Marguerite awoke that day with such energy as she had not felt in decades.
It was the sun, she decided, as she rose blinking from her bed. The sun and the birds, cheeping in disunity outside her window. It was June, and the world proclaimed it so there should be no doubt. Marguerite had seen many Junes. She hadn't tired of them yet.
She looked at her sewing basket, frowned at the gloom of her apartment, cast another eye out the small window at the glittering day—and, on ancient impulse, pushed the basket aside, and stomped out of the apartment to find her neighbor Fantine.
Fantine came to the door promptly, eyes smudged from lack of sleep. The poor girl only slept five hours a night, and spent all the other hours imprisoned inside, sewing her fingers off. Marguerite, looking at the sun, calculated that Fantine must have been at her work for two hours already.
Marguerite wished she could tell Fantine to stop working, just for a day, and come outside. You're young, she longed to say, you're a child of sunlight and blue skies, and you belong in the bright of the day. But she couldn't. She knew too well why Fantine had to work. She knew of the child far away, the child who was the reason why everyone whispered and stared and mocked Fantine on the street, why Fantine had been too ashamed to leave her rooms for months, and why she now raised her head defiantly as she walked, scorned by the world and hating the world in turn. The demands of that child's life were unforgiving, and would not permit Fantine to stop working for a day. How many times had Marguerite bit her tongue instead of urging others to freedom? How many times had she consented to or even suggested their misery, because without it they would die? Your boss is a devil, but if you quit your job, how will you eat? Or you can't rest today, no matter your aching head and hacking cough, you don't have that right, your family will wither without today's wages. So many small, grinding sacrifices.
She couldn't tell Fantine to stop working. But—"Bring your work and come outside with me," said Marguerite. "It's a beautiful day."
Fantine stared, confused. "I—I can't, where would we—"
Marguerite beamed. "I know a place. On the outskirts of town, a little field with a pond and an old wide bench. We can bring our baskets and sit, and watch the birds, and hear them sing." She knew Fantine had to give up her songbird when she fell on hard times.
Fantine started forward, then drew back. "The birds will dirty my shirts…"
"No. They're shy, too few people go there, they won't land anywhere near you."
The heartbreaking thing was how little encouragement Fantine needed. She darted inside to fetch her basket, and came back out in a moment.
They walked to the field. Marguerite talked idly about things she'd heard and seen, to distract Fantine from her shame and anger. Building after building, and street after street, each primped and preened with the largesse of M. Madeleine, whose generosity did not extend to allowing Fantine to keep an honest job.
But here—the scent of grass and leaves filled her nostrils, and she could look up and see no sign of the town or of Madeleine, but only the sky's shining blue. And there was the bench. They set their baskets down, and took out their sewing. "Isn't this much better than squinting in the light from the window, or a candle?"
"Yes," Fantine said, her voice soft, and a fresh color in her cheeks. A goose, its feathers puffed up importantly, waddled over from the pond, and squawked at them from some feet away. Fantine smiled at it. "Go away, you silly thing!" The goose did not oblige, but sat staring at them for several minutes, before deeming them boring and flying away.
Three larks lined the branch of a nearby tree, warbling lightly; a pipit watched over its nest of speckled eggs under a shrub. Pudgy sparrows hopped and flew here and there, charming in their utter lack of grace, and Marguerite felt her own aches ease away, and saw the shadows flee from Fantine's face.
They had to go inside at night, but Marguerite went to bed happier than when she woke, and perhaps Fantine did too.