The girl is out in the street again.
I can see her face pressed up against the shop window, her eyes large and haunted with longing. She looks more miserable than the gamin I see, begging from the bourgeois and wasting it on whores.
I wonder about this girl they call the Lark. She is the Lark that never sings. She is so thin she is ugly, and her rags are so torn and dirtied she might be better to wear what the factory workers throw out.
Her mother abandoned her, I hear. She was left to live off the charity of the Thenardiers who take care of the nearby inn. Such generosity, people said afterwards. To take in a child that is not your own, and to support her! Who has heard of such things in times like this? Montfermeil is not a rich town, and its inhabitants are never that wealthy.
I wonder about this girl. To be abandoned by your mother and maltreated by your keepers- for she must be maltreated, I have seen the bruises on her face. I wonder how she manages to survive.
The Thenardier girls are beautiful, even as the Lark is ugly. How does she feel, the Lark? She could have been a friend of those girls if life were kinder to her. Now, however, one is ugly, two are beautiful. I would hate for my daughters to feel that way.
At the break of dawn, I leave the house to work. I am paid a poor wage- fifteen sous a day- but it is more than they pay down in the locks. It is enough for us to live on, as my husband also works. We have enough to get by- we do not yet starve in summer, and although it is cold in winter, we do not freeze.
I wonder about this girl's mother as I work. Sometimes I remember an image- a woman, crying as though her heart had been torn out. Why has she left her child? Back then, the girl had been well-fed and well-dressed. What has happened?
But it is not my story, and it is not for me to know, and I continue to work each day. Each painstaking item I create, each sou I earn, I take it home for my children. Sometimes I wonder if I should help her- she has a haunted, starved look in her eyes, and sometimes it is so strong it frightens me.
Sometimes I feel I should help her, but there is not enough money for my family, let alone for a stranger who is not my responsibility. It is not for me to know what happens back at the inn. I work my family, and for my family alone.
At night, when darkness is all around and day seems years away, I hold my girls all the tighter. I will not let poverty strip away all they have ever known. They will never become like the Lark.
Marie asked me about her yesterday. I did not have much to say, for there is not much I know. It is life, I suppose. The girl has been here for almost as long as I have been here, and yet we have never exchanged a word. I have never heard her speak.
I wonder if the Lark will ever sing.
A/N:
Thankyou all for reading this! I know this isn't very original, but
I thought I might as well post it. A great thanks to Morohtar who helped beta this.
