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It seemed like a morning like any other. Nona had told the little that she remembered of her dream to Camilla and the recorder, dressed like a worm with problems faster than ever and had been sent off to the kitchen where Pyrrrha was halfway through making breakfast.
But, that morning, Cam and Pal were taking their sweet time in the bedroom. Nona had held into her mouth and eventually swallowed three spoonfuls of mushy eggs under Pyrrha’s patient and unwavering gaze, and she was thinking of ways to negotiate her way out of swallowing down the last two spoons when Cam finally joined them. Cam, not Palamedes. Nona thought maybe she just really wanted hot breakfast (yuck) that day so she was taking the lead. But the way her body moved said otherwise. It’s not that she was moving in any way out of the ordinary, per se. Her movements were tight and calculated as always, almost in perpetual motion as she shifted her weight, but a tension around the face and shoulders, ever so slightly, betrayed a mix of emotions she seemed to be battling with. Was it an old sadness? Frustration, perhaps? A certain discomfort? Jealousy? Misplaced anger? Nona hoped it was nothing she had relayed from her dream.
Pyrrha fixed the ends of Nona’s braids as Cam sat at the table wordlessly. Nona shifted in her seat and shoved the smallest spoon into her mouth and let the mush sit in there, in case it could make Cam feel a bit better. No one said a word as Cam ate her bowl of food in a matter of seconds. Until Pyrrha downed some of her coffee, placed the second mug in front of Cam and broke the silence.
“Did you do it?”
Cam’s hand held the coffee the slightest bit more tightly.
“Never said I would.”
Pyrrha went back to Nona’s braids, but her body was moving just to keep busy.
“Well, no. And you don’t have to. But have you asked him?”
Cam gave her a look that would’ve frightened anyone else but Pyrrha. Well, Hot Sauce probably wouldn’t have been frightened by it either. It accentuated the anger, frustration, jealousy, whatever it may be in Cam’s motions.
“We have many things of greater importance.”
And they left it at that. Nona tried asking about it, once Pyrrha separated from them on the way to school, but Cam just told her not to worry.
The next morning, everything seemed normal, but Cam and Pal were taking long in the bedroom again. Nona abandoned her barely-touched breakfast to go listen at the door when Pyrrha went to the loo. Even before putting an ear close to the door, she could hear Cam’s voice and the familiar clack of the recorder.
“... what if I don’t remember right? It’s been a while, Warden.”
Clack. The tape whirred as it was rewound and the little speaker echoed the words. Clack.
“Too long... But Cam, this is one thing you don’t have to get perfectly.”
Clack. The tape rewound and played it back. His voice, Camilla’s really, was soft like when Nona was sad and Cam tried to calm her. Clack.
“I would do you a disservice. The memory of you.”
Clack. Nona heard the words a second time. Clack.
“Whatever way you remember it, I wouldn’t want to be remembered any other way.”
Nona heard Pyrrha opening the bathroom door and rushed back to her dreadful breakfast.
The day went on quite mundanely and Nona forgot all about it as she hung out with Hot Sauce and the gang. They wasted the hours lavishly. They all felt the Convoy at the same time as it must have passed right under them, and Honesty and Born In The Morning fought about who felt it first.
In the evening, she took a bath to remove the dust. It helped her cool off from the hot day. Cam said she was busy with something, so she handed Nona a towel through the door and left Nona’s clothes on the bed. Cam was covered in a lot more dust than her, and a very dark, charred dust at that. Especially around the hands and arms.
Cam took her place in the bathtub and Nona got dressed as quickly as she could. The t-shirt got stuck as she passed an arm and her head all at once and Nona couldn’t help the sudden panic that arose within her. She yelled and thrashed, squirming out of it, but she hit the small desk in the corner of the bedroom and Cam’s stationery all fell to the floor as the desk stumbled.
When Cam entered the room, towel around her and dripping all over the floor, she found Nona breathing hard and all her things spread over the floor. Nona looked around at what she had done. Camilla’s and Palamedes’ letters to each other were everywhere, and her pencils and erasers, but something that Nona didn’t need to know how to read to understand stuck out to her: multiple sketches of a young man’s face from different angles, bespectacled in thin, round glasses.
“Are you okay, Nona?”
Past the initial shock, Camilla’s voice was calm as usual. She started gathering her things from the floor.
“Yes. Who is that?”
Nona asked just to be sure. She knew deep down. She wanted to hear it from Camilla.
“Palamedes.”
Camilla’s eyes betrayed a sadness that made Nona sad that she had asked.
“He had a beautiful face. I love it.”
Cam smiled that goner smile that made Nona want to do anything for her. But that was it. Camilla said nothing else about it. Since it seemed the truth was out, once Pyrrha came home as Cam made Nona do her stretches, Cam went inside to grab one of the sketches and handed it to Pyrrha.
“Here.”
Pyrrha looked at it intensely for a while, rotating the piece of paper this way and that as if making her appreciation.
“Hm. Your adept is hot. I get you now.”
Cam crossed her arms, looking like she regretted ever having done this. Pyrrha laughed as she gave it another look and handed it back to Cam.
“Come on, I just mean that our boy is cute in that nerdy way of his.”
Pyrrha tried to stifle her amusement a bit.
“Now I can put a face to him when he’s talking to me. I appreciate it, Hect.”
Camilla nodded and noticed Nona’s pleading eyes. She gave Nona the drawing and took out her notebook and pencil to take notes of her reaction. Nona wasn’t sure what reaction Camilla expected of her, but it felt really important to her in that moment to memorise the drawing in her hands. Carbon-pencil Palamedes was doing what he always did in Camilla’s body: pushing his glasses up his nose. This familiar gesture combined with the unfamiliar face seemed to finally make sense of something that Nona had been missing. Nona wondered if whoever she may have been before used to love this face. She knew that she loved it.
As if by instinct, Nona turned to Camilla, took her hand and kissed the second knuckle like Palamedes had shown her before. Cam seemed taken back at first, perhaps because Pyrrha was in the room with them this time or perhaps just that old sadness that Nona knew in her. But then Cam smiled, knowing that Nona loved him too. Pyrrha didn’t dare interrupt their moment, but Nona noticed the half smile on her dark lips from across the room.