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Heat held the day like a memory that refused to let go. Even at night, the Canal du Midi wore a sheen, pewter under the slow sky. Cicadas pulsed from the plane trees, a stitched rhythm over the hush of water. From the deck of Le Livre Vagabond, Pistou lifted his head and heard it: the soft bloop-bloop of simmering somewhere past Écluse 27, a low, insistent bubble.
Elodie set down her pen. “Hear that?” she asked no one in particular and entirely to Pistou. “Copper and sugar.” She lit the storm lantern, its glass winking apricot as if the moon had chosen to sit inside it for a moment. “You’re right—we should visit.”
Pistou stepped onto the towpath with the self-possession of someone certain he was expected. The lantern’s pool of light moved with them, catching pale moths and the ragged edge of wild thyme that grew in the cracks. Above the black tree crowns, the moon was rising—round and tender, the color of an apricot’s skin.