Sunday was a blank page. The Bibliothèque Lafleur was closed, its oak door locked, its silence left to itself. For the first time in years, Élise felt the weight of her day off not as a relief, but as an emptiness. The conversation in the café played on a loop in her mind—the raw confession in his eyes, the brief, electric touch of his fingers.
She tried to lose herself in her weekly market run, selecting cheeses and a fresh baguette, but her thoughts were not on the produce. They were in the catacombs with a fallen architect, tracing the lines of his past. He had built structures of glass and steel, and now he built worlds of ink and graphite. The grandeur of the failure made her own quiet life seem impossibly small, yet he had found something in her library, in her presence, worth seeking out.
On Monday, the library felt like a returning heartbeat. The familiar rituals soothed her, but the anticipation was a live wire humming under her skin. When the clock’s hands crept towards two, every nerve ending was alert.
He arrived at 2:07, of course. The leather jacket, the dark hair still damp from the outside air. But something was different. The weary restlessness of Saturday was gone, replaced by a renewed, focused energy. In his hand, he carried a small, flat package, neatly wrapped in plain brown paper and tied with a simple string.
He walked directly to her counter, bypassing his table entirely.
“Élise,” he said, her name a solid, familiar sound in his mouth. He placed the package on the counter between them.
She looked from the package to his face, her question silent.
“A thank you,” he said.“For the coffee. For listening.”
Hesitantly, she pulled the string. The brown paper fell away to reveal a book. But it wasn’t an old, leather-bound volume from the library’s collection. It was a new, hardbound sketchbook, its cover a deep, midnight blue. Embossed on the front in simple, silver letters was a single word: Raconteuse.
Storyteller.
Her breath caught. It was the most beautiful, the most perceptive gift anyone had ever given her.
“Luc, I…” she stammered, running her fingers over the embossed word.
“You said the silence here is the sound of stories sleeping,” he said, his voice low and intent.“You are their guardian. Their raconteuse. You should have a place for your own.”
Tears pricked at the corners of her eyes. He had not only listened to her words; he had understood the very heart of them. He saw her not just as a custodian of books, but as a keeper of narratives.
“It’s perfect,” she whispered, her voice thick with emotion. She opened the cover. The pages were thick, high-quality, blank and full of potential.
“I wasn’t sure if you drew, or wrote, or…” He trailed off, a rare hint of uncertainty in his eyes.
“I… I used to,” she admitted, the confession pulled from a part of herself she had long since closed off.“Little stories. Silly things.”
“They weren’t silly,” he stated, with a conviction that brooked no argument.“Nothing that comes from that place is silly.” He gestured around them.“You should start again.”
He turned to go to his table, but then paused, looking back at her.“And Élise?”
“Yes?”
“Don’t just write about the library.”
With that, he left her standing there, her hands resting on the profound gift, her mind reeling. The gesture was so much more than a simple thank you. It was a challenge. It was an invitation to step out of the shadows of other people’s stories and into the light of her own.
For the rest of the afternoon, she watched him work. But today, her gaze was not just one of fascination. It was one of profound gratitude and a dawning sense of courage. He was building his new world from the rubble of his old one. And with a simple, blue sketchbook, he had handed her the tools to begin building hers.
The silence of the library was no longer just about waiting for his presence. It was now filled with the whisper of a new, unwritten story—her own.
Chapter 11:
The First Line
The midnight blue sketchbook lay on Élise’s small kitchen table, its blank page a daunting expanse of white in the morning light. Raconteuse. The word seemed to pulse with a quiet challenge. Luc’s conviction—“You should start again.”—echoed in her mind, a persistent, gentle push against years of self-doubt.
She had made tea, she had tidied her apartment, she had even alphabetized her spice rack—anything to avoid the confrontation with that first, blank page. What right did she have to fill it? Her life was one of quiet order, of cataloging and preserving the genius of others. What stories did she possibly have to tell?
But he had seen a storyteller in her. He, a man who built worlds from ruins, believed she had something to say. The thought was as terrifying as it was exhilarating.
Tentatively, she picked up a pen. Not a pencil, which could be erased, but a pen, committing to the permanence of ink. She opened the cover. The smell of new paper, so different from the library’s ancient scent, filled her senses.
