VERY MILD SPOILER ALERT FOR A FOX OF STORMS AND STARLIGHT. It’s a minor explanatory thing that comes out in chapter 9 of Fox Book, which provides motivation for a major plot point that happens in chapter 12 (there are 49 chapters).
CONTENT NOTIFICATION: Kevin’s point-of-view scenes have a lot of swearing. Sorry-not-sorry. But maybe don’t read if the f-word offends you.
Also, this is an unedited draft. Feel free to let me know in the comments if you spot typos etc, but yo: unedited draft, so read accordingly.
Catch up on Chapter 1, chapter 2, chapter 3, chapter 4, chapter 5, chapter 6, chapter 7, chapter 8.
9: Kevin
I don’t know what the fuck I’ve done. I’ve spent the last three days imagining what it’ll be like to see Sunny again after our walk in the bush, ants in my stomach every time.
In no scenario did I imagine it like this.
She’s sitting across the lab bench from me refusing to make eye contact, refusing to look at me, and she won’t talk to me and I have no fucking clue what’s wrong.
Is it because I missed school yesterday?
Is it because I didn’t come to find her straight away today, even though we both agreed that our… thing… wasn’t for school?
I don’t know, was I supposed to fucken call on the weekend or something?
I don’t what the rules here and I’m flying blind, unsure which one it is I’ve broken, unsure how I’m supposed to make up for a transgression when I don’t even know its identity.
Absently, I flick the gas tap again, on, off, on, off. The pressure’s even right until the very end when the handle clicks into place. Twist—click. Twist—click.
Sunny darts a disapproving look at me.
I stare right back, twist the tap, on-off, on-off. Dare her to say something.
Go on. Say something.
Say.
Something.
But she only purses her lips together in a frown and goes back to taking notes in her book, gaze flicking between her notes and the set-up in front of us.
A cloud of burnt-match drifts past us, and for a moment it’s all I can smell.
I stare at her, because the sudden smell makes me think about her perfume, sweet rose, a smell that makes me think of leaf green and baby pink. And all I wanna do is move around to sit beside her, lean my shoulder against hers and drink her in, like I’ve lost my fucken mind.
I’ve fucken lost something, that’s for sure.
For a hot second, I nearly ask her what it is, what I’ve done that makes her not look at me like that.
Someone bumps into me from behind. I whip around, ready to bite their fucken head off— and by the time I turn back, Sunny’s lit a match and is holding it to the head of the Bunsen burner, all the rest of the equipment neatly in place, ready to go, and the only thing left for me to do is flip the switch on the gas and watch as fire blazes.
Doesn’t matter.
Now’s not the time, the place.
And fuck, maybe she just had the weekend to think me over and realised what a fucken terrible idea I am. Fuck knows Persephone must have looked around at the afterlife a time or two and wondered if Hades was worth it.
Suddenly, I’m not so keen to talk.
She hands me the [thing]. I take it without a word.
That’s the exact moment when I realise I’ve taken a fucken vow of silence, because this… thing? Whatever it is? Whatever it might have been?
It was nothing but a fanciful dream anyway, a flickering flame on a Bunsen burner, just waiting for a hand to turn off the tap.
Don’t waste the gas, Kevin.
You’ll set us all alight.
Keep reading: Chapter 10