Welcome to Gaia! ::

Day in and day out Cami had done everything that she could to make sure that she was pulling her weight. Some days it was nothing more than making sure that the people doing the real lifting got enough water, got shade, had sunscreen. Caroline had sat her down to talk about moving to a bigger house and so they weren't bothering to repair the one borrowed from Gale just yet, putting energy towards bigger, better things.

One of those things was carrying water when she heard a male voice calling her name, her head snapping up, squinting against the sun. It wasn't until Roland was crushing her in a hug that she had any inkling of who this stranger even was.

Laughing for just a second she returned the hug as her brain processed the faint memories of a place and time where they were both someone else. When she had wanted to be a queen and he was hungry for secrets. "Ro! You're alright!" They had not been friends before but now?

Now it just seemed right.

Yes, Cami had lost herself in the grief of a life without a Maebe or Otto that wanted her. Finding herself again, after she finally thought she was where she was meant to be, was a two-year process that had never completely gotten past denial. There was always the hope that one day she'd wake up to the right text message.

Making friends had not been high on her priority list then.

Now? Now there was none of the abuse of her late teen years, none of the insidious poison poured into her by her former boyfriend, none of the heartbreak of losing two people close to her at once. Now there was just Cami and her sunshine warmth laughing as the hug got too tight, laughing as she reassured Roland that everything was okay.

"No no, don't apologize! I was with Caroline and that's the best place to be." Easing back out of the second hug she put a finger in the center of his forehead and pushed lightly, a familiar thing from when they were the other selves. "The dreams, the riddles, the other selves, they're all gone now. But we're still here and that's awesome!"

Or so she told herself.

Seeing the flicker of dismay she didn't waste any time in linking her arm through Roland's and tugging on him to move away from the crowd. "Hey, c'mon, walk with me for a bit. I promised Ama I wouldn't wander around by myself anymore so you get to be my chaperone." Because being hardly two years older than someone made you a good chaperone?? Well, Caroline said not to go alone. She never said the girl had to be with an adult.

Destination wasn't important so long as it was away -- away from others, away from the pressure to not let memories of a false life drift between them. Cami was actually rather grateful for that Famine self. Otherwise she never would have been here, arm in arm with Roland, and that just felt quite lonely.

"Ama is kinda like saying Mommy, only in Spanish. Mamá," and now she accented the a properly, "Is Spanish for mother but Ama is the casual. My actual mom is Maman which is the Creole I grew up with and...yeah. Trilingual is fun!~" She laughed a bit at herself. "So it's both a nickname and a word for mom. And you're still nosy." She beamed.

"I'm glad."

Without really thinking about it Cami stood at the edge of a path looking out over the beach that no one used. Her head came to rest for just a second against the arm that she had linked with hers. It wasn't romantic - it wasn't meant to be - it was just a quiet moment between two people who had been in the same place. Seen the same things. Had many of the same reservations and small wounds that came with those places.

"Hey, Ro?" She chewed hard at her bottom lip. "I know we're not supposed to want to go back to being what we were in The Dusk but...we were good friends. Almost like best friends. Do you think we could try to be that here too?"