Today's fanart is by @KiwiKat! This drawing of Camilo is INCREDIBLE. His hair looks so fluffy and curly and the eyes look exactly like they do in the movie ahhhhhh Hope you guys  like this one as much as I do!!

BACK TO THE STORY

He'd abandoned you, the traitor, in the middle of the storm.

"Camilo!" You screamed into the darkness, angry and scared. The wind screamed back, blasting away your shout and greedily snapping at your clothes.

You crouched, dropping your head between your knees. It wasn't hard to feel small in the hellish whirlwind of water and thunder. Camilo shouldn't have blindly ran. Without any trees, he would be the highest point for miles: a curly-haired lightning magnet. 

Soon your hair flopped, cold and limp, against your cheek. Rain rolled down your back like heavy sweat, drenching your dress. The pasty fabric clung to your skin, chilling you to your core. Curling your fingers around your bare knees, you focused on the drowning stalk of grass ahead of you as it whipped violently in the storm. You tried to block out the wrathful blasts of thunder as they crashed overhead like a million iron pots clanking, grinding, and screeching against each other. 

You'd heard somewhere that you could calculate the distance of lightning by counting seconds between claps of thunder. 

Crash. 1...2...3...4...5...6... Crash. 

Six? You frowned at the floundering grass, digging your fingernails into your knees. What does that even mean? 6 miles? Am I supposed to divide by 5? A white flash of lightning illuminated your poor stalk of grass, driving you into confusion. What about the lightning? Do I count that, too?

Sweat slunk down your forehead like a slug. Or was it rain? Violent shivers racked your body. From the cold? From the fear? You couldn't tell. Everything had ripped itself upside-down through the mess of frustration, terror, and water. 

Please stop soon. You begged the storm, shaking as you hugged into yourself. Hours hissed by, agonizingly slow like the black clouds smothering the sky. The uncomfortable cold and looming death leeched your flickering hope, and you feared that the raging storm had cursed you into a parallel reality where this misery was eternal. 

The wind rose into a demonic wail. An ice-cold limb shoved into your shoulder. With a bolt of panic, you scrabbled backward, regarding the skeletal shadow with horror. The shadow crawled forward, and a flare of lightning painted its face with washed-out color. 

"Camilo," you gasped, exhaling a burst of fuzzy relief. The immediate realization that you were no longer isolated in the wilderness washed over you like a reassuring, tight hug. Camilo crouched down by you, unsteady from exhaustion. He half-smiled with tired eyes. His hair dripped flat, an earthy, deep brown against his head. Bewildered, you shakily laughed. "You came back."

"I found a cave," Camilo shouted above the wind and thunder, his strained voice barely audible even though he brushed his cold cheek against yours to speak into your ear. Camilo wobbled to his feet, then offered you his hand. His fingers gently enclosed around yours, and for a moment you forgot the storm, the fear, and the danger. The bitter world whirled all around, but you and Camilo breathed slowly, suspended in time, hypnotized. His eyes held yours, dark and safe. 

Thunder snapped the spell, and Camilo dropped your hand. He urgently motioned for you to follow, bounding away through the tall grass. You tumbled after the color of his ruana, a hazy, dimmed orange against the black sky. The waterlogged grass parted into a trampled trail behind him. 

Camilo twisted into a sharp right, abruptly disappearing. You nervously picked through the trampled grass, squinting through the downpour. Suddenly, the ground vanished underneath your feet. You toppled down a mudslide, thumping heavily on your side in an underground tunnel. 

Rain pounded the mouth of the cave to mud, but when you scooted deeper inside, the tunnel was damp, cool, and quiet.

"You left to find shelter," you realized aloud, speaking into the calm darkness. Your hands wrung out the hem of your dress, squeezing out a puddle. "I thought you'd just... abandoned me. You could have. It would have been easier for you. A lot easier."

"I thought about it," Camilo admitted, shuffling in the void. 

"Thank you," you sincerely said, smiling even though you knew he wouldn't see. You inched your back against the cave wall, too battered to care about the grimy surface you relaxed into. 

Your eyelids drifted shut, and dozy sleep began to numb you. You could have blissfully slipped away, but Camilo started rubbing two cave rocks together, extracting a horrible screeching noise.

"What are you doing?" 

"Making a fire."

"Oh," you bit your lip, trying not to laugh. Damp cave rocks wouldn't spark a fire. And even if he managed to start one, he had no wood to burn. "Maybe you should just try to sleep."

"Don't make fun of me," Camilo breezily protested, continuing to bash the hapless rocks together. "I saw Augustine do it once." 

"Okay, okay. Go for it." 

Screeeeeeech. You cringed. Screeeeech. You covered your ears. Screeeeeeee-

"Alright, Camilo," you finally exploded. "Stop that noise." 

"Don't you want a fire?" 

"No, I want to sleep." You grumbled, too exhausted to care about politeness. You rubbed your palms into your droopy eyes. 

"Let's compromise," Camilo cheerfully ignored you, scraping the rocks together. "You can sleep... once I start a fire. Deal?"

"You can't start a fire," you pointed out. "Not without sticks or something." 

"Fine. Wait here," Camilo rushed back into the storm, returning with armloads of damp grass. You'd just started to flicker away to sleep when Camilo continued knocking the rocks together like a nasty little cave troll. 

"Camilo," you pleaded, your hands flying back over your ears. Screeeeech. SCREEEEEEECH. You almost lunged through the darkness to tackle him and confiscate the offending rocks, when a yellow spark glinted from across the cave. 

"I did it! I did it!" Camilo yelped with childlike excitement. "Get the grass! Get the grass, (y/n)!" You hopefully shoveled the drying, stiff grass into a mound. Camilo touched the spark to the pile, and a wonderfully warm fire flushed over it. 

"See?" Camilo smugly asked, triumphantly smirking at you. You could see his face now, dimly outlined in orange. "A fire." 

"Bravo," you applauded, only half-sarcastic. You extended your hands over the flame, absorbing the delicious, hot light. You almost wanted to swirl your icy fingers through the red, orange, and golden colors. 

Camilo shrugged his ruana off of his shoulders, dropping it in a sopping pile on the ground. Then, to your horror, he peeled off his white button-up from his skin. 

"You did not just take off your shirt in front of me," you gaped at Camilo in disbelief. 

He'd been lanky before the fall of the miracle, but now subtle muscles hardened his back and thickened his arms. He was attractive, unbelievably attractive. Your heartbeat rushed like sugar. How dare he be this careless around you?

"I'm cold," Camilo shrugged, balling up the dripping white fabric and half-heartedly chucking it at you. "You take off your dress. Then it's fair."

"No!" You spluttered, hot embarrassment creeping across your cheeks and ears. Camilo's shirt squelched in your hands as you caught it. "You pervert."

"I wasn't gonna look," Camilo roguishly grinned, running a hand through his soaked auburn hair. "Why, do you want me to?" Beads of rainbow water slicked down his chest, and you squeezed your eyes shut, blushing hard. 

"I forgot that you're a prick sometimes."

"Ah, I forgot, too," Camilo easily bantered, winking at you. "I forgot a lot, actually." He tapped his head lightly with a single finger. 

"Wow. You're making jokes about it already," you half-joked, frowning at the rippling reflections of fire that cascaded down the cave wall. Easy for you to joke about it. You don't remember the girl you left behind. 

A sobering silence descended on the cave. The overhead patter of rain wove alongside the crackling sound of fire. 

"I have a question," Camilo seriously rumbled, the humor dying in his green eyes. 

"Shoot."

"You said... something. Right before the house fell," Camilo's words rushed out, quick but tentative. So he'd remembered after all. 

"I guess I did," you admitted, studying the dirt floor. You traced a heart pattern with your finger, avoiding Camilo's gaze.

"We must have been really good friends," Camilo contemplatively offered. You could feel his piercing green eyes lingering on you, willing you to meet his gaze.

"We were," you ruefully smiled, sweeping loose crumbles of dirt over your drawing, dodging eye contact like a coward. More than that.

"This must be hard. Me not remembering you and all."

"Trying to sleep in the same cave as you is harder."

"Right," Camilo effortlessly laughed, his tan shoulders rolled back. He gave you a quiet smile. "I think you're someone I could get to know. Let's do everything again."

"I was telling the truth, by the way," you rushed out. Your eyes searched his, suddenly desperate for him to believe you. "I only stole the candle to save Antonio."

"I know," Camilo quietly accepted, folding his ruana into a pillow underneath his head. "Now I know."

Chilly, damp shivers from your soaked dress seized you to the core. If you'd had nerve, you might have rolled against Camilo, hugging into his body heat. You didn't have nerve, so you curled onto your side, admiring Camilo's dusky eyelids as they closed.

"Don't fall asleep," you suddenly said, a terrible thought striking you like the swollen lightning outside.

"Well, that's just pleasant and creepy," Camilo brightly mumbled. "Goodnight to you, too."

"No, Camilo," you insisted, shaking your head fervently. "I mean it. My father... messed with your head. Each time you've slept since, you've forgotten even more. I don't want-" Painful knots clumped in your throat, but you bravely forced out the next sentence. "I don't want you to not even remember your own brother. You're slipping back in time."

"But that's the problem, isn't it?" Camilo gently countered, his eyes flipping open. "You said it yourself. I'm slipping back in time. There's no way to stop that. I have to sleep eventually."

You couldn't say anything. Because he was right. He couldn't stay awake forever. Your father's dark magic would always win out.

"Hey, last time I was unconscious I remembered something," Camilo protested with an amiable smile. "Who knows, I might wake up with new memories." 

"Okay. Goodnight," you numbly forced a smile for Camilo. Then you turned over and cried silently.