Our tale begins late on a warm summer's night in 2019. Rusden, roused from his sleep by a mysterious force, wanders outside and finds himself at a one-day-only art shop, which, for some arcane reason, is open from 7am to midnight. There, he meets THE DESERT PROPHET, who, exhausted, refuses to tell his fortune—but if she had, maybe the runes would have disclosed that he had just met his future wife. Though Camilla was the one wearing a guise on their first encounter, it was Rusden who was the mysterious one in the coming months—or at least, Camilla thought so. Rusden kept his cards close to his chest while feeling out his place in the ARCH-HIVE, Camilla's art cult (um, that is, art collective), and Camilla was fascinated by this clever, artistic, storyteller mystery boy. However, due to a series of misconceptions, she at one point thought he was a gay sociopathic kleptomaniac, and was therefore undateable. Well, turns out none of that was true. And turns out Rusden was all the while fascinated by this bold, charismatic, intelligent woman, so when they went to Santa Fe for a week with some friends, the steadily-brewing spark finally struck. They started dating on March 13th, 2020, the day the world shut down, and quickly discovered a host of shocking similarities—both being embroidery artists whose fathers are from Portland, being one of four kids who go in order boy-girl-boy-girl, a certain, ahem, distaste for certain popular media franchises that will not be discussed here, and a weirdly intense attachment to Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. After several months of navigating the pandemic together, and finding that their worst disagreements were over which Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie is better, Rusden & Camilla found themselves madly in love. Not the kind of love where everything is perfect, but the kind where each of them face their worst demons for each other. And now we're married, stupidly happy, and ready to take on life together ✨