There was nothing extraordinary to say about the month that Michel had. The morning after his last run-in with Mabelle, he did have to spend an hour or two scrubbing off the mess that their encounter had left behind. That included the heart on his door. He had too look at it for awhile just to be sure the shape really was that of a heart. Just from that, part of him felt like he understood her better, though he really didn't care to. She certainly wasn't like the other girls he had met. Whether or not that was a good thing, well, she certainly wasn't someone he would be forgetting about any time soon.
However, while her existence was still in the back of his mind, her absence was a relief to him. He never went into detail about what had happened when he talked with his uncle. After some laughter, the subject was dropped. Not only did she never return to Mobius's home, but she didn't return to the guillotine either. For awhile he wondered if she really did die of infection.
At least until that particular evening. Whenever he had an excuse to go to the Louvre, he went. It was a gorgeous palace fit for the art that went in it. Compared to the shambles and scrambling in the rest of Paris, it was a breath of fresh air to a world he greatly preferred. And he had made several friends, or at least proper acquaintances in the art community. He had spent part of the evening talking to the older man named Dorian.
After an educational conversation, Michel had only joked casually about wanting to learn to paint himself. It was an off-hand desire that wasn't really too prominent so much as it would've been simply interesting to try. He hadn't expected that Dorian would take it seriously. And that's when he was unexpectedly led over to Mabelle. Michel did not react immediately. In fact, he figured that maybe he shouldn't react at all. He had thought he had caught a glance of her out of the corner of his eye, but he had passed it off as his eyes playing tricks on him. She wasn't the only blonde woman in Paris, after all.
"Have you met Mabelle?"
"No," he replied immediately, relaxing after catching his own sharp tone. Casually, he shook his head before turning his eyes to her and holding out his palm. "No, I don't believe we've met yet."