open RP: croquet

[c_macaulay]

Thanks to magic brownies, Camilla was seven years old.

Thanks to insufferable slights against her gender, Camilla was also furiousShe marched right out of Gryffindor dormitory, out into the castle courtyard, calling for house elves, whom she knew would bring her whatever she wanted. "We need croquet equipment," she ordered. "Arches and balls and

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[c_macaulay]

Wholly uninterested in the prospect of whacking at a tree with a croquet mallet, Camilla led the way out of the courtyard, bemused by how everything seemed so familiar, even places she hadn't been the first time she dreamed of the magic castle. The other yelling children had run off to tilt against windmills, so to speak, except for the relatively orderly John; Henry, as ever, shadowed Camilla, probably grateful she wasn't demanding to be carried.

"Do you have any brothers or sisters?" she asked the other child, suddenly and without preamble.

[c_macaulay]

"Oooh." Camilla, who had stopped her own rummaging when he called her attention to the rock he'd found, was duly impressed. "That one is perfect. It ought to go quite far. This one looks a little like a hippopotamus but I'm afraid it won't be much good for skipping," she said critically, holding up her own find.

[semper_fi_house]

John laughed. "A hippopotamus?" He inspected the rock in question. Now that she mentioned it, it did bear some resemblance to the animal, though John would never have made the comparison on his own. He laughed again and shrugged. "I guess."

He weighed his own find in his hand, tossing it loosely up and down, looking out at the lake.

"Here goes!"

He held the stone carefully and set it loose, flying across the water, where it landed and skipped, once, twice, three times, and then disappeared.

He smiled. His father had taught him how to skip rocks, years ago.

[c_macaulay]

Shielding her dazzled eyes from the sun with one little hand, Camilla watched the stone skip expertly across the water, then dropped the hippopotamus rock and clapped. "Oh, bravo," she said, pleased. "Mr. Hippo I won't even try. Let me see ..." There was an acceptable stone near her feet, after all, which the hippopotamus rock had by no design happened to strike. "This should do."

One skip and a second, then it sank. "Our uncle taught us how. Charles is a little better at it than I am; but I will never, ever, ever tell him so, and don't you tell him either," confided Camilla.

[semper_fi_house]

John laughed. "Sure. I probably won't see him anyway. You're pretty good yourself, anyway." He grinned at her. "For a girl."

He tossed another one, which only skipped twice this time.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla looked heavenward, exasperated. "Not that again. If you say that again I shall go and climb another tree, and this time I won't come down. Then see if you can get Henry to skip stones with you. I rather doubt he will." She paused. "I don't actually know how I know that," she admitted, and bent to rummage for more rocks, to hide her confusion.

[semper_fi_house]

John fought his grin, watching the little girl get all worked up.

"I'm just teasing ya."

He threw the last of his stones, watching it jump across the water briefly, and then knelt down to gather some more.

"You mean you don't really know him?" he asked, brow furrowed. "I thought you did." He glanced over at Mr. Winter curiously, and a little cautiously.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla shook her head. "I do know him but I don't. The same way I knew the lake was going to be here. In your head, are there things you remember that you've never seen?"

[semper_fi_house]

John frowned. "I don't know." He glanced over at her uncomfortably. "Maybe you're remembering having this dream before?" He turned back to the dirt, grabbing a couple more rocks for inspection.

Sitting back on his haunches, he skipped one of them, and continued staring into the water after it sank. He remembered his dad taking him and his little brother down to the river near their house in Ohio. He'd been four, maybe five years old.

"I think I had a dream that my dad died," he said softly.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla knew that feeling, or thought she did. "When mine died, I thought it was a dream at first," she said just as softly, and very soberly. "What happened in your dream about your dad? Do you remember it?"

[semper_fi_house]

John shook his head. "Not well. It's just kind of a feeling." He stood up, stretching his legs.

"He just never came home," he said then, not knowing where that knowledge came from. "Mom got a letter. It was... Iwo..." He squinted across the lake as if the name of the place was written there. "Iwo Jima."

He blinked and then looked down at the ground, feeling uncomfortable.

[c_macaulay]

Camilla hadn't read much modern history, but most of her relatives were of an older generation -- her Nana's generation -- and that was a name she'd heard before. The grown-ups talked at holidays about things that had happened before Camilla was born. It was something to do with a big war, and sometimes people didn't come home. One of Nana's cousins hadn't come home.

That had been a very, very long time ago. Nana's cousin had been young. He never got to come home to be married or have children. Camilla thought John must have had a very, very old father, or maybe he was remembering something that really had only been a dream.

"Dreams are funny," she said comfortingly. "It probably didn't really happen. The last time I was in this castle I was up in a tree with another little girl -- her name's Molly -- and I started remembering all kinds of funny things. I'm sure I don't know half of what I was saying. Your dad is probably just fine."

[semper_fi_house]

John nodded, but a somewhat lost expression remained on his face. "Yeah," he said. He looked at the stones in his hand blankly for a moment and then picked one out to give to Camilla.

"Here," he said, holding it out. "This is a pretty good one."

He didn't feel like throwing another one at just this moment. Instead he sat down on a big rock near the edge of the water, dangling his feet.

"What kinds of stuff?"

[c_macaulay]

"Thank you," said Camilla, a little surprised. "This is a very good stone." She took careful aim to give it a skip worthy of its form, then padded over to stand beside his rock. "Well, I was telling Molly all kinds of things, and I didn't really understand them. She asked me what I meant and I didn't even know what I meant myself. Then I started to feel sad. Very sad. And I ran back to my room -- my room in this castle, I mean. I always start out in the same room. Only it has different things in it. Last time, it only had a lady's things in it. This time it had piles and piles of books, and someone's cigarettes, and then Henry came in and found me. He wasn't here last time."

[semper_fi_house]

John nodded, listening quietly to Camilla. He fiddled with the sleeves of his shirt, which hung down past his elbows, like a short-sleeve shirt for a grown man.

"I don't know why I'm wearing these funny clothes that are way too big for me," he muttered. "That's a pretty stupid thing to dream." Then he asked, "Why are you always in a room with a lady's things in it? Is she--" he had started to ask if maybe it was Camilla's mother's room, but then he remembered that Camilla's mother had died and fell silent. "Maybe it's your Nana's room?"

[c_macaulay]

Camilla considered this. "I don't think so. None of the things there are things that belong to my Nana. She wouldn't wear any of them." She waved a small hand down the length of her body, indicating the clothes she wore now. "And half the books are in other languages. The first time I had this dream it began with me holding a book I couldn't even read. And I do know how to read," she clarified firmly. "Also, it didn't smell like my Nana. She always smells like lavender. All these clothes smell like something else." Acqua di Parma, but child Camilla didn't know that. "And this time someone else's clothes were in the closet, too, suits that belong to a man, and my Nana is a widow." This term she pronounced very seriously. Nana was also not a woman of loose virtue, but that was a term Camilla had only heard once or twice, when the grown-ups thought she wasn't listening, and so she wasn't completely sure of its use.