8

They got to the entrance room. Enjolras wasn't there, so she assumed he'd already made it out onto the streets. Or maybe he'd gone the wrong way again, she mused in her head. She smirked to herself at the thought.

"I think you upset Enjolras," Gavroche said to her. His voice was quiet and for once quite serious. Éponine glanced down at him and realised he'd slipped his hand out of hers.

"Hmm?" she said, even though she'd heard him.

"Enjolras," Gavroche said. "You might have upset him."

"You were quite harsh, Éponine," Éléonore chimed in from somewhere ahead of them.

"He's a grown man," Éponine said. "I'm sure he can handle it." She didn't say out loud what she was thinking, which was she was glad Enjolras felt upset. She wasn't known for her sympathetic nature, after all. It was partly his fault she was here, anyway; it was the revolution of his making that she'd died in, after all.

Before any more could be said on the subject, Éléonore was leading them into yet another room. One more fire, green walls this time, and a cluttered table in the centre surrounded by a variety of mismatched chairs. There were some people sat in there – a couple of men, more women – and one of those, a young girl, rose when they came in.

The girl looked to be about fourteen, and had curly blonde hair and a sour expression on her face.

"This is Inès," Éléonore said. "She's another Guardian. She's found you somewhere and she'll take you to help you settle in."

"Nice to meet you," Inès said as she learned their names, even though the look on her face said she was anything other than happy to meet them. "It was just an apartment for two, yes?"

Éponine nodded. Inès stared Éponine up and down, and wrinkled her nose at Gavroche.

"I'll leave you in Inès' capable hands," Éléonore smiled. "Although, if you need any help, feel free to drop in. I'm sure there will be someone around to see you."

XXX

Inès walked too fast for Éponine's liking. Gavroche was dragging his feet in a way that made Éponine feel like slapping the young boy, but Inès wasn't far off running.

Éponine could, however, appreciate the fact that Inès wasn't trying to engage them in conversation. Gavroche was muttering under his breath, but Éponine welcomed the silence that came with their walk.

Inès led them to a tall, grey building with stairs zigzagging up the front of it. There were about seven front doors, each on one of the landings. "This is it," Inès said, ignoring the door on the ground floor and beginning to climb the stairs. "Your apartment is number four."

Their door was painted a bright green, and had its number on a plaque on the wall beside it. Inès fished in the pockets on the front of her dress and produced a simple key. "Try not to show anyone you don't trust this key just on the off chance they remember its design and try to recreate it," she said, her voice sounding bored and mechanical. She stuck the key into the lock and turned.

"Is robbery common here?" Éponine wondered.

Inès sent her a sideways look and pushed the door open. "Some people find old habits hard to break," she said. "And others just love the thrill of breaking and entering. But it's not very common, no."

She stepped over the threshold, and Éponine and Gavroche followed. They were stood in a small, square room, with white walls and a rough wooden floor. No furniture, just a couple of alcoves that formed shelves in the wall. There were two more doors.

Inès gestured at the room with her hands. "This is it," she said. "There are two more rooms through those doors, which could be your bedrooms, if you like."

"There's no furniture," Éponine frowned.

"You can create your own," Inès shrugged. "It's not hard, Éléonore should have explained how you do it."

"Only a small thing," Éponine argued. "An orange. I don't know –"

"Then you'll just have to learn," the younger girl sniped. "It's not actually in my job description to stand around helping you conjure furniture."

"Well, aren't you an unhelpful creature," Éponine said. "So why don't you run along and leave us to it?"

Inès looked unimpressed. She raised her eyebrows. "I will do," she said. She threw Éponine the key, but it was Gavroche who snatched it out of the air. "As Éléonore said, if you need any help with anything, just pop in and someone will see you. But, for now, you're on your own."

She left the flat, and slammed the door shut behind her.

"She's in the wrong job," Éponine said. She held out her hand towards Gavroche. "Key."

"I live here too," Gavroche said, defensively.

"Give," she said. "I'm the adult here."

"We're equals here," Gavroche retorted.

"I'm your older sister," Éponine said, triumphantly. "So, give me the key."

Gavroche shook his head. She lunged at him, and after a couple of minutes, managed to wrestle the key out of his grasp. After their scuffle was over, they both stared at each other for a few moments.

Gavroche looked away first following their little battle of wills, grumbling under his breath.

"You can have a copy of the key," Éponine said. "But for now, it stays with me, okay?"

Gavroche just continued to scowl in her general direction. She ignored him and stared around the empty space they would now be calling home. It looked so bare, and there was nothing to do here, nothing to sit on…

"We need furniture," she said out loud. "Have you conjured anything, Gavroche?"

"I made a penny," he said.

"I think we just have to imagine these things and will them to be there," she said. "Shall we start with something…Maybe…Maybe a chair?"

"There's two of us," Gavroche said.

"Two chairs? I could make one, you could make one…" Éponine trailed off. "Or a sofa. A sofa, let's start with a sofa."

They both looked at each other, and then looked around the room. A part of Éponine had expected the sofa to just appear, but she knew deep down that was silly because it had taken more effort than that to create an orange which was a much smaller item.

"We're going to have to try harder than that, then," Éponine said. "Let's try again."

Their first attempt looked horrid, because they'd both gone to create a different type of sofa; it was a mishmash of different materials and odd angles. So they tried again, after discussing the exact details together. This time, it looked right; but then when they tried to sit on it, it collapsed beneath them and was just a heap of…

Éponine didn't know what to describe the outer shell of the sofa as, because it didn't feel like any material she'd ever felt before. It was too smooth, for starters.

They stared at the heap of pale blue on the floorboards and then stared at each other. "I don't understand," Gavroche said, scowling. "The sofa was just there."

"Maybe…" Éponine's mind ticked over, wondering what they were missing. Something seemed to slot into place in her mind and she focused in on the pile of blue. She closed her eyes, and thought hard. She had a hunch, and working on that hunch, she imagined the feel of cloth beneath her fingertips. Soft, but slightly rough at the same time. She thought hard, and then opened her eyes.

She ran her hand over the pile of blue, which had now turned into a heap of cloth. She blue fabric had taken on the texture she had imagined in her head.

"I think I've worked it out," she said, excitedly. "It's not enough to imagine just the image – we have to imagine everything about the sofa for it to work!"

Together, they worked on their sofa. They had to imagine its different structural elements and then add the stuffing to it. It didn't take up a large amount of time, but it did take a lot of effort. Once they were done, Éponine could honestly say it was the first time she had felt tired since she woke up in this place.

It was more than tired; it was exhaustion, pressing at the back of her eyes and weighing down on her mind. She could tell by the droop of Gavroche's shoulders that he was feeling the same way.

She fell back onto their sofa. They might have gone a bit overboard with the stuffing, she thought dimly at the back of her mind, as it was possibly overstuffed. But it didn't matter. They had an item of furniture for their new home, and she was aware of Gavroche curling up at her side, and then she was asleep.