Reunion
Chapter 20 - Reunion
Charlie stared at her long-lost uncle, just barely aware of what he said, until the wood under the future-seer had cracked and broke under his feet. The blue bow blonde thought fast and caught him with one hand and a branch with another. Blitzo looked up to his niece with a smile but then the latter let go at being shocked over a rat showing themselves from under the former’s hood.
“Oh, no!” Charlie cried out, horrified at what she just did.
Then Blitzo stood up, his head barely peeking out from the dust that had built up at the bottom. He fanned it away with his poncho, showing that it actually wasn’t that deep of a fall.
“Huh,” the future-seer voiced. Apparently, nothing more could be said.
In any case, the two eventually managed to scale their way up and out of the hole. Blitzo had made eye contact with Charlie for a bunch of seconds.
Finally, he said, “bye.”
“W-what? No. Hold on! Wait. Wait!” A thud. “Ow… why did you take the vision?”
Blitzo got to knocking on the wood. “Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock. Knock on wood.” Then he took a deep breath, held it, and crossed his fingers before resuming on his way.
Charlie was still asking questions. “What does it mean? Is it why you came back or… Tio Blitzo?”
The future-seer lets go of his breath and does some knocking again, ending it with a knock to his head. “Knock, knock, knock. Knock, knock. Knock on wood.”
Finally, he answers his niece, “You were never supposed to see that vision. No one was.”
“But-“
“A little salt,” Blitzo said, tossing salt over his shoulder. It got Charlie in the face and she spat it out. “Now sugar…” Same thing happened with Charlie’s face but with sugar.
Now the future-seer was jumping around the cracks on the floor. The blue bow blonde saw that they were patched up, the same with the ones on the walls.
“Wait. Have you been in here patching the cracks?”
“Oh, that? No, no, no. Not that I’m scared or anything, definitely not, but I still don’t want to go up near those things. All the patching’s done by Lucifer.”
“And who is Lucife-?”
Charlie stopped herself at seeing Blitzo put the hood on and saying in a deep voice, “I’m Lucifer and I’m scared of nothing! Just like Blitzo but I’m willing to do him a solid at shit like this!”
Then the hooded guy took off his hood. “Okay, yeah, it’s actually me but don’t judge me, okay? I used to say that my real Gift was ‘acting’... at least before Penn crushed my dreams. But I know I would have made a killing, if shit didn’t get in the way.”
The blue bow blonde just stood there in silence as the future seer puts on a bucket and picks up a cement spreader.
Then in a high-pitched voice, Blitzo says, “I’m Lilith and I make the spackle.”
“…how long have you been back here?”
Instead of answering the question, the future-seer just takes his niece to his living space. There, the blue bow blonde saw so many rats. One rubbing their back on the bristles of the brush, one brushing its teeth, two running a record player, a whole bunch messing around in some hung-to-dry pants on a clothesline…
“You never left,” Charlie declared.
“Well, I left my tower, which was, you know, a shit ton of stairs and, uh… here, it’s kitchen adjacent.” Blitzo picked up an arepa and took a bite into it. Then he got excited as he picked up a rat on his comfy chair. “And free entertainment!”
The future-seer placed the rat down next to another, in between some handmade curtains on top of a barrel.
“So, what do you like? You like sports?”
Blitzo popped the rodents’ heads through holes of a piece of cardboard. It’s shown that he painted on it a soccer field with two players and a crowd watching. It was kind of bad but at least it could be made out for it’s meant to be. Besides, it had a special charm to it.
“Game shows?”
He removed the first cardboard to reveal one that had a wheel of things and a bunch of lights behind a host and a lady contestant and a trio of rabbits.
“Telenovelas?”
Finally, the last cardboard had two women under a starry night, one holding a rose to the other.
Then as the future-seer plopped down on his chair, “their love could never be…”
“I don’t understand…”
“Oh, well, you see, Tilla and Barbie are actually mother and daughter but Barbie has amnesia and can’t remember that. So it’s a very forbidden kind of-“
“I meant, I don’t understand why you left but didn’t… leave.”
Blitzo slumped down and took a deep breath. “Oh, well, because the mountains around the Encanto are pretty tall and, uh… like I said, free food and all that good shit.”
The future-seer got up for another arepa, which was resting on a little table on the side of the wall.
Then turning to the rats, “you guys love the free food, don’t you? Always hungry and never fucking satisfied. You just lucky you're part of the familia or I woulda gotten mad over you hogging all the grub.”