❝you know, you're pretty cute, considering you're 4,000 years old.❞
❝thank you?❞
luna clair loves museums. she loves history, mythology, all that old shit. so when her best friend's dad gets a new job as the night guard of the new york national hist...
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CHAPTER EIGHT
❝It is no secret that the moon has no light of her own, but is, as it were, a mirror, receiving brightness from the influence of the sun.❞
Vitruvius
✦✧✦
There has been dispute, as long as the English language has been around, about the saddest sentence ever created and which, of the many candidates, is indeed the saddest. Many agree with the poet John Greenleaf Whittier, when he said, "Of all the sad words of tongue or pen/The saddest are these, 'It might have been.'" Others cite Ernest Hemingway, on a bet with friends that he couldn't write a novel in six words: "For sale: Baby shoes, never worn." Still others believe in Vincent Van Gogh's alleged last words, which were, "The sadness will last forever," as he lay on his bed, bleeding from a wound he himself created.
Luna Clair disagrees with all of them. The saddest sentence in the whole world was spoken to her just now, when the most beautiful boy she's ever met looked down at her, his eyes shining, and said, "Please, let tonight be a night I can remember for the next thousand years, for this is the happiest I have been in all my life."
(Wait just a damn minute. Why are we skipping to that part? The readers need backstory, dumbass.)
(Well, excuse me for being poetic.)
(Not the time. Now go back. And I don't mean 'go back' like 'hey, start at the beginning of time'; I mean 'go back' like 'maybe thirty minutes ago'.)
(*sigh* Fine.)
It's been three months. Three wonderful, glorious months of sleepless nights spent at the museum. And Luna wouldn't trade it for the world.
On a particular Tuesday evening, Nicky, Luna, Ahkmenrah, Sacagawea, Jed, and Octavius are sitting in the security office, watching reruns of The Office and eating M&Ms. It's Luna's favorite episode, "Office Olympics", and she's been explaining everything in whispers to Ahkmenrah, who, she's delighted to find out, has a cringy and awkward sense of humor that's equal to her own. It's also an excuse for her to be close to him, curled up in the corner of the lumpy sofa with her head almost resting on his shoulder.
There's a gentle knock on the open door, and Luna and Nicky both turn around to see Larry standing there in the doorway, with that trademark awkward expression on his face that means he has bad news.
"Can I talk to you two for a minute?" he whispers, gesturing to the hallway.
Shit. Luna sighs and touches Ahkmenrah's arm gently. "I'll be right back, okay?"
