Disclaimer: I don't own anything from Les Miserables. I don't own the line "a rose in dire poverty" I just liked it.
Chapter 1
Even though there was no snow, even though there were no trees to flaunt their bare branches with a depressing self-pity, like that of a beggar unwillingly flaunting cleavage and bare grey skin, dead and lonely also like the trees, without feeling the cold that can't be described, even though people have tried using words such as "biting" and "nipping", they would be able to tell it was winter.
Would it be the grayness? Or would one compare that to a rainy day in summer. Maybe the nearly empty streets, but that could still be explained by the earlier excuse. One can see the wind from papers in the streets and curtains in the windows, but is there not wind in fall?
But one would still be able to look at this and know that it is winter, for winter brings a light but thick grey, a thick and dry grey that one only sees when they look for it.
A young girl sits on a bench.
The girl is like the trees. She is a small creature. Her skin is tired and grey. Her eyes are dull. Just like trees in the winter, she can be terribly young, yet look terribly old and worn. Her arms and legs are nearly that of a skeleton, long thin and grey like the limbs and branches of a tree. Her fingers the sticks. Bare and longing for leaves, just as hers probably longed for something to cover her frozen fingers.
Her name is Eponine. Eponine Thenardier. A rose in dire poverty. A flower taken from a bush in a garden, and thrown on a lonely street after a rain storm. Now it is dirty, colorless, and trampled. No beauty remains about it. Only a shadow that tells us it was once there. Like the flower, which we can look at and know it belonged on the bush and was once beautiful.
But no one picks up the flower, no one gives it a thought, and that is the same as with this deserted flower.
Eponine came to a bench, and being tired, with no hurry to get to the place she called home, she sat down. She tucked her legs underneath her, along with her hands, hoping to give both a little warmth. She rubbed her bare feet trying to bring a little more feeling to them.
Her thin skirt was spared being blown by the wind since it was tucked under her, but the wind still grabbed the edges of the rags and tried to pull them with it. Her oily strands of hair blew in front of her face. She couldn't help the hope that perhaps it made her look a little more beautiful, but she knew it was in vain.
Her think and fraying blouse, apart from being nearly see-through, was being blown by the wind, as it would seem with much force, but since it was so thin and light it took little force at all, so that it showed her cleavage and a little bit more.
Eponine treasured every little bit of warmth. When the wind stopped and her hair fell around her bare arms, when her skirt was blown over the very tips of her toes that she couldn't keep hidden, and when the wind stopped for only a few seconds. She had learned to enjoy it all.
As she sat she thought. OF course, when one is alone that is what we do, we think. She thought about the life she used to have. She thought about the clothes and comfort she used to have. Then she thought about the winter when they were homeless. She thought of the dark water she would spend hours staring at. Then she compared her old life to her life now. She thought of the crimes she did without a second thought. She thought of the last time she looked in an unclear shop window to see her reflection. She thought of all this.
Now another figure enters the just so recently empty road. Again, another flower, once resting by the rose we have been describing, blown by the harsh wind and thrown on the same road. If Eponine was a rose in bloom, this one was a bud.
"Eponine!" The second flower called.
Eponine looked up at her younger sister Azemla. Azelma was no better off than her. Perhaps, one advantage, Azelma was younger and smaller so her bonnet could cover more of her head, but there was no more.
"Where have you been 'Ponine?" Azelma said with casualty. Someone was always gone. Nobody gave it a second thought. Everyone always came back at night, or perhaps the next morning at longest. Even home wasn't a real place to go, so both of these daughters were homeless, and both didn't much care where they were, home or not.
"Father didn't send you out. If he did you'd be the one carrying the letters," and with that she revealed a small bundle of letters. "If he meant for you to do anything else I would've been with you. He'd have sent me too."
"I was working." She took one hand from under her and opened her palm revealing one sou.
Azelma gave her an understanding and slightly sympathizing look. Then she took off to deliver the letters to whatever philanthropist their father had wrote to.
One sou. Others could get more than that. But no one cared or notices this deserted flower. No one wanted her. So one sou was all anyone would offer or pay. There were other women out there.
Eponine stood up, bringing her crinkled skirt back to its full length and pulled her blouse around her. She headed to what she called home.
Empty streets with empty windows,
though one girl walks all alone.
She's deserted, she's forgotten.
The world has left her on her own.
She's a rose that lays trampled now,
a shadow of old beauty.
How the world has beat her down.
This rose in dire poverty.