So be it on earth...

Ch.1 Diablo

Note:

This fanfic, like the previous one, takes place in Michigan (United States) but in this one the protagonist is part of an ethnic minority so let's do a mental exercise and assume that the dialogues and other things that are in "Spanish" are the parts written in italics (the slanted typography).

Italics = Spanish

please, give me your opinions

/:/

/:/

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When Rosa returned home from the field, still with her back bathed in sweat, the faces she found inside those four walls were completely different from the usual ones. Instead of finding the usual indifference of tiredness, she found that her parents and brother were serious, very serious and silent.

Without saying a word as a greeting to her family, Rosa slid like a shadow to the small iron stove at the back of the house, with a grimace of disgust she scraped the bottom of the clay pot. The dried crust of beans they had saved for her to eat was barely enough for a taco, but it didn't cross her mind to complain to anyone; since a few months ago until now whoever came last went to bed without food.

"There's nothing to buy food with anymore, I swear to you kids," Ronalda, their mother, always murmured when that situation happened again and it was her turn to apologize to her children.

Before she could eat, the daughter of the Manzano couple knelt down and began to give thanks for her food. The girl's pitiful voice was barely able to interrupt the foolish silence of her elders. Her voice was confused with the sound of the crickets and the noise of the mountain.

"... and deliver us from evil, amen."

For the duration of the half-voiced prayer, no other human sound was present, but when Rosa finished her prayer, a deep sob finally broke the silence that had been maintained inside the home. With his head buried in his wife's arms, Agustin Manzano, even in his fifties, began to let out his sorrows as a child would.

Rosa had never seen her father cry, and according to what they said in town, no one, not even his wife, had ever experienced anything like that. All she could remember was her father's cascading voice repeating ad nauseam "Men do not cry". To see such a scene could only portend horrible things.

With her soul trying to escape through her throat because of fear. Rosa came close to her older brother, Roberto, short of breath, she could only ask him with her gaze

"We're leaving, sis," the teenager said as he pinched her cheek affectionately, " we're going north... to work as braceros".

Rosa had already heard about that 'north' after all, many people from the town had already gone there, at the beginning the government took only the men, under the promise of well-paid work, but later and very gradually, entire families ended up leaving too... the Manzano family had never heard that any of them had returned.

Once her arms were free, Ronalda began to pack up the family's meager belongings. Yes, the woman had a sad look on her face, but unlike her husband she didn't let her emotions get the better of her. Drawing on a strength equal to that of the mountain itself, she concentrated on her task.

"You, girl, help me put the clothes away, come on." Rosa understood, if they were going to make such a long trip, it was essential to keep and protect their things as well as possible.

So the girl, barely ten years old, began to fold and arrange the few clothes in a cardboard box, the only box that would hold everything they would carry, but it was so hard for her to fight back the tears. Finally, she couldn't take it anymore and in a huff she stormed out of the den slamming the door behind her. She needed to see her mountain, her land, one last time. She ran off to the foothills, the screams of her father and brother were left behind.