hh_mirror | open RP, corridors: Camilla as a child.

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open RP, corridors: Camilla as a child.

(( Camilla has eaten some magical chocolate and is now seven years old. ))

It's a make-believe place, isn't it? She's in a castle. She must be dreaming. It's a beautiful dream, Camilla thinks.

She seems to know where things are, here, in the way of dreams, even though she doesn't remember any of it really. That way's the Great Hall, not knowing what the Great Hall actually is, only somehow knowing its name and if she follows that particular turn in the corridors that's where she'll end up. That's the way out to the courtyard, though she's not sure what's in the courtyard.

Inquisitive, she wanders, that first exuberant skipping long since slowed to a sedate walk.

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"Go Fish," Milly pronounces.

Well, you can't expect anything too sophisticated from a seven-year-old. Besides, there are only two players.

"You got it," he says, and deals them each seven cards.

Camilla fans out her cards in one hand, careful to keep their backs to her opponent. She's very serious about Go Fish. "Do you have any fives?" she asks.

Outside, it's started to rain again.

"Go fish," he replies, trying not to smile. "Any eights?"

She looks them over twice to be sure, not that she wasn't sure before. "Not a one. Go fish," very serious. "You know, I think it's funny you dreamed you were having lunch."

"I can get hungry in my sleep!" Charles protested. "In fact, I think we need that hot chocolate."

He called for a house-elf, who returned a moment later with a tray and two steaming cups. "Thank you. Any tens?"

Small bitten-nailed fingers pluck out a card: ten of spades. She holds it out with an air of long-suffering. If you must. But she's distracted, by the cocoa, and by something else. She sets down her cards, face down and still fanned, to take a mug in both hands.

"Do you think it's going to thunder?" She knows something doesn't feel right.

Charles fits the card into his hand and flashes her the briefest of smirks.

He looks up at her question. "Might. It does have that kind of tense feeling in the air you get before a storm. How about aces?"

Camilla doesn't have to peek at her cards to answer. A good thing, because her attention's elsewhere, eyes darting to the corners of the room, looking to see if there's anything in the shadows. "I haven't got any," she says, so preoccupied she doesn't even pronounce the ritual go fish in which she ought to be delighting. "Something's wrong, Charles." Puzzlement in her voice. How can he not know it? Charles knows everything Camilla knows. They think the same. They can finish each other's sentences. It's always been that way. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end.

He regards her with clear gray eyes held carefully open, no secrets.

"I know what you mean. But I don't know what it is and it doesn't seem to be hurting us. Not so long as we're together. So I figure maybe it'll go away in a while."

Intently she peers into those eyes that are the mirrors of her own. What she sees is enough to quiet her for a moment, long enough to set down her mug and pick up her cards again. Nothing can hurt them when they're together, he's right, isn't he? He's her brother. In child Camilla's limited recollection, nothing has ever come between her and her brother.

She settles like an unquiet bird, ready to fly at the slightest start, ragged edges of her robe pooling around her. "Do you have any kings?" Fidgeting, she twirls a lock of golden hair around the finger of her free hand.

He makes a face like he's tasted something awful and hands over two cards. "There. Happy now?"

The face Charles makes is one she knows well, and now it's Camilla's turn to smirk, same little satisfied expression, proverbial cat who's gotten into the cream. She tucks away the cards into her hand until such time as she can acquire the fourth and final of their rank. Then she looks up from the cards to his face again.

"Let me look at your eyes again," she says abruptly.

He looks up from his cards just as abruptly, all innocent surprise. "What for?"

"You know what for." It's almost scolding. He ought to know, anyway. Turning her cards inward -- literally holding them close to her chest, no symbolism there, she's all open to him, worried wide gray eyes -- she scoots closer, gets up on her knees so she's level with his face, studies it. He's so much bigger than she is, which is wrong in itself, and he even smells different.

They're supposed to be the same -- that's the solution, there, she has it. "We can fix it. Tell me how I can be grown up too."

"Camilla, I -" He squirms under her scrutiny. "I don't know. I didn't do anything exactly to get this way, I just am."

He shrugs. "Sometimes I wish I wasn't."

Camilla is sure he has to be holding something back. She can't tell what, but it's something. Something he doesn't want to share? He doesn't always like to share. She has to fight him over things like the tape measure sometimes. Frustrated, she narrows her eyes.

"It's supposed to be a nice dream," she says. "This is the first time we've been able to dream together, not just a dream about the other one. It needs to go the right way and it's all wrong. Fix it," half-demanding, half-pleading, maybe more of the latter than she'd admit. "Make it better again."

"Oh, Milly. You have no idea how much I wish I could." He shook his head. "But I just don't know how."

She just can't believe that. There's something he isn't telling her. She supposes (wrongly) that it's how to become grown up. Holding the secret over her head. "You don't like it when I keep secrets from you. I don't like it when you keep secrets from me, either. But fine. If you won't tell me how to become the same as you are, then you come back with me and be little again. We're twins. You can't just go and be whatever you want without me," she says, angry and sad and hurt all at once.

"I don't know how to do that either," he says miserably. "I would if I could. But I don't know how I got this way and I don't know how to undo it either."

Which is true in so many more ways than little-Camilla can possibly imagine, and Charles would very much like to keep it that way.

He really does sound miserable. Camilla would be able to tell that much at any age. It just frustrates her all the more. "Then you're not thinking hard enough about it." Neither of them has ever been very fond of hard work. For this, though, he has to be willing to work. "We can play cards after." She's just as miserable. But she refuses to cry. She sets her jaw. She can be as stubborn as he can. More stubborn.

Charles frowns. How to placate her? He's fairly certain neither of them is in fact dreaming, he hasn't learned any spells or even bought a wand yet, and he has no idea how or why Camilla can have become small again.

He bites his lip. "What were we doing before we started dreaming? Do you remember?"

Camilla is reaching the end of her patience. She's almost certain he's trying to distract her. "I don't know what you were doing. You started out somewhere different from me, remember? And you said you were eating lunch." She sits back on her heels, her cards still held close. "I was reading something that I don't understand. Before that ..." She shuts her eyes tight and tries to straighten it out.

"I think I was having a nightmare before that, but it got better for a little while when I came to the magic castle," she says, opening her eyes, small grave troubled face looking up at her brother. "And now it's being a nightmare again. We're never supposed to be different than one another. This is worse than the one about ... you know." For a week after their parents' funeral Camilla had the same dream over and over.

Being without her parents is manageable. Being without her brother is unimagineable.

"What do you remember?" She throws the question back at him. Hot potato.

Charles flinches; he does know what dream she means, that awful first week when they didn't know what was going to become of them. "This isn't like that, Milly. It's a good dream, not..." He frowns. "I remember being alone for a while. But I think I was dreaming that too. This is better."

The opacity of it vexes her. "It isn't better at all if you won't share," Camilla shoots back. "If you'd tell me how, we could be grown-ups together. I didn't even see who you were at first, Charles. You had to tell me. And now I know you're you, but you're not the right you, or you won't tell me how to be the right me." Despairing, she wants to cling to him for comfort even though he's what's upsetting her. She wants to fling herself at him with all the weight and momentum her small body can exert.

Instead, she scoots away with as much dignity as is possible in scooting, and climbs off the bed. For a moment she stands there at the side of the bed and glares at him, mute with rage and frustration and sadness and pain, pain most of all.

There's only one thing to do, when he's made her this unhappy. He has to be made to understand how unhappy she is. That's not best done in words.

She makes a dash for the door. As she runs away, she's biting her lip so she won't cry. Everything's broken.

She's still clutching her hand of cards, too, and that's on purpose: he can't play solitaire while she's gone, with part of the deck missing.

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open RP, corridors: Camilla as a child.

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