The usual: You are all glorious and wonderful, especially as I update this sporadically . The plot has become much more complex than I expected, and it takes a while to write each chapter, as I need to strike a balance between the Thenardier part, the Jehan part, the Ma'am Hucheloup part and the Oliver part.

Forgive me if this seems rushed- I'm in a hurry to update before these "drastic changes" to take place, just in case I find myself bewildered and unable to upload. I was quite suspicious when they told long-time members such as me to have an open mind.

A frog was waiting in the main room when Azelma descended the stairs. It was appropriately dripping a little; no doubt it had been out all day in the rain. The wetness did not help its smell.

Azelma had no time for wet swamp-beings. She had a knight for the first time ever; she had a knight and not a barbarian!

The frog croaked loudly from its corner as she passed. Azelma glanced towards it, nearly haughtily, and continued on her way.

And then, suddenly, her face contorted its formerly serene features into an expression capturing deepest, darkest fear.

"Eponine…"Azelma mumbled softly, turning around. "Eponine…it's…so nice to see you."

"What's this, then?" came the Frog's grating croak. "Zelly's too good for me now? She got her foot caught in a tree, did she?"

Azelma looked at the floor, the familiar floor, and sighed a little. Eponine scared her when she spoke nonsense.

"Eponine…you're saying crazy things again." Azelma muttered, stepping back a little. There was nobody around to help her if her sister got angry. Nobody! Oh, where was her knight when she really needed him?

"I think it's you what's crazy," the Frog rasped, as she picked something out of her matted mane. "My brat sister, the whore, too high and mighty to talk to the likes of me!"

"No, 'Ponine, no, that's not true." Azelma was nearly yelling now, and tears of dread slithered down her cheeks. "I'm nothing, 'Ponine, I'm nothing at all!"

The frogjust sneered.

Our mouse,perhaps to quell her sister's growing flames, slipped back into their native tongue- the language of the street. "I learned me fancy speech from the same man whose whore I am! I ain't nothing!"

For our little mouse, soft and mild, these few sentences were like a speech. Those few sentences, so few and anguish-wrought, were the pinnacle of years and years of sharpest and most painful fear. Seeing Eponine here, in what Azelma thought was her long-deserved save haven, was too much altogether.

She sobbed.

"You come here, Zellette," the Frog whispered, almost kindly. "You come here to your old 'Ponine."

Azelma's instincts said no, Eponine wasn't in her right mind, but she shuffled over to her sister anyway. How Azelma feared people's anger!

"That's right, Zelly, right here." Eponine was breathing her rotten frog-breath onto Azelma's face now.

And suddenly Azelma's face stung, and she was crying all the more. Eponine had slapped her.

"That's who you are, and don't you forget it." Eponine said, and left it at that.

"Eponine…"

"Now, you, don't start in on your sobbin', you got what you needed, and besides, I'm here for a reason."

Azelma blinked and took to tracing a circle on the floor with her foot.

"Fine, I don't want to hear yer voice anyhow," The Frog said annoyed, "All I gots to say is that Papa and me sold you off to that man."

Azelma's heart stopped. "Which man?" She whispered faintly.

"The one what's got nice togs and who's been lyin' with you, you stupid thing!"

Azelma merely blinked. She could not cry. Her family – her family! – was the cause of all her suffering! It was they who joined her with him, they who sold away her every waking minute to a vile speck of a man!

"We sold you off to him and now you gots to try and get information out of him, like, for Papa's new scam!"

Azelma stared at Eponine for a minute, and finally said, meekly and softly, "What Papa?"

Azelma glided away, still heading towards the backroom, to her knight.

Perhaps he could save her from this queer and depraved web woven all about her!

It was not like she had anyone else in the world. Azelma was a newly christened orphan.