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Lune was feeling a number of things, right now, that she would rather not.
She was never one for sentimentality; there just wasn’t time for it, especially the more that time wore on. She had only three years left, three years until her expedition. Four, if she had chosen to gommage—but she had decided several years ago that she wasn’t going to do that. Just imagine, she had thought, how much knowledge lay beyond Lumiére. How much she’d uncover. How much could be learned from applying her parents’ research in the wild.
If, she thought, she were really and truly putting the future of Lumiére first, she would spend that extra year, that fourth year, working incessantly, furthering her research, so that the next expedition would have more to use.
But, like her brother and sister and mother and father before her, she—though quietly—craved excitement, too. And, though it took many years of convincing herself, she deserved it. She deserved it, and the only people who would possibly question her decision had been dead for almost a decade. And it wasn’t as though she hadn’t sacrificed much already—her time, her energy, her sleep, her music. She had earned herself a little selfishness.
Still, there was so much to do between now and then, so she spent her time carefully. She tried to keep her thoughts to productive things. Her plans for the next day, for the next week. The purpose of Nevrons. The journal her parents had filled up, that she was going to read through tonight. Her parents. Would they be proud of her? What would Stella be doing right now, if she were here? Lune felt her chest ache. She missed her dog, her siblings, her parents, and the playful, high-pitched barking as Patte raced around the living room, and the resultant laughter from Stella and Sol. The sounds of life in the house.
It was quiet, she thought. Too quiet.
By now, she had learned that sometimes it was better to acknowledge and work through her feelings rather than ignore them, because they would always come out eventually. That started with naming them. Right now, she was feeling sad and she was feeling lonely.
She had no desire, no energy, to socialize. But being around people, seeing people, would help. Maybe for a half hour or an hour or so. Then, her mind would be hers again, to focus on her work as she pleased.
With a small sigh, she stepped out of the door and began wandering around Lumiére. The bricks under her feet were slick and the air was thick. She was glad, she thought, that she had evidently just missed the rain. She found herself going to the town square, which was always lively in the evening. She smiled politely and nodded as people passed her by, but no one stopped her to speak, much to her relief. She felt a bit of warmth swelling inside of her. It was nice to see people, smiling and laughing and talking. That was why, she thought, she was working so hard, after all. So that people like this could keep living like this.
But, she thought, when would she get to live?
No. That’s not what your life is for. Your purpose is not to enjoy life. You have a higher calling. You should be proud of that, she thought. That was what her parents had always told her, and it was true.
The shouts and giggles and squeals that surrounded Lune quickly became too much to bear, and she turned around to head home.
On her way back, she noticed a man standing on the edge of the bridge, staring intently at the ground below, grasping the railing with a single hand. His grip was strong and tense, his back curled, his knees slightly bent and facing inward, his chest pressed against the railing. It was as if his grasp on the black iron bar was the only thing keeping his body from collapsing, from tipping over the edge and onto the ground below. There was no way anyone would survive such a fall.
Lune hastened her pace, slightly. She couldn’t tell if he was aware of how close he was to falling. As she drew closer, she realized it was Gustave—Sol’s girlfriend’s brother, she thought.
She saw him every week during expeditioner training, and was often paired up with him, but that didn’t offer much opportunity for conversation. She had spoken to him maybe fifteen or twenty times in her life, though none of those were probably in the past year. Probably, none of those conversations had happened since Sol died, although maybe they had exchanged pleasantries sometime afterward. Little, frivolous conversations had for the sake of politeness. It wasn’t worth keeping track of those things. She was surprised she remembered them at all. Though, she did have three or four interesting conversations with him that she could remember: one where they discussed previous expeditions, and she had been impressed at his extensive knowledge of them all; one where he seemed genuinely curious about her guitar and how she learned to play it; and one where they discussed the philosophy of the expedition, and talked through the morality of different hypotheticals they might find themselves in in a few years’ time.
He was, she thought, an interesting-enough man, if a little awkward. Certainly capable of meaningful conversation, once they moved past the pleasantries. Probably someone she should have spoken more to. Probably someone she would have enjoyed speaking more to, if she hadn’t been so busy with her research.
Despite not speaking to him much, recently, she knew a lot about him, because word got around in Lumiére. He had—recently? A year ago?—broken up with his girlfriend, Sophie, who worked at the aquafarm. His mentor, Julien—whom her parents had spoken highly of—had gommaged recently, and one of his apprentices—little Marcel, who had taken an interest in Lune’s playing when she performed at the festival—was sick and dying. So, she thought, she wouldn’t have been surprised if he was feeling lonely, too. But he had two sisters at home—Emma, and that witty redheaded child they had taken in. So he couldn’t be that lonely. Surely not lonely enough to—
“Gustave,” she found herself saying softly, as she slowly approached the man.
His back straightened, and he let out a quiet exclamation.
“Oh, Lune,” he said, turning his head and giving her a small, perfunctory smile. “I didn’t hear you.”
His voice shook slightly.
“I can see that,” she said. "Do you usually startle so easily?”
That wasn’t, she thought, going to be great for his performance in their expedition.
He chuckled.
“I don’t—I mean, I—Usually, I…”
He smiled. Were his cheeks red?
“It’s been a long day,” he said.
That was a lie, Lune thought; or, at least, that being the reason why he was so inarticulate was a lie. He had always been like that.
“Were you thinking of jumping off?” Lune asked.
Gustave’s eyes widened.
“No!” he exclaimed, then sighed softly. “I mean…Going to? No. Thinking about it? A little.”
That was, she thought, a very personal and vulnerable thing to divulge—but it had been a personal thing to ask. She should probably offer some sort of consolation.
“L'appel du vide,” she said, smiling, as she approached him.
Had anyone in this world, she thought, not thought about jumping off a bridge, once or twice?
He took a step away from the railing—towards her—and loosened his grip.
“Yeah,” he said with a small laugh. “Yeah. That.”
She felt herself relaxing. Gustave was fine.
“What’re you doing out here?” he asked.
“Going for a walk,” she said with a shrug.
“I mean—I never see you out, especially at night. You’re always working.”
“Not always,” she said with a small smile. “So are you.”
“Not always,” he parroted back, grinning.
He was a bit handsome, thought Lune, wasn’t he? His wavy brown hair, which was, after a full day, slightly unkempt, but had clearly been styled that morning. The slight slant in his smile. She had never bothered to notice it, before. She could hardly think of a time when she had given him, or anyone, her full attention, when she hadn’t been running numbers or making plans in the back of her mind. But, he had her attention now.
“Would you like to accompany me?” she asked.
Gustave looked at her for a moment, his eyes wide, before his face softened.
“Yes,” he said. “That would be nice.”
He took a few steps toward her, his face illuminated by the lamplight. There was some redness around his eyes, and his cheeks glistened. He had, Lune thought, been crying. Maybe he was in a worse place than she had initially guessed. It was very rare for the citizens of Lumiére to cry, she thought, given how inoculated they were to tragedy.
But, she wasn’t particularly skilled at dealing with emotions, at offering comfort. Maybe her presence would be enough to help him. Maybe she could distract him.
“It’s busy down at the square tonight,” Lune said. “Have you been?”
“Not tonight,” he said. "But, usually, I try to get out and—well, not every night, but I…Did you want to go?”
Lune shook her head.
“No. No, it’s way too crowded for me,” she said.
He gave her a small smile.
“I get that,” he said. “Maybe you could come by earlier in the evening sometime. I’m sure people would enjoy more of your guitar-playing.”
For a moment, Lune felt her insides flutter. To be acknowledged for something other than her work, to be thought of as skilled-enough that people, other than children, would enjoy it…
It felt nice. She did always enjoy playing at the gommage.
But that was the only time she allowed herself to. Nobody worked on that day.
“I’d like to, but I’m too busy,” she said.
Gustave chuckled awkwardly.
“Right,” he said, and nodded vigorously, as though he understood.
If anyone understood the kind of pressure that she was under, it would be him. He seemed to be—for the most part—very intentional with his time. He had had a hand in multiple inventions that were indispensable for Lumiére, in addition to training up his apprentices. Though, he had engaged in relationships, which was an obvious time-sink. So, maybe they weren’t as similar as it first seemed.
There was a long silence.
“Uh…well, where are you headed?” he asked.
“Oh, I thought I might walk to the harbor and back,” she replied.
“That sounds great,” he said, and the two began walking.
Lune felt herself growing a little self-conscious after another long silence. She hadn’t actually spent time one-on-one with another person in weeks, if not longer. She could talk about her research, but he probably wouldn’t understand the complexities, and it would take an hour just to give him an overview of the prerequisite knowledge. He was probably still feeling sad, so she shouldn’t bring up the recent gommage. What else did they have in common?
That’s right, she thought. They had had one interesting conversation since Sol’s death. It hadn’t been too long ago.
“How’s your work?” she asked. “You were working on the…What was it called? Something that’s going to draw out the power of the pictos?”
“The Lumina Converter—that’s a working title,” Gustave said, flashing her a smile.
“Lumina Converter,” Lune repeated with a nod. “I like that. It’s straightforward.”
“At least the name is,” Gustave said with a small sigh. “The prototype…It’s not going so well. It’s twenty pounds, which is too heavy to lug around, I know, but making it smaller with the materials we have right now is…I won’t say it’s impossible, but it feels that way.”
The anguish in his voice was familiar, thought Lune. She had spent many nights despairing a lack of progress, only to find, after a good nights’ sleep, that the answer came to her.
“And it barely fucking works,” he continued with a frown. “I give it a pictos, and get barely any energy back. The math checks out. I’ve done it a million times. So I have no idea why—”
He paused and chuckled nervously.
“Sorry,” he said.
Lune smiled at him. His cheeks were a little red.
“Don’t apologize,” Lune said.
“It’s—I mean, I—I’m happy to work on it. It’s a great opportunity. An honor. But there’s so much riding on it. Our resources are so limited, and they gave them to me. It has to work. But it’s…it’s not. And I’m the only person in Lumiére—in anywhere—who can figure out why, and I just…I can’t.”
He sounded like he might cry. Lune felt almost overcome by the rawness in his voice, the frustration.
“I’ve been there,” she said. “Now that my parents are gone, I’m the expert on everything they’ve done. If I don’t understand a part of their notes, or if my experiment doesn’t pan out the way I thought it did, the only person who’s going to figure it out is me. I find that a good night’s sleep helps. Sometimes, your mind just needs time to process what it knows to be true.”
“It’s…It’s lonely,” Gustave said quietly, after some silence.
How strange, Lune thought. It had never occurred to her to prescribe emotions to the situation. The facts were that she was the expert and that she, alone, could figure out what was needed. She had to figure it out, so she would. That was that.
Lune shrugged.
“I try to keep emotions out of my work,” she said.
“But why do we do it this way? Why don’t we get more people to help?”
“People just complicate things, in my experience,” Lune said, crossing her arms.
Gustave chuckled.
The lack of people to begin with, let alone people with the mental capacity to take on the work, was also likely a factor, she thought. But even if there were more people who wanted to help out with such complex problems, they’d probably bring their emotions into it. Lune wondered how much of Gustave’s problem, of his inability to make progress on his work, was due to that.
"You think so?” he asked.
Lune nodded.
“Is that why you and Sophie broke up? So that you would have less distractions from your work?”
That was certainly why, Lune thought, she had never pursued relationships.
Gustave stopped walking for a moment, and made a noise that almost sounded like choking.
Lune stopped, too, and looked at him. His big, brown eyes. His slightly-parted lips. The faint flush—from embarrassment at speaking so much? From passion for his work?—in his cheeks.
He was definitely attractive. Sophie must have been devastated by their breakup, Lune thought.
“Uh, that’s…that’s not why,” Gustave said after a moment.
He slowly resumed walking, picking up his pace only when Lune began to lead the way again.
"How do you know about that?” he asked.
“You and Sophie breaking up?” Lune asked. “It was the talk of the town for a while. Long enough that even I heard about it, and I really don’t pay attention to gossip. I don’t have the time.”
Gustave chuckled.
“Yeah. You’re a very busy woman,” he said, giving her a small smile.
“And you’re a very busy man,” Lune said.
Lune felt a tinge of embarrassment. She was incredibly intrigued by this sudden mystery. She was, probably, one of the least-aware people when it came to the goings-on in town, and even she knew that Gustave and Sophie had seemed quite happy together, and had gotten the impression that their marriage was an inevitability. She was, she recalled, genuinely surprised when she first heard about it—but quickly assumed that he, like her, had decided that relationships were taking too much time and energy away from work.
“Why did you two break things off, then?” she asked.
“That’s, uh—I mean, that’s a complicated…”
Gustave cleared his throat.
“I guess you could say it was…philosophical differences,” he said.
“Oh?” Lune said. “Like one of you doesn’t believe in marriage?”
Gustave shrugged. The smile had fallen from his face and his lips were pursed together.
“Something like that,” he said.
Though Lune didn’t know Sophie particularly well, she seemed to be a romantic.
“So you were against it, then?” she asked.
Gustave took a deep breath.
“I don’t, uh…It wasn’t…”
He took a deep breath.
“I, uh…I wanted to have kids and she didn’t.”
That was surprising.
“Oh, really?” Lune said. “She’s always seemed so good with children.”
Gustave frowned. His jaw was clenched tightly.
“She—yeah, she is. She really is.”
He sighed.
“It was more that she didn’t think it was fair to bring them into a world like this. She didn’t think that things were going to get better.”
Gustave was an optimist? But that made sense, Lune supposed. He was working tirelessly to make things better. He wouldn’t work so hard if he didn’t feel like he could make a difference. Maybe he and Lune weren’t actually so different.
“You do, though?” Lune asked, smiling.
“I…Well, I have to,” Gustave said, an attempt at a chuckle sputtering out from his throat. “Everything we’re doing…I can’t believe it’s all for nothing.”
Lune had never seriously considered having children. They were cute and curious and she always enjoyed them (except, maybe, when the younger ones were too loud), but they took up lots of time, time she needed to focus on her research. Her parents, thought Lune, were lucky enough to live in a time where they could have a family and make serious progress in their career—but she wasn’t.
“Right,” Lune said with a nod. “It’s sad that it has to be like this. If only we were born in the previous generation.”
Gustave laughed quietly.
“Before we had Aquafarm 3?” he said, grinning at Lune. “When half of what we ate was just fish and bread? No thanks.”
Lune chuckled. She had never cared much for eating—it was more of a nuisance than anything—but it was certainly true that far fewer people now went hungry, and that far more people enjoyed a more varied and nutritious diet.
Well. Eating was a nuisance, unless she happened to have some of her favorite pastries. But the chef who made them had been sick all week, and she didn't know when she would get to have them again.
“No, I’ve often thought the same,” Gustave said softly after a pause. “Another 30 years. What I wouldn’t give.”
“I don’t even know what I would do with all that time,” Lune said. “I’d surely have finished my work by then.”
“You’d have more time to play guitar,” Gustave said with a grin.
Lune chuckled. How nice that would be.
“That would be fun,” she said.
“Sciel says we are sorely lacking in fun here in Lumiére,” Gustave said with a grin.
Sciel, thought Lune. She hadn’t spoken to the woman in years, not since the night they shared together. Sciel was talkative and touchy-feely and Lune had allowed herself to get drawn in by her. If she wasn’t careful, she could have spent days and days and days at her side, talking, laughing, dreaming. That had been almost a decade ago. Since then—Lune, again, knew from the talk of the town —Sciel had gotten married, lost her husband, and changed careers. That sounded like too much stress to bear. The woman was, thought Lune, clearly far stronger than herself. It was good that she had avoided such distractions.
“How’s she doing?” Lune asked.
“Sciel?” Gustave said.
His eyebrows raised slightly, and his eyes widened for a moment before softening.
“She’s…She’s good. Working at the school has been really, really good for her. She’s probably doing better than me these days.”
It made Lune happy to hear that Sciel was doing well. Maybe she should have talked to her more, should have kept in touch. At minimum, she should have reached out to her after her husband died. Why hadn’t she? She had told herself she was too busy, but had she really, truly been too busy for a ten-minute conversation? It had felt that way at the time.
“That’s great,” Lune said, feeling her face start to redden. “I haven’t talked to her in a while. I…I’m glad to hear it.”
“She talks about you sometimes,” Gustave said with a small smile. “How brilliant you are. How our expedition is going to make it much farther thanks to you.”
Lune felt her blush deepening.
“It’ll be thanks to my parents,” she said. “They’re the ones who—”
Lune inhaled sharply as she suddenly felt a cutting pain on the sole of her left foot.
“Merde,” she breathed, stopping.
She hoisted her leg up and gripped her ankle, then inspected the source of her pain. Her stomach turned. A shard of glass—green-tinted, from a bottle of wine, most likely—was embedded there, surrounded by bright, red blood that was oozing outward.
Gustave grunted.
“I have some bandages in my—”
“No need,” Lune said.
“Wait, wait!” Gustave exclaimed as Lune yanked the glass out and flung it to the ground with a groan.
“I’ve got—”
“I can heal it,” Lune said, and brought her hand over her wound. It began to glow, slightly, and she felt the stinging pain slowly begin to subside.
“Woah,” Gustave breathed. “That’s amazing.”
He was staring at her, wide-eyed.
“Is it?” Lune said, crossing her arms. “I’ve been able to do that since I was ten. Larger wounds are a different story.”
“You’ve been able to heal larger wounds?” he asked, his voice soft.
Lune nodded.
“Sure,” she said. “But it takes more concentration. I don’t think I could do it on the mission, yet. It’s just another thing I need to work on.”
“Still,” Gustave said. “That’s amazing.”
Lune shrugged.
“Well, the hardest thing I’ve healed is a broken leg,” she said.
Gustave frowned.
“How do you even practice that? Do you…Do you have to hurt yourself first?”
Lune felt a little short-of-breath, suddenly. She saw, in her mind’s eye, her father’s furrowed brow, his pursed lips, his shut eyes as he tried to will himself silent. But she could hear him. His whimpering.
“No,” Lune said after taking a deep breath. “My parents let me practice on them.”
“Wow,” Gustave said after a long silence. “That’s…That must’ve been difficult for you to…That’s a lot.”
She shrugged. She had never, she thought, made it about her feelings. It was always about her parents. Always about their work. Her work.
“I suppose it was,” she said. “But, they told me…Well, a part of me was honored, that they trusted me enough to believe that I could heal them.”
“And—And you did?”
“Of course,” Lune said. “I just hope I can do it for everyone else when the time comes.”
Gustave gave her a small smile.
“I’m sure you will,” he said.
Lune felt her cheeks starting to grow red.
“Thanks,” she said, and gestured ahead. “Let’s keep going.”
Gustave nodded, and the two continued to the harbor. They were going the long way, to avoid the town square.
Again, there was silence. Gustave, several times, opened his mouth, but closed it before speaking. His eyes darted to and away from her.
Finally, he said, “Why are you always barefoot?”
Lune suppressed the urge to roll her eyes. She had tried to be charitable in her assumptions, tried to guess that it wasn’t her feet that Gustave had kept looking at, or maybe was trying not to look at. Some men could be so weird about it.
She narrowed her eyes and crossed her arms.
“Are you one of those—”
“No!” Gustave said, his face flushing. “No, no, I—I just…Shoes protect your feet. And you just stepped in glass…”
She felt the prickliness inside her disappearing. Gustave, she thought, looked even cuter when he was a little flustered. The tips of his ears were bright red. He seemed to relax when she smiled at him, and he gave her a sheepish grin.
“It helps with my abilities,” Lune said. “The healing, especially. How do I explain it? I need to feel…the city. Life. Energy. It’s easier to do that, easier to ground myself, when I literally feel the ground.”
Gustave gave her a small hum and nodded.
“I’ve always wondered. Your tattoos, they’re chroma carved into your skin, right? Is the idea that you…You’re channeling it directly through your body, instead of a weapon like the rest of us?”
Lune nodded, and smiled at him.
“It took my parents a year to figure that out,” she said.
Gustave frowned.
“Does it…Does it hurt?”
“Using it now? No,” Lune said.
She tried not to cringe as she recalled the feeling of the hot, serrated knife her parents painstakingly used to etch symbols into her skin. Her father had told her it would be easier to get it all done in one go—otherwise she would dread the subsequent ones too much—so, she did. It was agony. It was the first time she had really and truly wished for death. How old had she been, then? 14? Her mother was so proud of her after it was over. She had baked her a cake. They had all eaten it together, after dinner, as a family.
“Did you…How did you learn…Did your parents teach you that?”
“My mother, yes,” said Lune.
Lune realized she didn’t know anything about Gustave’s parents.
“Were your parents engineers?” she asked him.
“Sort of,” Gustave said with a smile. “My dad always liked tinkering with things, but he sort of bounced from job to job. He was a farmer at one point, then a baker, then an artist, then he got roped in to run training drills for the Expeditioners. Near the end, he even got into politics…”
That sounded exhausting, Lune thought.
“I looked up to my dad,” Gustave said. “But I didn’t want to be so…aimless. So, when I picked my specialty young, I stayed with it.”
Lune smiled at him.
“What about your mother?” she asked.
“She was a teacher, mainly. Math,” he said. “But she…My dad and her…They liked coming up with ideas together. They brainstormed all sorts of things. Nothing as complicated as the Lumina Converter, but they helped come up with a new irrigation system for Aquafarm 2.”
“It sounds like things were a bit simpler back then,” Lune said. “They had more time to work on more than one thing.”
Gustave nodded.
“It must have felt like all the time in the world,” he said. “And they still chose to spend it on us.They really did a lot for us.”
Gustave, Lune thought, was a good man.
“They did,” Lune said. “They…”
She, suddenly, felt lightheaded. She stopped walking.
“Lune?” Gustave said, his voice soft but intense. “Are you alright?”
“I—”
Lune felt her legs buckle as the scene before her blurred to greys and browns and silvers, until all the colors coalesced into darkness.
When Lune came to—seconds later? minutes later?—she knew that she was off the ground, moving, but wasn’t trying to levitate. Her head was resting against something firm. She smelled, faintly, rain and pine needles.
“Lune?”
Gustave’s voice was soft, and close.
Lune’s eyes jolted open and she looked up to find his big, brown eyes looking down at her. Gustave was holding her, tightly. She felt her cheeks blazing. She hadn’t been this close to anyone in ages. In almost a decade.
“Put me down,” Lune said loudly.
“I’d feel better if…If it’s okay, I’d rather carry you,” he said.
The discomfort growing inside her dissipated to nearly nothing.
“Aren’t I heavy?” she asked.
“Not at all,” he said, giving her a small smile.
This was like a dream, thought Lune. Like a scene out of one of those books she sneaked away to read when she was a girl. And it was happening to her.
Wait. What had happened?
“Where are you taking me?” Lune asked.
“The hospital,” Gustave said.
She had felt faint. Had fainted. That wasn’t entirely uncommon, she thought, when she was particularly stressed, or when she had forgotten to drink water all day or eat anything, which happened often enough when she was particularly enthralled by her work.
Come to think of it, she hadn’t had anything to eat all day, had she?
“Don’t bother,” Lune said. “I’m fine. I just forgot to eat.”
“You forgot to eat?” Gustave asked.
Lune nodded.
“Does that…Is that normal for you?”
Lune nodded, again.
“Okay,” Gustave said. “Well, let’s get you some dinner, then. I’m not sure what’s still open, but—”
Eating a fancy dinner, under the moonlight, with a cute guy? That was like something out of a book. How fun would that be? How romantic?
Stop it, Lune thought, feeling sick suddenly. Who do you think you are? Some heroine in a romance novel? That’s not you, and that’s not your life.
“You can just take me home,” Lune said. “I’ll make a sandwich.”
“Are you sure? I don’t mind—”
“Yes,” Lune said. “I’ve been gone for long enough, anyway.”
Gustave was quiet for a moment, and sighed softly.
“Okay,” he said. “I will. We’re not far, now.”
He carried her, and the two were mostly silent. Lune felt shame bubbling up inside her. What a waste of time this had been.
“It’s nice weather tonight,” Gustave said. “I always love it after it rains. That kind of, uh, sweet smell in the air.”
“Petrichor,” Lune said.
Gustave gave her a small smile.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“The smell after it rains,” Lune said, giving him a smile in return.
He grinned at her.
“There really is a word for everything, isn’t there?” he said. “And you know them all.”
Lune felt herself blushing. They were close, now, to her house.
“You live alone?” he asked as they reached her doorstep.
“You can put me down, now,” Lune said.
“Oh, uh, right.”
Slowly, Gustave lowered Lune to the ground. She felt the palpable absence of the hand that had been wrapped around her waist.
“Yes, I live alone,” she said, as she retrieved her keys and opened the door. “You live with your sister and that girl, right? Maelle?”
Gustave beamed, his eyes sparkling.
“Right,” he said. “Maelle, she’s…I consider her a sister, too. I owe everything to those two.”
Maybe, Lune thought, she would get to know Maelle a little better someday. That would be nice. But would there ever be time?
“I can’t imagine living with other people anymore,” Lune said. “It’s nice not to have distractions from my work. Even if it does get a little too quiet sometimes.”
“Well, if you ever need a break, or if it gets a little too quiet, you can always come spend some time down at the workshop. Or, some of my friends and I get dinner after work, usually. You’re welcome to join us.”
Lune crossed her arms. Maybe, she thought, she had misread Gustave. He had seemed dedicated, committed to his work and to the future of Lumiére, yet now it sounded as though he spent multiple hours a day on…socializing? With all that needed to be done?
“Thanks,” she said, “but I’ll probably be too busy.”
“Right,” Gustave said, with a small chuckle. “Well, maybe…If you change your mind…”
What if she did it once a week? Went out to dinner with Gustave and his friends? That sounded fun. That sounded nice.
But, she thought, that was a slippery slope. An hour here and there would add up, and surely she’d lose track of time and lose the whole evening, and then what? What could possibly be worth that time?
It looked like Gustave’s face had become slightly red. He cleared his throat.
“Um, can I come in? I don’t know if you should be walking around too much. I thought maybe I could make you something to eat, maybe.”
Lune couldn’t stop herself from smiling. Whether or not Gustave was more of an idler than she had previously thought, he was certainly, still, one of the kindest people she had ever met.
“Thanks, Gustave,” she said, “but I’m fine. I promise.”
“Okay,” he said after a moment, with a quiet nod.
“Thanks for tonight, though. I enjoyed your company,” she said.
He smiled at her.
“I did, too. It was fun.”
Lune smiled wider. Maybe, she thought, going to dinner one evening every other week might be okay. Maybe.
“Yeah,” she said.
Gustave lingered there, for long enough that Lune opened her mouth to say something.
“Maybe we could work together,” he finally said before she could speak. “When you were talking about channeling the Chroma…You know all about how that works. The conversion into elements, it’s…I’m basically trying to do the same thing with the Lumina Converter. We should, if you want…?”
It had been a while since she had worked with anyone, but to work with someone as intelligent and as cute as Gustave…That sounded too good to pass up. And it was work, so there was no wasted time.
“Of course,” Lune said. “That sounds fun.”