Les Misérables Drabbles
Sheets
The sheets are billowing on the line, and Louise takes a minute to rest against the wall, her back aching. They're all good sturdy linen, if a little worn, and heavy when they're wet from the washtub.
In the front yard, Eponine is singing tunelessly as she plays. The sun is pleasant on her face, and a clean smell rises from the drying laundry. In the still spring warmth, Louise feels a strange loosening, a pang of contentment.
Then the sun goes behind a cloud, and the greensickness comes over her again. Bitterly, without words, she straightens and lumbers indoors.
Refusing
It has always been a struggle for him to refuse her. She is such a good child; she never asks for much. And even now, when this slim young woman in her elegant dress says to him, "Father, you will stay with us, won't you?" -- he sees a little thin-faced girl with pleading eyes.
Poor little girl, who had never had anything. It was hard to weigh caution, common sense, against her hopeful face. Toys, clothes, walks in the park, these he could give her for her happiness, but above all she must be safe.
"Won't you?"
"No, Cosette."
Gamin
They all know his name, though none can remember learning it. He faded into their close-knit consciousness as Louison did, simply by always being there.
"Gavroche, do me a favor."
"Gavroche, what'd you do with your shawl?"
"Here, brat, take this, go have breakfast, you're scaring the women with those bony elbows."
When he was off on his own obscure errands, they were apt to forget him. Something in his smirking, young-old face forbade too keen an interest; their camaraderie he accepted, but not their concern.
Staring at the small still body, every one of them remembers this.
Bells
All her life afterward, Cosette will remember the bells. They sang sedately, calling you to prayers, to meals, to lessons; they rang peremptorily in summons; they tolled mournfully, lamenting a death. Bells tinkled in the open air, heralding a beloved face; bells bounded each day like the colored borders of an illuminated page.
Even during the worst times, when she argues with Marius, when Toussaint begins to slide into the lunacy of age, when they bury what would have been a daughter, given another few months, the distant music of church bells will bring a moment's serenity to her heart.
Adventuress
"You'll get in trouble," Elisabeth hisses, and the new girl shrugs.
"Not if no one tells. Who's coming with me?"
It is more than half bravado, and she is as surprised as anyone when a small ugly girl sits up in bed. "I will."
"Cosette!" Elisabeth again. "You can't!"
"Can, too."
Barefoot in their long nightdresses, they slip out the narrow window, balance on the ledge, scramble -- hearts pounding -- up crumbling stonework to the roof. In the moonlight, the garden below is stark and strange as a fairyland.
After a while, "Thank you. For coming along."
Cosette squeezes her hand.
Mistaken Identity
She's popular with certain men: the auburn-haired tart from Paris, with her accented English, her bold eyes, the knowing smirk that hides her missing teeth. She is still thin from years of semistarvation, but in her new clothes it shows less. At twenty she's prosperous, she can afford to get drunk.
Stumbling home through the back alleys one night, she sees him.
"M'sieur Marius!"
The young man turns. She falls into his arms, silk-clad, breathless.
He knows no French; he will never know that before he leaves her bleeding on the pavement, her last words are of love.
Reason
All reason, all common sense tells him to stay where he is and keep his secrets. It would be madness to sacrifice so many for one. Even if he thinks of sparrows fallen, lambs strayed -- even if his heart urges him to the grand gesture.
He has spent so many years here, in this safe life. Would it not be a fine thing, a brave thing, to go to Arras and speak the truth with a sound like breaking glass?
In that moment he sees the temptation.
You are not a saint, Madeleine tells himself severely. Do what you can.
Solace
With what she earns now Fantine could rent her old room again, but she has lost her taste for solitude. She lodges with Fleur, a sylphlike slattern of twenty, in a windowless garret not far from where she grew up.
When Fleur cups a slim hand around her breast under the covers, she stiffens briefly, shocked. But -- she reasons -- she has no shame left to lose, and it is a long time since she was touched so gently. She lies quiet under the girl's caresses, and presently returms them. It is a comfort, like the brandy; a means of forgetting.
Westmark Drabbles
Innocent
Heaven help me, I have found that mainstay of sentimental rhetoric, the innocent child. Two of them! Unspoiled by corrupt society. And as I always suspected, they're unholy little brats when you come down to it. Innocent is also ignorant; unspoiled is also unwashed.
Damn me if I'm not fond of them.
For there is a charm in innocence. There's something charming in a boy who expects the people whose pockets he picks to like him. There's something to be said for a little girl who settles on the simplest explanation for everything.
I almost feel sorry for civilizing them.
Children
Florian is in the habit of choosing his words advisedly. When he was younger than Justin is now, he already knew how perilous it could be to say the wrong thing.
Justin knows it too, but the knowledge only makes him the more reckless. Zara never learned. Those two will get themselves in trouble, one day. Rina's innocence and Stock's naivete worry him; idealism without common sense is a recipe for destruction. Even middle-aged Luther, with his direct simplicity, is in danger of seeing too narrowly.
Children, he calls them, teasing -- but he does not use the word unthinkingly.
Reunion
Sparrow has moved up in the world. Dawn finds her atop the bridge she used to sleep under.
The Vespera is sluggish in the cold, grey and surly as her heart. Wind whips at her skirt. A sentimental girl might throw herself in; Sparrow is too practical.
Footsteps stop behind her. If it's Weasel, she'll hit him.
But the hand that falls on her shoulder is heavy, adult. She turns, looks up at blunt features and snowy hair.
She throws herself against him. "You!"
"Good morning," Dr. Torrens replies politely, and then: "There now," stroking her hair as she cries.
Misplaced
Keller leans on one elbow, scribbling out the last of his thoughts in a mad rush before they can escape. Words, words, words. Unruly little devils, always about when you don't want them and never handy when you do.
Rather like children.
There. He throws down the pen, and fumbles for the first page.
"It's on the floor."
He nearly falls out of the chair. "Good-- heavens, girl."
Sparrow smirks from the doorway. "You're always dropping pages."
"Like a molting canary," Keller agrees glumly. "Don't sneak up on me like that. You'll give me heart failure."
She grins. "Not you."
Phantom of the Opera Drabbles
Aftermath
After a long time she was able to look at mirrors again.
For months after the disaster, she woke crying in the night from claustrophobic dreams. She had always been flighty; now she was nervous, flinching at shadows, at certain bars of music. She could not rest in a room lit only by candles. Her nightmares were so full of sound -- splash of water, low hum of viola, soprano scream, crash of glass -- that, waking, any unexpected noise sent her into hysterics.
It was over a year before she saw her reflection again. Skin like parchment, hollow eyes -- Meg wept.
Nerves
When the door of the managers' office shuts behind M. le Commissaire, they breathe two identical sighs.
"My nerves can't take much more of this."
"Your nerves?" demands Moncharmin without opening his eyes. "What about my nerves, with you thundering at me?"
"You're not the one who's had his pocket picked." Richard stands over his partner, glowering.
"By a ghost?"
"By someone."
"Really, my dear." With an air of immense fatigue, Moncharmin lifts a hand and tucks it into Richard's back pocket once more. "If it were me, don't you think you would have noticed? --Kiss me."
Richard sighs, relenting.
Harry Potter Drabbles
The Other 364 Nights
"Altair, Andromeda Arwen."
"I PROTEST!"
A murmur runs through the hall and dies into silence. The Sorting Hat topples off Miss Altair's raven curls and lies there fraying at the mouth.
"Have mercy on me," it wheezes. "I'm nearly a thousand years old. My seams can't take it. You know what kind of strain these little hussies put on me."
"Hat," says Professor McGonagall sternly, "I must ask you to speak civilly of my niece."
She picks it up again. "Better be Gryffindor, Andie. --Black, Brandy Blossom!"
A dozen portraits blink in the darkness as the Sorting Hat wakes, screaming.
Mooncalf
Luna strings globes of light in the air, pearls on an invisible necklace, tiny glowing moons. There are people on the moon, she remembers vaguely, stranded by a Government Conspiracy. At least there were last week. At least there's nothing to say there weren't.
She colors her string of lights blue and orange, and watches them sparkle in the sunlight.
"On the moon," she answers without thinking. Someone laughs, a long way off.
Oh dear.
Luna blinks, focusses.
Professor Flitwick gives her his best approximation of a disapproving frown. "Do pay attention, Miss Lovegood."
Luna meets his eyes, and smiles.
Other Drabbles
Where There's Smoke (Martin Guerre)
"Must be good to have him back," Jeanne says.
"It is," Bertrande agrees without a flicker. When is the tiresome cow going to leave?
"Has he changed much?"
"He's been in the wars."
"Oh, you know what I mean, girl."
Bertrande turns from the fire. "I suppose I do. And when it's any of your business, I'll tell you."
Jeanne steps back, ruffled. "Well, I heard--"
"I know. You all sing the same song!" As if she could miss the murmurs, the speculative looks. "Just-- never you mind. Hear? I--"
Jeanne isn't listening. "Mind the fire, girl!"
Smoke billows.
"Damn!"
Winter of Discontent (Emily of New Moon)
They greet each other with a fierce embrace, grownup dignity or no. "Honey, I haven't seen you in a month of Sundays!"
"More like a week of Mondays," Emily says. "Not as long, but twice as dismal."
"That bad?" Ilse pulls away, studying her critically. Emily flushes.
"Not bad, not really... just... flat, somehow. I-- I'm starting to understand what you see in quarrelling."
Ilse quirks a brow. "The course of true love never did run smooth."
"But it ought to!"
The other woman's eyes are wet, suddenly. Ilse touches the tears away with a manicured finger, and kisses her.
Collusion (Neopets)
"You've been helping that puny Earth Faerie," Jhudora sneers, with a flash of acid-green fingernails. "Get out. Come back later and I might give you another chance." The child flees, his Cybunny skulking at his heels.
"As if you could know such a thing if I didn't tell you." Illusen's legs are long and sleek in her high-laced sandals, graceful as she perches on the arm of the throne. Her scent of loam and leaf-mold makes Jhudora's pulse race. "You're such a bitch sometimes."
"Oi! Don't swear," Jhudora says, and kisses her soundly to stop her laughter.