She takes hers from him.

“It’s…the silver comb. The incense. The mad astrologers. I thought my horse could take me to it, but he never brought me any closer.”

She raises the mug.

“I can’t sleep, looking for it at night.”

She takes a drink, and furrows her brow, trying to place something.

It's extremely urgent to distract her. Luckily the distraction is right at hand.

"And ... maps, foreign countries? Or were you just hoping that it might be from abroad?"

“I thought a place name might tell me where it might have gone. Where I could look.”

She takes another drink. What does it remind her of…?

“There’s always…an empty space, behind me…”

Oh. That’s where she remembers that taste from.

“…what’s in this?”

"Uh. I think they brew it with ... juniper? Or something?"

He's so innocent. His own drink is so untouched.

She stands, crosses the narrow space between them in two strides, grabs him by the hair, and slams his head back against a bookshelf.

“What did you put in it.”

Camillo is going to die. Camillo is going to die and his body is producing entirely inappropriate adrenaline responses about it.

"Nothing! What! Ow!"

Her hand flashes to her side and the edge of her knife is at his throat.

When Camillo was in third grade, before everything went down with his parents, he used to do math competitions. In one of his favorites, two players went head-to-head, equipped with buzzers. The moderator read the question aloud, and the first player to buzz in had the first chance to answer for the big prize. If they got it wrong, they'd have to sit out the rest of the allotted minute in silence, while their opponent raced to answer before time was up.

The real trick to it, when you were playing against a strong opponent, was to hit the buzzer about five seconds before you had your final answer. The buzzer would sound, the moderator would call your name, you'd take a deep breath, and that would buy you enough time to finish your calculations. An opponent who only buzzed in when they knew the answer wouldn't stand a chance.

It was a game Camillo was very, very good at.

"I know what you're looking for!"

The edge of the knife at his neck bites into the skin.

(But it doesn’t slit his throat.)

“What am I looking for.”

fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck

Okay. Think fast. Think think think. Don't just think the word think repeatedly, that never helps. What is Dorothy looking for. What should be in Dorothy's dream but isn't. What would Dorothy miss. What's foreign and far away. What's like astrology and incense and a silver comb. What goes on four legs in the morning, two legs at noon, and three legs at night.

What does Dorothy find wandering at night under the stars, driven mad by thinking too much about Jupiter.

"Kyou!"

She blinks, uncomprehending—

—and then gasps.

Her knife clatters on the floor.

Camillo has way too much adrenaline to shut up.

"Your best friend! He's really smart but he never talks!" He's hung, Camillo knows this from the locker room and it's invariably about the third thing he thinks of when he thinks of Kyou, but this isn't a good time to bring it up! "One time he wore a blindfold for two weeks straight! He had a psychotic break senior year of high school! Genuinely unreasonable amount of hair! Gave himself some really weird tattoos!"

She lets go of his hair, takes a slow step back.

“…I remember.”

Released, Camillo slumps against the shelf, touches his throat with his fingers. There's blood, but probably not a fatal amount. Cool. That's cool.

“I loved him. We had a bond. In…another life — but it’s my life.”

She sits back down.

“How did you know?”

"I -- knew you. A little. In -- another life."

The way a terminally uncool freshman knows the coolest senior in the entire high school.

“…you tried to poison me,” she adds, although this is suddenly not her primary concern. It does, however, seem like it might be relevant.

"Only a little bit. Sorry! No! That's not -- I had a good reason?"

His heart can stop racing any time now.

“Go on.”

Ah fuck this is going to sound so stupid now that he tries to explain it out loud.

"...this isn't real. None of this is real. This is a dream and you need to wake up and go back to your real life." He knows because an alien told him in a dream, but somehow that seems best to omit.

“…a dream,” she says, about as unimpressed as the statement warrants.

"Yes -- look, you just said another life, right -- that's the real one! The one with Kyou! That's what you've been looking for this whole time!"

…he has had some startling insights in the last five minutes. Maybe this is one more.

She thinks about it, tries to remember.