Title: Fuzzy Thread
Fandom: Encanto
Rating: Teen
Length: 383 words
Content notes: Angst, Family feels, Dysfunctional family, Canon-typical mild child neglect/emotional abuse-ish ((skip) Abuela's attitude towards Mirabel, mostly)
Author's notes: Spoilers for the recently released movie, Encanto
Summary: Mirabel quietly rubbed her fingers over her fuzzy bobbins of embroidery thread and tried not to hear.


Mirabel quietly rubbed her fingers over her fuzzy bobbins of embroidery thread and tried not to hear. Camilo could make his ears go away, but Mirabel didn't have that magic. So she could still hear Abuela and Mamá arguing again. You didn't have to have Delores's gift to hear them; they probably thought they were safe to talk in Abuela's room, but the noise carried through the open window.

They were arguing about Mirabel, of course. Abuela and Mamá only ever argued about Mirabel, especially since Tío Bruno left. Mirabel pushed that thought away and ran her fingers over the next fuzzy bobbin. She had every color of the rainbow, here in her drawer. Señora García made all the threads, and she had given Mirabel a large selection of them last year, after… well, after. She'd said she noticed how much Mirabel liked rubbing her fingers over the threads when she visited with Mamá — Señor García needed her help almost as often as Papá.

Señora García had whispered that she liked to rub them too, and one day Mirabel should visit the pastures and feel the wool on the sheep themselves! Then she'd given Mirabel a little basket full of different colored threads. Mamá taught Mirabel how to sew, and she'd started embroidering little copies of butterflies and Isabela's flowers onto her skirts.

The next time they visited, Señora García had looked at her skirts and said she was a prodigy. Mirabel still didn't know what that was, and wondered if it was similar to being a problem, like Abuela always said. But she didn't think so, because Señora García had been smiling, and after that she always sent new thread back with Mamá when she came to fix Señor García.

Mirabel didn't feel like embroidering right now — she couldn't think of anything happy to make, and she never wanted to make something unhappy — so she felt her threads instead. Eventually Abula and Mamá would stop arguing, and Mamá would go back to the kitchen, and then Mirabel could sneak down to her. Her food wasn't supposed to fix bad feelings, but it always seemed to help Mirabel. Until then, she'd play with her fuzzy threads, in all the colors of the rainbow, and try not to hear anything.