Midnight Wonders

6.0.1. Midnight

I have come from the future to tell you that from this point onward the plot makes no goddamn sense. This entire book is one big plot hole. Every conflict that the characters worry about is resolved by just realizing that it's all one big non-problem. Literally nothing matters. This book is like 80% vibes. Don't pick apart the plot too much because it really doesn't exist. It's fixed in later drafts but I'm just gonna leave the first draft up.

—

Still so gently o'er me stealing,

Mem'ry will bring back the feeling,

Spite of all my grief revealing

That I love thee,—that I dearly love thee still.

— Eugène Scribe, from La somnambule

—

He said he loves me.

Luc didn't know what kind of child he was to have that singular thought ringing in his head every second since the moment had passed. He couldn't stop thinking about it. He said he loves me he said he loves me he loves me he loves me he

He had replayed the moment so many times in his mind that it was surely all fiction by now. In a hundred versions, Kay lingered there for longer, so that the weight of his words had time to sink in. In a hundred versions, he let Luc come with him, and Luc would fetch Milk from the stables and he would get on her in his practiced way, and all would be as it had been before. In a hundred versions, Kay stayed, and he let Luc take his hand and memorize the rough warmth of his skin and the feeling of their fingers twining, and then any more was pure fantasy.

But still, in a hundred versions, Kay rode off without saying anything.

Because, of course, there was the other part.

Luc didn't know what he was supposed to think. He didn't know how he was supposed to think. Kay had still not returned and all Luc could think of was him.

Luc wanted to invade Kay's privacy. He wanted to know everything about Kay. He wanted to be the one who knew everything and more. The one who knew the most. He wanted Kay to be the one to trust him enough to say everything, but it didn't seem as if that would ever happen. Luc settled for second-best: asking other people. Specifically, Tristan.

"What does he like?" Luc asked as they walked through the village on one of Tristan's (and now Luc's as well) last rounds before Midsummer.

"I don't know," said Tristan, who was half occupied with a bowl of rice and beans he'd gotten after helping a woman into her house, which she'd accidentally locked herself out of. The rice and beans looked very good, and Luc would have been jealous, except he wasn't hungry and food just didn't seem very appealing anymore, and Tristan had even offered to share and he had refused. "You."

That was embarrassing. But Luc didn't say that aloud, because that probably would have been more embarrassing. Though to whom? Embarrassing for Kay? For Luc? It was much too complicated, and best to think of it as not an embarrassment at all. "And?"

"I don't know," Tristan said again. "Being moody all the time."

"You keep saying you don't know and then actually answering the question," Luc observed.

"You keep asking me things I don't know," Tristan replied. "I'm just guessing."

"But you know him."

"I don't know," Tristan said for a third time before seeming to realize it. He made a face. "For seven years I haven't been settled at home and for seven years he's been nursing a broken heart so I'd say we both don't know each other as well as we used to."