Worth The Shot

Slipping Back in Time

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.