Generations of Miracles

14 Years Later - Lorena

"Helena!" Lorena said, racing over to her 14 year old cousin, Helena Guzman-Madrigal. "Hela, Mama told me to take care of the twins. But now they've disappeared!"

Helena sighed. "Lorena, I really don't have time for this. Just use your gift, I have to get these decorations up!"

"Oh, the others can do that!" Lorena dismissed. "Besides, fire and water? I'd just wreck everything if I tried! And Tía Abuela Pepa can do the decorations with a hurricane or something. Alejandra can do some, and Isabela and Frida and Luisa and the rest can do it! Come on! A second in the sky, and you'd find them!"

"Lorena, I...," Helena struggled, but gave in. "Fine!"

Then, in the distance she muttered: "But Roberto would be better at this."

Just then, Mirabel Madrigal strode into the courtyard where her 12 year old daughter stood waiting.

"Oye, Lorena, ¿dónde están las gemelas?" Mirabel said, making her daughter jump and spin on her heal. The surprised look on Lorena's face seemed to be a giveaway. "Ay, dios! Don't say that you've lost them!"

Lorena cast around for a solution. "Uh, no!" Lorena said, relieved. "No, uh we're, um, playing! Hide and seek!"

"Oh, really?" Mirabel said, unconvinced, turning to thread streamers through the balcony rails on the first floor. "And is Helena playing too? I notice she's not here."

"I...uh...," Lorena was lost. Why, Lorena thought, must her mother always be smart? About everything? As she was just about to admit that she had no control whatsoever over the twins, a soaring figure holding two squirming... where they dogs?

Lorena grinned. "Yes. Helena was playing, and has found the twins.

Mirabel still looked suspicious. "Well, whatever you do, don't lock them in the nursery!"

Lorena starred at her.

"Look, Roberto thoroughly traumatized Helena at her ceremony when you were a newborn, don't make the same mistake," Mirabel said, walking into the kitchen.

Lorena turned away and started waving frantically and yelling for her cousin.

***

Three hours later, Lorena was standing in front of her bedroom mirror, which was forged from fire. Her room had walls of waterfalls and was always toasty. Her usual attire was a long, sky blue dress, embroidered with water lilies and flames. But now she wore a floaty ball gown, in shades of flames and sunsets, which brought out her sienna coloured skin. Unlike her usual of her curly cinnamon hair tumbling around her shoulders, it was pulled up in the bun and ribbon used by her Tía Dolores.

A nock on the door made her spin around, her curls falling back around her shoulders. "¡Aye, Dios!" she muttered as she rushed to answer the door.

Her father Julio stood in the doorway, eyes blinded by love for his eldest daughter. "Oh, mi hermosa niña," Julio said lovingly. "Can I come in?"

Lorena smiled, pushing her door further open and closed it behind him, shouting. "¡Oye, Frida! ¡Papá está en la habitación! ¿Poca ayuda?" Lorena yelled up.

Above her, her 13-year-old cousin Frida sat on her bed. She carelessly made a pushing movement with her hand, and the floor in her cousin's bedroom bellow turned to burnt floorboards.

Frida was very similar to her mother. Her gift was she could create any aspect of nature from the other side of the earth if she wanted to.

So putting a couple of plank of wood on the ground in the room bellow? When does the hard stuff come in!

"You look absolutely stunning, hija," Julio said, kissing Lorena on the top of her head. "Don't try for your primo mayor Dolores. How about just pulling it up with the red ribbon?"

Once Lorena's hair was firmly up, her father chuckled. "Come, hija. Let's go see what happens with the primos pequeños."