Hello all, I am back, after suffering not only writers block but also a new year! I would have been happier if time came to a stop and I could stay in 2004 forever, but unfortunately time is an upperclassman: it's not even willing to listen to the moans and whines of an underclassman (like myself), let alone comply (though it could stuff me in a locker without regrets). Ah, well. I'm here to write, not rant! Every single one of you is absolutely lovely! I love all my reviewers to bits! Forgive typos in last draft- loves to mess with my word documents.
Azelma stood at the side of the street, looking blankly about her. The Café was not many paces behind her. Before her, there were clumps of shops trying to look presentable but only looking sad and world-weary.
Azelma was scared. Very scared indeed. This is a place for rich people, She thought. One look at me and they'll chuck me out!
This was a quarter where "rich" meant one could survive without picking the pockets of the drunken students ambling about. Azelma, to these people, looked a queen, old though her dresses were. They had stopped their business, suddenly ashamed of their behavior. They were in the presence of a "lady"!
Our mouse, though, was far from the little hole she called home, and to her, this was grandeur and beauty. Such a funny sight it was- a mouse in awe of a rubbish heap, and the rubbish heap in awe of a mouse!
Azelma began to shuffle slowly back towards to the Café, backwards. Azelma did not fit in here.
And the quarter shyly came back to life as she walked away. The quarter felt inferior to Azelma.
Thenardier was not pleased. A dog had stolen one of his roses and scamped away with the thing in its mouth.
"Them roses better be poison," he called after it, starting to run. The bewildered, rag-tag bunch of onlookers, however, blocked his path to the mutt and so he retreated.
"Stupid animal," he said, continuing to the Café. He had /paid/ for these roses- paid!
"Bloody stupid!" he screeched again, but this time he was not cursing the thief of a dog. No, he had walked right into his daughter.
She had tumbled down, of course- Azelma never could keep her footing- and stained the white muslin gown the size of bedclothes, tied sloppily at the waist with a bit of snow white hem.
"Girl!" our loving father yelled, "Now we're gonna have to buy that stupid rag!"
Thenardier did not have a very wide vocabulary.
He yanked his daughter (no longer white as snow after her tumble in the dirt) by a spindly arm and half-dragged her back to the Café.
The Ogre was not pleased after his walk with his child. She did not have any new information.
Her husband, her very great and good (though woefully deceased) husband, and come back to her and had not left until the morning shone through the streaky windows.
The Ogress was glad he had remembered her. She was afraid he'd leave her forever after he brought her girl back to her. She thought his sojourn on Earth would not last, and soon he'd be whisked away, back to the heavens to stay.
Or to Hell, perhaps. But The Ogress did not like to dwell on that.
He had been a good man, she thought. A very good man.
Perhaps he'd like to come to the pretty-boy's meetings…