Griddlebone

Title: A Terrible Affliction
Author: Griddlebone/ladygriddlebone
Character: Camille
Rating: G
Summary: Something was terribly wrong with Camille.
Warnings: None
Notes: Written for the "kindness" prompt at fan_flashworks



Something was terribly wrong. Camille knew it in her gut, with a powerful animal instinct. She could feel the sickness growing inside her, the incessant and uncharacteristic longing for something that went against her entire nature and everything she had ever believed in.

Kindness had been absent for much of her long, long life. Her existence was cold and unforgiving, like the stone walls and dusty scrolls that had been her only company for ten thousand years. Kindness was a human idea, a foreign concept that had no place in her world. It was human. It was weakness.

And yet she yearned for it. One taste of kindness from that human girl, the Yellow Ranger, and now she wanted more. She wanted someone to listen to her, to care about her. She wanted Dai Shi to listen to her and care about her.

That was the crux of it, and the curse. Somehow she had come to want Dai Shi to behave like a human.

It shamed and horrified her, but no amount of shame or horror could stop the longing in her heart. For him to recognize her loyalty and her love, for him to return those feelings… she wanted it more than even victory over the humans. But for that to happen, the Dai Shi she loved would cease to exist. He would have to become other than he was. He would have to become more human. And that would never happen. That could never happen.

The humans were destroying the world, changing the course of its destiny forever, and that could not be allowed to happen unchallenged. Only Dai Shi was strong enough to stop it. There was no one else. And their only chance for victory over the humans could not be sacrificed for one silly chameleon's feelings.

Even as Camille knew this and recognized it, and so did her best to hide the hideous longing in her heart, she wished it were not so.