Death

The gorgeous ghost with long blonde hair sags on the pillows in the frankincense and patchouli celestial boudoir. The Houri's dance is dreary and hot; she's yet to see a sou, or a silver lining. She wants her eternal reward, her goddamn payment for her spread-legged service.

She wants her daughter. She bites her lip and screws her eyes while some dead goodfellow screws her, and all she wants is her baby girl.

She opens her eyes and nobody's there but that pretty girl in the black hat hovering over her, managerial concern.

"Okay." She says, smiling. "You've earned it."

Destiny

"What d'you want?"

The scrawny gamine knows what it is, if not who. She's not afraid of ghosts or goblins, or floating blonde shapes with vaguely familiar features, crouching over her pallet. She's afraid of eyes like that though: hungry, haunted, wanting something. She waits for an answer.

"A daughter." Says the apparition. "Your mother took mine from me. I demand repayment."

The gamine stares, gets it. "Your girl took something from me, too."

They trade looks, hard and steady. Bargaining, both understand.

"What's your name?" Says the child.

"Fantine." Says the ghost.

"Eponine."

So they came to a bargain.

Dream

"What's he like?" Asks Fantine, halfheartedly. They stroll down the avenue, arm in arm, like ladies of the promenade.

"Who? Oh. Him." Eponine shrugs bony shoulders. "Dark, curly hair. Dark eyes, soft expression. Terribly smart. Stuff that dreams are made on."

She'd heard that in a play once, and thought of Him then, too.

"D'you think she's happy?"

Eponine closed her eyes, imagining herself alone in a garden, then not-alone. She stops the reverie before it can take her where it always goes. She has Fantine's answer, anyway.

"Yes," she says, "I think she is."

"Ah." the ghost sighs, faintly.

Destruction

The sun sinks low in the sky. As the girl and ghost stop for a moment's laugh by the Luxembourg, two men pass with something in their eyes that makes everyone stop. One smiles.

"A bit out of your way, loves?"

"Lucky us." salivates the other.

The women trade hard, cold looks. The dead woman and the used girl make their decision simultaneously and act swiftly. The men crumple with expressions of disbelief on their faces, their own knives sticking out of them. Whores are not supposed to behave this way. This is not supposed to happen.

All things change.

Desire

Giddy with conquest, night finds them in the Rue Plumet, at the gate of a certain, dreamed-of garden. Inside, voices sigh, laugh, caress each other. Pressed close enough to the bars, if one is patient, one can catch glimpses through the overgrowth: a shimmer of dark hair, a hand pressing a lacy shoulder, moonshine upon eyes that shine with love for only one... Eponine wrings her hands on the bars. The food-hunger that has gnawed all day at her belly cannot touch this starvation. She does not have to look at Fantine to know that the ghost is hungry too...

Despair

"There's a trick to it," Eponine says with a shrug. Their steps echo in the midnight alleys, but they fear nothing. "It's not hard with him-he's pretty clean, and not overmuch a brute. I daresay he's got prospects."

"And not the pox."

"Not that." She agreed, falling a moment silent. "He isn't Him, of course, nothing like Him. But sometimes? When he's with me, and I've made him smile a bit, I can trick myself that I've made him happy, too. It makes me feel good. You know?"

"Yes," Said Fantine softly, a sigh on the wind. "I know exactly."

Delirium

The only drink Fantine has tasted in forever has been the organic results of her heavenly duties. Grog-without water at their request-goes down like manna. It's necessary after this day, glorious and horrible. They sling their arms around each other's necks, sobbing, singing lullabies and love songs, hearts full of love, castles on clouds. They graduate to Absinthe, delirium racing with dawn and winning. Neither has felt this way before-unconditionally loved.

The feeling persists into the next day, although Fantine does not. Eponine trips out of the bar and dizzily into Paris. Eyes-one blue, one green-follow her dance.

tell me quickly what's the story...