They must have been walking for a good two hours. The lights of the town are far behind them. The houses disappeared long ago. Now they are walking through the forest and night is falling. Tom is ... [+]
Billy got in touch. We must meet and soon. I have a secret to reveal that only you can understand – a true exquis. As if we hadn't lost touch years ago. The charge of his excitement ran through me. An exquis – our private language for something beautiful and rare not everyone would appreciate: a secret mulberry bush beyond the woods, heavy with sharply-perfumed fruit; a four-hundred-year-old diary in the chained library; a creased map of plans for a Blazing New World. How could Billy have slipped from my mind? How could I have stopped loving someone as luminous and gentle and playful as him? W