The smell of leather and sweat from the stables had followed him for as long as he could remember. Lautaro, still a boy, moved among the horses as if he were one of them, his bare feet toughened by mud and discipline. The Spaniards didn’t know his real name. They called him Felipe, or sometimes just “boy.” He obeyed in silence.

There was a woman with a firm voice and hands that knew both herbs and scolding. She wasn’t his sister, but she was always there, watching from the shadows of the corral with that gaze that could stop him mid-step.

Whenever he got distracted, whenever he responded with anger to an order, the memory of her reprimands would come back—worried, firm, but carrying the softness of someone just a few years older than him.

Once, hidden among the sacks, he cried in silence. A soldier had kicked him in the ribs for moving a saddle too slowly. No one saw—except her. She said nothing, but later he found a piece of cloth with fresh ointment, left carelessly near his corner.

"Don’t cry where they can see you. The brave do cry, yes—but alone, and just a little."

Years passed like that: spurs, filth, and those maternal echoes that scolded him even in dreams. He grew, and inside him a quiet fury lit up, learning, unintentionally, everything he would one day use against his masters.

One day, when his voice was beginning to sound like a man’s, he saw her for the last time. The Spaniards took her away with others, for reasons he didn’t fully understand—he only knew she wouldn’t return. No one cried for her. No one but him, silently, biting his wrist until it bled.

The boy became a warrior. He was no longer Felipe. He was Lautaro. He no longer cleaned horses—he rode them with spear and rage. Santiago burned, 1557. Not all of it, but enough. And then, in the chaos, he saw her.

He stopped. With his heart in his throat, his hands shaking a little as he felt like a child again under her gaze, recognizing him.

“I..." he murmured softly, almost shy. "I still hear you scolding me in my dreams."