanted them to stay together.

"Will you have a vision for me?"

How could he say no to her? He wanted to, Bruno didn't want to see any future he already sort of knew. But what if it had changed? What if his future had changed since Pepa and Julieta made him look all those years ago? If it had changed since Catherine had come back to the encanto?

Slowly, Bruno turned his hand to take hers. He led her up the stairs to the glowing door with his name and silhouette on it. Catherine had become familiar with the enchanted doorways that led into rooms designed to the Madrigal who owned them, but they still never ceased to amaze her.

Through Bruno's door, Catherine's jaw dropped. There wasn't much to start. Just an empty entryway with a near-empty bookcase. All it had was a family portrait and a lamp on top. The thing that caught Catherine's attention was the curtain of falling sand on an hourglass-shaped arch.

"The sands of time," Catherine unintentionally said in a breath.

"Yeah," Bruno said. "A lot of sand."

He tilted the lamp and the curtain of sand began to separate and the room made a small groan as stairs that lead down into the open space beyond, appeared.