Lightning dances along her skin, leaving thin, skittering burns in its wake. The new ones are pink and angry, and she tries not to wince as more electricity crisscrosses them.
Usually when she's upset or overwhelmed, Pepa runs fingers through her loose braid, muttering for clear skies until her gift follows her command, but there's no use trying that now. Not unless she wants her staticky hair to leave her nursing even more burns.
Pepa has never had any control over how much people know about her. It's sort of impossible to have anything like privacy when the whole village is privy to her emotions by simply looking at the sky. There's a running joke among the villagers, she knows, about how "that Madrigal lady's a walking weather forecast". It rains, and people ask if someone burned Pepa Madrigal's breakfast. It shines too bright, and people grumble about how someone needs to knock Pepa Madrigal down a peg or two. Her emotions have always been on display. More so, they've always been an inconvenience.
It was worse when she was younger and had no control over them. The other kids, already put off by her constant hand flapping and hair brushing, just had something more to whisper about. The bullies always knew when they'd affected her, doubling down on their tactics, and then complained when her rains drenched them. The others shied away from "that strange girl with her strange gift", too weird and unstable, leaving her not understanding what she'd done wrong. Some of them did try to befriend her, but they always left after getting drizzled on or zapped one too many times.
Things had improved as she'd grown older and had more control over herself. Mama smiled at her in approval when she learned to cry on command. The people looked at her with respect when she rained on their fields, and brought her gifts to keep her happy when they wanted sunny days. Everyone approved of her emotions as long as they were convenient.
But there's nothing convenient about her anxious hurricanes, her angry thunderclouds, her stressed snowing. There's nothing convenient about the way she feels sometimes, like everything is too much. Too bright, too loud, too many people watching, too many eyes. Just too much.
She feels like that now, like her senses are on the verge of explosion with all the things they're taking in.
She has no right to complain about it, she knows she doesn't, her little Dolores has it so much worse with her hearing, and Mama always reminded her of how dangerous these unnecessary periods of emotion were. The storms they whipped up, that had once uprooted the Garcias' lulo tree, and how much trouble that had caused.
So Pepa taught herself to hold it in, to keep her storms to herself. It's not that her feelings aren't important, she tells herself, it's that they're too important. Too important for her to mess up, too important to feel the wrong thing at the wrong time. Her wedding had been proof of that (although Félix hadn't minded, her sweet, darling Félix who had said he was just so happy to marry her in the first place, hurricanes and all).
But here's her secret.
Pepa has never learned to control her emotions.
Oh, she's learned to control how she shows it. She's learned to stop her gift from spreading her worry or sorrow over the whole town, she's learned to sedate her brain with a surface of calmness. She's learned not to flap her hands so much, and restrict her movements to a soothing braid-brushing.
But she still feels her sorrow and worry in the pit of her stomach. She feels her anger about to burst out, and she stuffs it further down. She bottles up her wildest laughter and most potent words. Sometimes a little spills over, a little annoyance or anxiety that she lashes out at the wrong person, and she adds her guilt at their bewildered expression to her festering well of emotions.
It's when she's alone in her room that it bursts out.
Well, not her room. The glass bell-like enclosure that opens off of the room she shares with Félix.
When she was younger, simpler, more volatile, the room would keep the storm out. She'd be free to rage and sob and scream within the glass dome, and Casita would protect her from the backlash.
That didn't please Mama and the village though. The room only protected her, after all.
Now, the room keeps the storm in. Pepa rages and sobs and screams, and the glass contains it all. It keeps the clouds, the sleet, the hail, the lightning in, in where it can only hurt her.
Everybody assumes Pepa has her feelings under control. That, or they think she has none. But for all they know, for all they assume, nobody knows the truth. Nobody knows how much Pepa Madrigal really feels. Nobody knows the burn scars she'll be sporting under her dress, that she'll sneak one of Juli's arepas to heal.
Sometimes, she thinks about telling Julieta or Félix. She wonders what she would say, her sister who has never looked at her like she was weird, who has never told her to stop her irritating tics, who has always been here for her. She wonders what he would do, the man who's sat next to her and caught colds under every storm she makes, who's always told her it's alright to feel whatever she feels. Maybe they would comfort her, maybe her husband would cuddle her and her sister would feed her her favourite food. Maybe they would confront Mama, shout in the village square at the people to stop telling her what to do, what to feel.
Realistically, she knows they won't do that, that they can't do that. Their gifts are to serve the village, their Encanto, and the way she can best serve them is this.
This, with thunder in her ears and lightning on her arms, with snow sticking through her clothes and her vision blinded by fog.
It keeps her clouds smaller, just enough to only affect her. It keeps her Mama from hissing "Pepa, you're storming!" too many times a day. It keeps everything convenient.
It keeps making new scars replace the faded ones across her skin.
