The Chameleon (Camilo x YN)

Part ten

Camilo's POV
"The once leisurely days had become tense," Camilo thought. Everyone was making preparations for a possible attack on their community. Some of the elders had become particularly forceful, slipping into a state of survival they had when they came to Abuela's sanctuary all those years ago. Dolores was up constantly patrolling the perimeter and Luisa was usually with her, both on the look out for anyone in the forest. Isabella took to reinforcing the barrier every day with ever increasing thorns and poisons. In fact, Isabella was becoming quite the engineer when it came to human sized carnivorous plants. So much so, a few community members had gotten tangled up in a few traps, thankfully the non lethal kind. Camilo tried to help as best he could, but could only do so much, and it wasn't a lot.
Days dragged through the week, locked in a constant drudge of waiting for a possible shout or scream, but none came. Mirabel walked over to Camilo, sighed and plopped herself on the ground.
Slightly confused and a little concerned, Camilo leaned over only to see Mirabel collapse, face first into the ground. Just as he was about to help her up, a line of rats ran by carrying a piece of food, and shoved it into Mirabel's mouth. In a instant, she sprang up, a crazed look in her eye and went back to work.
"Um? Mirabel? You're not looking too great."
"I'll be...fine," she smiled, "it's for the family, and the more that I can do, the more people can relax."
"You are clearly the most stressed person here," Y/n poked their head around the corner, "besides, you saved the magic, like, what? A few months ago? You need to rest."
"But-"
"shush," Y/n glanced at Camilo mouthing: "aren't you going to help me?"
He shrugged and took one side of Mirabel and Y/n took the other. They both carted Mirabel across town and into Casita who threw together a stretcher and carted Mirabel off to her room.
"so, how have you been?" Y/n asked, the whole area had been busy and they hardly had much time to talk.
"Oh, um, I've been doing stuff... around.. you know," Camilo said. He tried to think of a conversation, but nothing came to him.
"Well, I'm finished with the work I wanted to do today, do you want to just hang out?" Y/n asked, setting down the basket they were resting in their hip. Camilo agreed, and they sat by the side as people streamed past them.
"I don't like this," Camilo whispered, clutching his yellow shawl, "this is just us waiting for something to happen, we're on the look out for any possible threat but what happen if we burn ourselves out like this?" He sunk his head, arms crossing over himself like the vines outside the community.
"Maybe, no never mind," Y/n rubbed their temples, "that would be too risky."
"Hmm? What would?"
"Well, if we sent some people outside the literal death traps your cousin is making, we could get information out there. We could try to contact... well I don't know who but someone or some people who could help us subdue who ever is after us."
"What do you mean?"
"I'm saying, why don't we have spies who could let everyone in here know what's going on so that we aren't just reacting and get preparations for anything that might come our way? But I think it's too risky and who would do that anyways? Your Uncle Bruno could do almost the same thing and Dolores is basically our entire emergency warning."
Camilo relaxed, not wanting to do anything at the moment. He was so tired but it was nice to sit and just be.

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