The first time they ever see each other it is the afternoon. He had wandered for a while, through streets and parks – giving laughs and smiles to those who saw him - until he stopped there on that quiet road and sat down on the curb for a late lunch of cress sandwiches and lukewarm tea.
He spots her as she leaves, locking up the store for the evening, hair up in what he will quickly learn is her usual bun, satchel heavy with books to be read over biscuits in the silence before bed which he one day learns too, ink smudges on her hands and on her sleeves.
It is, for him, love at first sight.
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The following morning, and the first time they meet face to face (or at least that's how he counts it) he smiles wide and bright, and makes a sweeping bow to her from across the street.
His heart leaps when she waves back.
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The eighth time they meet she smiles when she sees him.
He falls in love all over again.
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The 34th time they meet is the first he speaks.
"J-je suis Wes." He stutters, gloved hands clasped as if praying. "Je t-tadore."
For all that she does not speak his language he thinks she understands.
She does.
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He bows to her in the mornings when she opens her shop, taking her hand in his and brushing his lips across her knuckles and leaving lipstick stains that are still there in the evening when he walks her home. They are mostly silent, knowing without speaking that they love each other, and often ambushed by children wanting a little show from the mime and she sits and watches, laughing
They sit in the park some nights, watching the city and fireflies flutter by, in the daytime they feed birds, pet the park cat who winds around their ankles and smile.
They are quiet in their adoration.
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He can't remember when the two of them first sat together for lunch in the nearby park, cress sandwiches and bread and pastries and tea shared carefully between them.
Eventually it is hard to remember a time when they hadn't.
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They speak, or rather she does. She reads him books in the park, sometimes about magic, sometimes Philosophy, history, fiction and non-fiction depending on the day. She talks and talks about all the things she's read in her little store filled with paper and string, and he listens.
He always listens to her.
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She talks about a bakery once, a little thing where she'd go for coffee and croissants, all airy and light, ones she'd never found anywhere else after it had closed.
He spends weeks looking afterwards, spending his free hours (in between his time with her of course) hunting for the owners of that little store.
He finds them eventually.
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He gives her a box, filled with pastries, airy and light, and the look she gives him when she sees is worth all the hours spent looking.
The kiss, chaste and light on his painted cheek, smelling slightly of sugar and honey and her, is worth even more.
He doesn't stop smiling for days.
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Some days she listens to him too, through his stutters and heavy accent about all sorts of little things.
He loves her even more the first time she laughs.
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He gets her flowers, little ones he picks himself, lavender, tall and refined, daisies, shining like her eyes, little flowered weeds, bright and stubborn, and roses he steals from rich houses, quite simply beautiful, and she presses them between her books and their heavy pages filled with forever, and keeps them in her satchel that goes with her everywhere.
He finds them there one day and smiles, and remembers each and every one.
She still wears dried lavender in her lapel.
Every time he smells the flowers perfume he thinks of her.
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She gets sick one day, coughing and snuffling quietly to herself.
He brings her breakfast in bed, toast, bacon, porridge and coffee just as she likes it.
He sits there with her, book in his lap, one of the dozens she has on her shelves about all sorts of things, and reads it until his voice is cracked and hoarse.
She kisses him on the cheek when he leaves and when he gets sick in turn- well, she does the same for him.
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For her birthday, months into their friendship (when his lives could be clearly cut into With Her and Without Her) he gets her a tiny kitten.
It has a big red bow at it's throat and white mitten paws and a tiny white tip to it's long black tail. The noise she makes when she opens the little box he'd kept it in was worth all the scratches to his hands, his fingers.
She names it Bleu and it grows up to be long and lanky and terribly spoilt because she'd always wanted a cat but had never had the opportunity. She brings it along with her to work where it sleeps under her desk in a basket while she works, and is petted and loved.
He's jealous, just a little, until she cards her hands through his hair and he thinks he understands just why it purrs so loudly when she scratches its ears.
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And the first time they kiss it's bumping noses and awkwardness the both of them so nervous, so shy.
She gets lipstick smudges on her cheeks and lips and white on her nose and they giggle quietly, holding each others hands.
It's perfect anyway.
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Her name is Margaret Wickerbottom and he loves her with all his heart.