She sees no geese down by the Queen Street*

In which our Hero shares a restaurant with a rodent of extraordinary character

Today was a good day because I got to have lunch with my sweet little Mouse today. It was an almost random alignment of planets, meetings and tests because until yesterday we were occasionally talking about “should get together” and then yesterday I started by asking if she was free next week and then I got home and had time to think and realized… I need a treat.

So I emailed her. Asked her what she was doing today. And to my gleeful surprise, her work included a “hurry up and wait” for hours over the lunch window. So I told her to meet me at the Geese at the Eaton’s center.

“The Geeks?”

“There will probably be plenty of those too,” I allowed, what with that entrance being right near an Apple Store, “but no, G-E-E-S-E. Geese!”

“Ohhh! I heard Geeks and was wondering if you were okay. But there are Geese inside the mall?”

I explained it was a big art installation at the south end of the mall. “Go to Queen station, come up to street level, and just look around.”

And so today, at the appointed hour, I stood puttering on my phone and the phone rang.

“Chachen? I’m out of the station, but I don’t know where the geese are.”

“Just come upstairs to street level. You’ll see me, and them!”

And then I spotted her as she was coming to the escalator so then I just started narrating turn-by-turn directions. “Okay, now turn right, and go up that escalator. Good.”

Which made her look around, so I waved.

When she got to me she asked me where the geese were. So I turned her around and waved at the 60 Canada geese statues captured in various aspects of flight. (It’s honestly a pretty cool little art thing, even if it features flying rats) And she was startled to have never noticed the flock of petrified birds coming at the south entrance.

So then we wandered and we talked. She held my hand pretty much the whole time and kept taking it again when we had reason to come apart. And at first I felt just a little awkward that I was standing there holding this beautiful girl’s hand but heck, she’s mine.

We had lunch and talked and it was all good. And then eventually I had to send her on her way back to work.

She really is beautiful, beyond just my bias. And while she’s pushing 20, but the smile she gives me is just a taller version of the one she wore when she threw her arms around my knees when she toddled.

As we ate, I mostly talked. Well, I tried to talk less and listen more. But for a little while, as she talked about her work and I had the moment, I just watched her, my little tiny mouse, grown so bright it makes my heart squint and blink cheerfully in the warm sunlight.

As we stood in line, her hand still clasping mine, I did spent a little time reflecting on the fact that here I was having lunch with one of my cousins when I’d expressed so much hesitation about doing the exact same thing with another.

But after thinking it through, the situation is enough different that I’m not concerned that it’s just favouritism. Most of all, Mouse is 19, and not 16 like Willow was when she was talking about me taking her out to lunch. I wouldn’t have the same degree of hesitation with Willow now either, though I still want to make sure my attention is unmistakeable.

The thing that really bothers me is that I haven’t told Mouse about Nocturne. It was in my throat for most of our lunch, the words to share my little secret. If anybody should know, she should know. But I couldn’t say anything. It’s not the right time to say anything. And any instinct to swear the Mouse to secrecy is overruled by the last phone call with Willow, where sitting with her brother, she said on the phone, “So how’s Noct-errrrr, sorry, how’s your nocturnal plan going” (Obviously not those words, but Nocturne’s name and a weak recovery.) Fortunately in front of her inattentive brother but…

I can’t tell the Mouse yet. I can’t. If I tell the Mouse, I have to tell Moonbeam. And I want to, I want to share Nocturne with my girls so badly. Even if they’ve never asked and don’t know there’s anything to know, it feels like I’m lying to them to not say anything.

It hurts me to hold this away from them.

*Edit*

It boils down to family politics and courtesies. But very simply, I feel it’s very important that my parents find out from me, and the only way to manage that is to keep it a secret until I’m ready to share. And the more people know, the less it’s a secret.