Cosette walked slowly as she crossed the causeway back from the mainland, lost in thought after a visit to her father. For a while now, ever since the weekend that the dead had come to visit, she had been entertaining the notion of asking him to tell her more about her mother, but every time she broached the subject he got so visibly anxious that she just never had the heart to push.

Like tonight. She was rarely ever nervous about anything, but working up the nerve to bring it up had seemed more of a task than usual.

She didn't realize right away that she was singing to herself.

"Telephone wire, long black line
Telephone wire, finely threaded sky
There's the pond where I went wading, there's a sign for Sugar Valley
On the mountain light is fading -- I go back to school tomorrow
Say something, talk to him
Say something, anything
At the light, at the light, at the light, at the light
At the light, at the light, at the light, at the light
Doesn't matter what you say
Just make the fear in his eyes go away . . ."

Yes. She'd have to do this, and soon. Just . . . she had to figure out how.

[OOC: This is what I get for challenging myself to work something from Fun Home into today, I guess. Can be open if you've a mind.]

Cosette had avoided getting caught up in the whole mess with Leland Gaunt and the cursed items, but she'd heard enough from the researchers at the library to know she ought to consider herself lucky. Still, she couldn't help wondering what she might have wished for if given the opportunity; there was nothing she could think of that she wanted so badly as to go to the lengths others had, ( except for one possible thing. )

She would have been awake early out of habit, even if she didn't have to get back to the island for class today, and she wasn't at all surprised to find her father awake and in the living room, waiting to walk her back to the causeway, by the time she was dressed and ready to go.

"I saw my mother in a dream last night," she began carefully, knowing how reticent he always was on the subject. She would never push him, but she was getting frustrated with how much she didn't know, and the dream had only made that worse.

He looked at her with a familiar expression on his face, a mixture of caution and sadness, but nodded and said nothing, waiting for her to continue.

"She had two great wings," Cosette went on. "I'm not sure how I knew that it was her, only that I knew. She smiled at me, much like the way you do, and I felt as though I recognized her immediately, but when I started to go towards her she simply vanished. I wish . . . I don't know . . . but I think she must have attained to sanctity in her life."

The wariness subsided from her father's expression, but when he smiled the sadness was still there. "Through martyrdom," was all he said, and offered her his arm as he opened the front door. It was all she was going to get on the subject, Cosette knew, and she was resigned to it, but it didn't mean she didn't wish to know more.

[OOC: Thanks for the dialogue, Victor Hugo, even if I did expand on it a little bit. NFB for distance/establishy!]

Cosette was finally getting around to unpacking her bags from the trip. As soon as they got back from Skyrim yesterday, she'd deposited them in her room then gone right off-island to her father's house to give him his presents and tell him all about where she'd been and the sorts of things she'd seen, though she left out the bits about the dragons. No need to worry him that way.

She was not particularly surprised to find that she'd accumulated an absurd number of books over the past week. The various flowers didn't surprise her either, though she wasn't sure what she had been thinking when she picked the handful of cotton mixed in with the lavender and other sprigs.

As for the apples (three red, one green), the eight or nine carrots, the potato, and the wooden plate, as well as the basket all of them were packed into . . . she had no idea how she'd ended up with those.

[OOC: Not saying this looks a lot like my own Skyrim inventory at the moment, minus the weapons, but . . . You can blame doesnotkneel for this. Open door/post, SP likely.]

Cosette had never really remembered much about her early childhood. She knew that before her father came to take her away from all of it there had been a time when she went about in a constant state of lonely, terrified despair. That was all it had been to her, though: a dark and suffocating haze, like being trapped in a dark room full of ominous noises until all of a sudden someone came along, opened the door, and pulled her out before her eyes had time to adjust to the brightness and she could look back to see where she'd been.

This morning, when the chime of an incoming text message woke her and she sat up in bed to grab her phone and read the 'good morning' message from her father, she was a little confused, and much more uncomfortably aware of memories that she hadn't had before.

She'd never wanted to imagine what life would be like if Father hadn't found her, but she didn't have a choice about it now. ( Cut for some mention of child abuse and neglect. )

That was a lot to think about, so once she'd gotten up, made her bed, and dressed for the day Cosette curled back up on her bed with a book that she wasn't really reading, only leafing through idly every now and then when she wasn't staring out the window, lost in an uncharacteristically moody silence.

[OOC: Closed door, open post, subject to some SP . . .]

Yeah, yeah, I have a student character again; you can laugh at me now. Also this infopost is likely to just contain large amounts of me keysmashing and flailing and possibly crying and I'm sorry in advance.

( The Student: Cosette Fauchelevent )

( The Townie: Éponine Thénardier )

( So What's The Connection Between Them In Fandom? )

( And me. )

[Note on Content: This post contains mentions of abuse. Proceed accordingly. Also there is only one gif. Sorry.]