open RP, corridors: Camilla as a child.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

(( 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.

Comments

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

He tilts his head to look at her. "One, but it wasn't a very friendly ghost. I chased it away. How long have y-we been dreaming, can you tell?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

This is a question that wouldn't have occurred to Camilla. "I can't really say. Not a terribly long time, I don't think," she ventures. "It hasn't been a bad dream. I'm sorry you met an unfriendly ghost in yours. It'll all be better now though." She's supremely confident of that. "This ghost I met was a nice one, and she was wearing a shirt that had awfully naughty words on it. What was your ghost like? How did you know it was an unfriendly one?"

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Well, he was big, and he was mean, and he wanted to take things from me." He smiles down at little Camilla. "I'm sure it'll be fine now that we're together."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Definitely," and Camilla smiles back. "I would also lend you Silas except that he doesn't seem to have power over ghosts. It doesn't matter anyway now. I'm not afraid of big mean ghosts," she says bravely.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"He's gone off now, and I don't think he'll bother us," he says.

They arrive at Ravenclaw and he opens the door to the common room. "Do we feel like being sociable, or holing up with cards and hot chocolate, Milly?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla doesn't remember ever having been in this room before. By dream logic it isn't remarkable, this amalgam of mad-scientist laboratory and bar (neither of which are anything little Camilla's seen in person before, of course; she's working off memories of television). All the same, it doesn't look like a place she wants to be. "Cards," she tells him, but she's not looking at him, still glancing around the room, and she holds tight to his hand. "Charles, where are we?"

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Just another part of the castle," he says, leading her out of the common room and into the dorms. "My deck of cards is in here."

He opens the door to his dormroom, still stark and anonymous, snags the deck of cards from atop the desk and sits cross-legged on the foot of the bed, shuffling the cards.

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Camilla sizes up her surroundings. "This room needs flowers, like mine." It's so bare. "Didn't you know you could just ask and you can have anything you want in this castle?" Quick as a fawn she darts into the hallway and can be heard calling for a house elf; then she's back, with a bunch of paperwhites in a vase. She's tall enough to place them triumphantly on the desk.

Satisfied, the child climbs up onto the bed to sit facing Charles, her legs tucked under her. She watches her brother's hands as they shuffle the cards.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

Charles hadn't thought of that; it was the sort of thing Camilla always noticed more than he did. He's grown used to anonymous, short-term lodgings over the last six years.

"What shall we play today, m'dear? Ladies' choice."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"Go Fish," Milly pronounces.

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

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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."

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"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?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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?"

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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."

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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.

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

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

[c-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"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."

[chas-macaulay.livejournal.com]

"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."