About this story
You play Emily St Aubert. Your last chord travels upstream, and something across the Garonne answers it — a human voice, from a bank with no boat and no light. A pale shape passes behind a cypress. Then the singer begins an air your father knows and has never taught you.
Who you’ll meet
Monsieur St Aubert in the opened fishing house with his hand up for silence, and the young man in the pale cloak on the far bank who answered the song — the reasonable father, and the stranger he cannot account for.
How it opens
Monsieur St AubertEvening has laid violet, gold, and mist across Gascony.
Madame St AubertLa Vallee seems to float above the woods and river tonight.
Monsieur St AubertBring your lute, Emily; the western path is dry again.
Your father waited at the terrace steps with a book beneath one arm.
Madame St Aubert watched from the open parlor window as you joined him.
Choose
The lute, if you will choose our song.
Bring the sketchbook beside the lute.
Carry the lute, but let silence begin the walk.