Ten Cuidado Con Lo Que Deseas -
And every time, his abuela, Elena, would look up from her herb garden, her dark eyes holding a century of unspoken stories. “Ten cuidado con lo que deseas, mijo. The world listens.”
He froze.
His abuela’s voice drifted through the door, muffled, speaking to a visitor: “He’s not here anymore, señor. But if you’re looking for art… there’s a new piece in his studio. Quite breathtaking. Ten cuidado con lo que deseas.” Ten cuidado con lo que deseas
“The sphere is old,” she said softly. “Older than the mountains. It gives wishes, yes. But it gives them the way a river gives water—it takes its price from the banks. The sculpture you have? That woman was a sculptor too, three hundred years ago. She wished for eternal beauty in her art. Now she is the art. And she will never stop screaming.”
That night, Mateo stood before the living statue. Her stone fingers had almost reached his throat now. The obsidian sphere pulsed like a black heart. And every time, his abuela, Elena, would look
Elena was grinding herbs at her kitchen table, calm as the eye of a storm. She didn’t look up. “You wished for excitement, mijo. For your work to matter.”
Mateo couldn’t answer. He couldn’t move. He could only watch, trapped in his own masterpiece, as the world outside forgot his name and remembered only the sculpture—and the warning carved into its frozen face. His abuela’s voice drifted through the door, muffled,
He woke to the smell of wet clay and something else—sulfur, or maybe ozone.
Desperate, he ran to his abuela.
One stormy October night, lightning split the ancient oak at the edge of town. The next morning, the villagers found something strange embedded in the splintered roots: a flawless sphere of obsidian, cool to the touch despite the lingering heat of the strike. Inside it swirled faint lights, like trapped fireflies.
Mateo tried to destroy the sculpture. The chisel shattered. The hammer flew from his hand and struck his own reflection in a mirror, spiderwebbing the glass. He tried to flee Valverde, but the mountain roads twisted back to his studio door.
