Author's Note: Videos for characters canon and original, can be found on my YouTube channel via the link on my profile.

~*~

'And the coastal town we wandered 'round

Had never seen a love as pure as it...'

Gold Rush – Taylor Swift

~*~

Under The Willows

"Make way, make way, for the amazing Sarah Cameron!"

Startled, Clementine sat bolt upright from where she had been half dozing over her book, the novel slipping from her fingers forgotten. And just in time at that, her sister taking a running leap and cannonballing into the hammock, forcing Clementine to grab the sides to stop herself being tipped out. "What the hell, Sarah!?" she yelled as the hammock rocked wildly, sending the sheltering branches spiralling above them, making Clementine deeply grateful that Pat and John B had suspended the hammock between the two sturdiest trees they could find at the time.

"Hey, I gave fair warning, Podge!" Sarah objected, hanging onto her own end. "Not my fault you're a slow-poke."

Clementine just glared at her, jaw tightening. Sometimes Sarah just really pissed her off. Sarah was their father's favourite, Daddy's Little Princess with the world at her feet. At first glance the sisters looked superficially alike with their long fair hair and delicate features, but up close, the differences that divided them became apparent. Clementine was naturally blonde whilst Sarah heavily relied on their stepmother's personal hairdresser to achieve the same effect. Sarah possessed a distinctive dark gaze; Clementine's eyes were pale green. Sarah sported a tan all year round whilst Clementine freckled and burned. Though of similar height, Sarah had irritatingly inherited their mother's willowy build, whilst Clementine's frame still carried some childish roundness much to her chagrin.

But only Sarah alone possessed that magnetic charisma that made everyone forgive her almost anything. Her brother and sisters always paled into insignificance beside her no matter their own talents and triumphs. Nobody could compare to Sarah Cameron and Clementine had long learned not to try and compete. But it didn't make it any easier to accept, not when Sarah's sins were forgiven and forgotten, whilst Clementine had to begrudgingly bear her own crosses. She loved her big sister but it wasn't easy living alongside her, not when fate smiled upon Sarah so.

"Whatcha doing anyways?" Sarah asked, tossing her hair back, bored.

Clementine fumbled for her book. "Reading," she said irritably, seeing she had lost her place, "or trying to anyways."

Sarah just glanced around, unperturbed by her little sister's italics. "Nerd," she teased, "reading when there's that kinda view to check out." Smirking, she looked back over her shoulder, confusing Clementine who followed the path of her stare, only to see Pat and John B struggling with a heavy wooden wheelbarrow, both of them topless and sweating thanks to the terrible heat.

Clementine then caught herself, realising she was gawping. "Don't be so immature," she said, rolling her eyes, despite the hot blush creeping up the back of her neck.

Pat had been around their family forever, before the Cameron children had been even thought of. He had once ruled Figure Eight, but after his wife had passed, he'd stopped caring about anything beyond his next bourbon, drinking to blot the world out. One evening, after drinking himself into a sodden stupor, Pat had gone out sailing in a storm and lost his boat, as well as nearly his life. The aftermath had resulted in Ward Cameron unexpectedly intervening, turning up at Pat's hospital bedside with a proposition to help turns things around. The two men had once been as close as brothers growing up, but circumstances had separated them, fate then bringing them full circle. Broke and broken, Pat had reluctantly gone into rehab paid for and arranged by Ward. Finally clean, afterwards at Ward's personal behest, he'd then accepted a live-in position as head gardener and general handyman maintaining the sprawling grounds of Ward's home, the Tanneyhill Plantation.

Now in his fifties, despite the damage the drink had done, Pat was still handsome and debonair, with a drawling Virginian accent enhancing his dark good looks. With his tall frame and broad shoulders, he attracted more than his fair share of attention, but as far as Clementine knew, there had been nobody since his wife. Meanwhile Sarah liked to feign swooning around him whenever the opportunity arose. But nobody took her seriously except their stepmother, Rose, who warned her to chuck it, joke or not, Clementine always squirming when Sarah acted up because it was Pat.

Mind now in turmoil, Clementine leaned back in the hammock, trying to avoid looking in John B's direction, not that he was looking in hers. He was the reason behind her blushes, something she didn't care to examine too closely. The fact her heart had inexplicably settled upon him was humiliating enough. He was a Pogue and she was a Kook. He worked for her father. They simply existed in separate spheres. That was just how it was, the natural order of social selection, almost Darwinian in its origins. But it unfortunately went beyond that. They didn't only exist apart, she just didn't exist in his eyes at all. All John B saw was Sarah and only Sarah, Clementine not even sure John B was aware of it yet, his gaze always settling upon Sarah with something like confusion. And Clementine didn't want to be there on the day he finally realised why.