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Maelgwyn isn't quite asleep yet when the rocks tap at his window. His phone buzzes after the second one, and he grasps blearily at his nightstand to see what the fuss is all about.
Edmund: hey look out ur window
Castille: wanna go out with us tonight?
He sits up, confused as a third rock ricochets off the pane. Are they... downstairs?
A shuffle over confirms that they are, and Aubrey and the twins wave excitedly when they see him appear. He opens the window, peering out at his friends.
"Why - what's up?" he stage whispers. "What's going on?"
"Come on down!" waves Ethan (or maybe Edmund), another rock from his fathers' immaculate front lawn linden tree at the ready.
"We're bustin' you out," adds Edmund (Ethan?), lifting the full plastic bag on his arm as if that'd clarify anything.
Maelgwyn frowns, chancing a look behind himself. All seemed quiet in the house. "Why - it's midnight - you can't just do that." But he clambers out his window as quietly as he can anyway, the movements practiced and assured even as he tests his grip on the side of the roof, letting go once he's sure he'll be safe - and he lands in Sige's arms, the latter setting him down easily and sweeping him into a tight hug.
"Hey," Maelgwyn wheezes when Sige lets go, and ducks his head as Sige ruffles his golden curls. "Guys, get over here, they're gonna see you if you hang out on the lawn."
The Hitchcock with the rock tosses it back into the mulch ring from whence it came, and the gang congregates at the side of the house, out of view of any windows.
"What's this about - 'busting me out'?" he asks, wishing he'd brought a sweater with him but unwilling to show it just yet.
"It's exactly what it sounds like," scoffs Hitchcock (the one who had the rock). "We're gonna go on a midnight adventure! Like every teen movie, you know, loitering, being out too late in sus places, just hangin' out with your pals."
"My dads are going to notice," Maelgwyn protests, heart already rising to his throat at the thought of having to mitigate that disaster. "Friday night? We don't have anything happening the morning after, right?"
"Do you need a cover story?" Castille asks. "Can't you say you're staying with one of us for a study night, or... or at your. Um. Your aunt, right?"
"Yeah, she's my aunt. I could ask Galenica if they could cover for me," he says dubiously, "But I think Aunt Severea would tell my dads..."
"Right, then it's decided," Hitchcock-who-had-the-rock says, punching his palm confidently. "We'll kidnap you!"
"No, we won’t," Sige interrupts, amused. "We don't have to kidnap him."
"Yeah, can't we just say you're going to a sleepover at one of our places?" Aubrey asks. "Are - are your dads gonna let you do that?"
Maelgwyn frowns. "I dunno, they've been weird lately. Y'know, with Grandpa..." It doesn't need to be said, the implication's presence hanging heavy in the air. "But I could get Galenica and Severea to distract my dads?"
"Uh huh? How so?" Castille rummages in the grocery bag they'd brought and tosses a tangerine at him, which he catches and peels absentmindedly.
"If they hang out with my dads and distract them by, like, catching up or something, ‘cause we haven’t seen them in a while... they won't notice I'm gone, right?"
"You sure that won't get you in trouble?" Aubrey asks, fidgeting. "I mean, even more trouble..."
"It'll be fine," Maelgwyn says, more for the sake of convincing himself. "Galenica's - none of you have met them, right? They'll cover for me. Besides, isn't that more teen movie-ish?"
"It is good when family members help cover up a heist," agrees Hitchcock-who-didn't-have-the-rock.
"I guess," Aubrey says slowly, worrying her lip.
"So wait," Castille interjects. "What's your plan?"
Maelgwyn grins, crooked, feeling himself tugged along by the optimism of his vision. "See, here's what I'm thinking..."
Group Chat: the six
Maelgwyn s.: Im on my way, be there at like 6?
Edmund: 👍👍
Aubrey: what did u tell ur dads???
Sige: Gonna be late
Aubrey: ok doke! \(^o^)/
Maelgwyn s.: Just my dad, but i said i was studying at ur place bc i know he likes you
Maelgwyn s.: Thinks youre a good student :p
Aubrey: :>=
Castille: so the plan is to say you're sleeping over?
Maelgwyn s.: Yeah, im gonna say im sleeping at aubrey's house bc we forgot the time. And severea and galenica are going to be there soon so they'll be distracted til I check in. Its gonna be perfect
Maelgwyn s.: So what do we want to do?
“You know,” Sige says when he gets there, “I didn’t expect us to be...”
“Studying on a Friday?” Castille deadpans in the Zosim armchair, looking over Maelgwyn’s hurriedly-improvised Chem homework he brought as proof they were actually studying in case Samot questioned him later.
“Up to our usual contrary tomfoolery?” Ethan contributes cheekily, having none of the homework business as he, Edmund, Maelgwyn, and Aubrey play Smash Bros. (Maelgwyn had taken the time to figure out which Hitch was which this time - Ethan is playing Cloud and Edmund is currently on Lucina. He definitely doesn’t feel competent enough to be playing with the Hitchcocks and Aubrey, who is hunched over muttering a stream of threats (“when I beat your ass it’s gonna be over for you you’re about to feel the wrath of a god HI SIGE”) as she mashes buttons, but he’s holding his own with Ike.)
“Making general nuisances of ourselves?” Edmund adds, casually sticking his whole hand in Ethan’s bag of chips and having Lucina topple off the arena for his troubles.
Sige barks a laugh and motions for Edmund to scoot over on the couch. “So what’s the plan?”
Aubrey, perched on the sofa arm, scrunches her nose to lift her glasses. “I know we were floating the idea of getting ice cream? Just down the street...”
“Oh yo, no, I got it,” Ethan pipes up. “We should go down to Quince, I saw a bunch of trinket shops that would be cool to look at.”
“Ice cream sounds pretty good too, though,” Edmund adds, shoving Cloud into oblivion while Ethan isn’t looking. “Well, I mean, we can do both.”
“Both sounds good,” Sige agrees.
“Then it’s both,” Castille says, still occupied with the homework. “How... did you get 3.18... 76 on number 12?”
“I don’t know,” Maelgwyn admits, relieved to be able to be honest. “I’ve been faking knowing how to do Chem this whole time.”
Aubrey winces in sympathy. “Are you signed up for it next year too?”
“Yeah,” he sighs, irritated at the prospect. “Samothes kind of forced me to.”
“Oh, so it’s ‘Samothes’ now, is it?” Ethan calls.
“‘My father’ is just the socially acceptable way of saying ‘my dad is a bastard’,” Maelgwyn quips back. “Look, it’s rough, I don’t know. I still... can’t really tell them to back off, you know.” The weight of the statement settles in the room like a fog, and Castille sighs, capping her highlighter with the sound of finality.
“Well, shall we?” she asks, shaking them all from the haze. “In a few, I mean -”
“No, we can go right now,” Edmund responds, pausing the game. “Let’s go.”
Canopy Row is slightly more genteel than the last time any of them had been there - there are new pop-up shops, true to Ethan’s observations. The Red House, a former mansion that had been converted into a mini-mall a few years back, has new displays in the windows, proclaiming the services of a Walligan Upchurch, Antiquities and Notary.
“Walligan Upchurch,” Ethan proclaims in his loftiest, snootiest voice as they crowd around the window, ice creams in hand.
“Antiquities and Notary,” Maelgwyn adds, “You know, in case you need to get something legal signed or whatever while you browse for the latest gas lamps.”
“Who even needs a notary?” Aubrey asks, on her tiptoes. “You can get licensed online for anything now.”
“I hate to think of who’s gonna need this guy at like, 6 AM,” calls Sige as he follows Edmund into the Red House. “I mean yeah, I kinda work here, but it’s not like I know why these businesses are here.”
“Sometimes it just be like that,” Castille deadpans as they all congregate in the thankful coolness of the building. “Should we check it out?”
“Why, we shall,” Maelgwyn teases, still affecting a dramatically pompous tone. And so they do, a bell tinkling overhead as they push the heavy door open.
“Hey, Remembrance,” Sige says to the square sad-eyed man behind the desk wearing an off-white knit sweater. Remembrance waves. “Wally isn’t in?”
“He took off.” Remembrance rolls his eyes wearily. “You know how he is about schedules.”
Sige shrugs in sympathy, and lets himself get tugged along by Aubrey, who’s seen something interesting. They more or less stick together as they rove the shop, pausing to make fun of some particularly wacky antiques (Remembrance doesn’t seem to mind, even cracking a smile at a few of their jokes). Eventually they decide they’ve overstayed their welcome and thank Remembrance as they cluster out the door and into Lilith’s curiosities shop right across the hall.
“Hi guys!” Lilith calls from a ladder at the back. “How’s it going?”
“Good!” Sige calls back as they move into the store.
“Oh, Sige! Did you forget something?”
“Friends wanted to come here,” Sige explains good-naturedly, waving at Ethan, who is insistently flagging him down, pointing at a frolicking ceramic frog holding a clarinet. “So I’m back.”
“That’s a good frog,” Aubrey declares next to Ethan, hushed, “But you know what’s better?” She holds up a truly garish teapot, the image on the side only recognizable as a cat painted by someone who had only ever interacted with descriptions of cats. “Boom.”
Lilith laughs along, a hearty belly laugh that threatens to topple her off her ladder, and cheerfully points out some of the weirder knickknacks in her store as they move along her shelves - a carefully rendered painting of a shark and a unicorn dueling with lightsabers, a lamp with a screaming contorted person for a neck, a statue of a... weird horse? It’s hard to tell. She waves goodbye when they’ve had their fill of her curios, making them promise to come back if they ever want somewhere to hang out, and they crowd the sidewalk, chattering in the golden glow of the sun as they idle in the direction of Orchid Street and into yet another familiar shop.
“Hi Tisk,” Aubrey calls as the group spills into the cramped bookstore.
“Oh, I, hello,” the aged store owner responds distractedly as he tries to extract himself from the precarious pile of books stacked at the till. “Hi Aubrey, good to see you - are you folks looking for anything in particular?”
“No, just looking,” Maelgwyn assures him, and winces as he hears Ethan knocking over a mountain of books with a comically quiet “oh no...” as they cascade to the ground. Tisk’s hair instantly stands on end.
“Don’t - don’t worry about it!” he calls anxiously as he darts through the store with unforeseen dexterity. “I have a system, it’s very important to respect the system - here -” He vanishes into the walls of books, leaving the rest of the Six to peruse what they can reach of the store.
It’s not a lot, honestly. Whatever Tisk’s system is, it’s confusingly intricate and apparently relies on the Jenga-stacking of so many books one could build another bookstore out of them, and the Six are honestly too cowed to consider any hijinks that won’t further disturb Tisk’s delicate ecosystem. They leave as soon as Ethan has sheepishly extricated himself from his criminal avalanche, calling embarrassed goodbyes and thanks behind them.
“Well,” Castille says with a straight face as soon as the door closes. “That was... great.” They burst into laughter, wandering along the dimming Canopy Row. The streetlights are on now, giving off an atmosphere of timelessness when set against the bleeding sky. “So what now?”
“It’s getting kinda late,” Sige offers. “You guys wanna get some food? Hit up the corner store?”
“Sure, yeah, let’s go,” is the general consensus. So they set off, feeling taller than their shadows, exuberant and unfettered and the only people that matter to each other out on the street.
The lights of the Gardener Convenience Store (Coffee $2! Fresh bakeries!) invite in a garish kind of way - the neon magentas and blues give the façade a liminal atmosphere, insistent where the fading sun is not. The sliding doors welcome them with a chime, and they disperse into the aisles, past the tall gangly cashier who only gives them a cursory look.
Castille is the one who eventually finds Maelgwyn in the candy aisle, clutching some drinks in her arms. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he responds softly, acutely aware of the hum of the fluorescent lights for some reason.
“Something on your mind?” she asks, contemplating the Sour Patch Kids with him. He lays his head on her shoulder, a warm familiar presence, and heaves a sigh.
“It just... keeps weighing on the back of my mind,” he says softly. “Like... Grandpa. You know. And how my dads expect me to be the adult here... it sucks.”
“I know,” Castille murmurs, leaning her head against his. “Do you wanna talk about it, or do you not want to think about it?”
He shakes his head, as best as he can. “I don’t wanna - I want to stop thinking about it for a moment. I just want to be able to relax.” Hitchcock has wandered into their aisle - he’s pretty sure it’s Edmund, but they could’ve swapped jackets - and joins the leaning party, sandwiching Maelgwyn between Castille’s armful of drinks and Hitchcock’s oversized squeaking bag of chips. “Hey, man.”
“‘Ello,” the Hitch singsongs. “How are you doing?”
“Good,” Castille says at the same time as Maelgwyn’s half-hearted “eh”. “How’re the others?”
“Ethan found a shopping cart and now Aubrey’s sitting in it,” responds Hitchcock, who must be Edmund, then, and almost on cue, Sige, Ethan, and Aubrey rattle into the aisle, Aubrey in the cart with a lap full of snacks. Castille promptly dumps her drinks in the cart, and Aubrey catches Edmund’s chips and finds a place for them on the side.
“We good?” Ethan asks cheerfully.
“Yeah. Yeah.” Maelgwyn shakes himself from his fog, done deliberating A pack of Sour Patch Kids makes it into the cart, then a large Kit Kat. And a second one. “Now we’re good.”
Ethan claps him on the shoulder. “Good man. C’mon, let’s feast!”
The cashier (who they learn from Castille is named Hazel) smiles at the sight of them and lets them push their cart full of spoils outside, where they decide to congregate on the curb, under the blue and purple neons washing everything in their hues. It’s fully dark by now, a clear starry night, and they sit there, snacks a free-for-all as they chat animatedly about the past few days, the near future, and the far days ahead, seemingly limitless with possibility like the sky above.
Maelgwyn laughs at something Ethan says, he doesn’t remember what - he just knows that right now, he feels at home. No obligations at the moment, sitting around with his friends, enjoying their company and the treats they’re indulging themselves with - a rare luxury for him. It’s relaxing, being able to do and think and feel however he wants in moments that seem boundless, just them and the sky above, eternal, constant, infinite, unaffected, cocooning them and promising brighter futures.
And right now, he feels weightless. He feels full of that promise, he feels like he can do anything. For the first time in a while, he feels like he has the buoyancy and balance to go back to his everyday life and be as strong as he needs to be, and to come out of it all to a bright sunny day. It’s giddying, glowing inside him as brilliant as the lights overhead, and he wants to take that light and wrap himself in its reassurance. These past few years, with stress and tragedy and no room to breathe in his family, he’s felt out of it. Shifting, greyed out, hollowed, leadened, caught - there hasn’t been much cause to feel better than alright lately, but it’s relieving to know he still remembers how to feel joy. To remember and believe that there are bright days ahead for him, that the sun always comes back after the dark.
Bright days ahead. There is a future out there where the sun smiles down on him, and everything is alright.
And he’ll smile back.