“I’d like to help harvest!”Username: Northstar.
Buttermilk: Eponine“I’d like to help harvest some more!”Username: Northstar.
Buttermilk: EponineWord Count: 609
Prompt:Eponine knows loneliness when she looks in the mirror. It is cold and creeps up like a waking dream. She walked hand and hand with it for over six long months; she and solitude were close friends. Not by choice.
No, Eponine was made for people. It was a deep betrayal that sent her running in the opposite direction with only herself for company. After that, no living beings were seen for many, many long and lonely weeks. She blossomed in that time, became someone independent. But her soul withered nearly to dust.
She remembers that first day truly alone. Trapped in a room, surrounded by death. He had used her as bait to save his own skin. She didn't think she could go on. She was so broken from his words. All of what made her
Eponine was in jagged shards.
He thought that I had paper wings to shatter, crumble, melt away...But she went on.
I am iron, forged in fire. I'll live to fly another day.She managed to escape the horde and flee. Eponine remembers running flat out down the street, her heart in her throat as she looked for salvation. It came in the form of a dumpster, leading up to an empty fire escape. At the time she thought death had come for her - she was trapped on a roof with no supplies. But there was an unusually large air vent and she slipped through into the building below.
It was a blessing.
The museum was boarded up and barred. It would be the last place anyone would go. She alone made the museum home and at first it was nice. Peaceful. Eponine nested in the smallest room she could find for safety, until she realized there was no way anyone was getting in.
Supply runs were hard alone. From the moment she left to the moment she returned she was on edge. With no one to watch her back any small mistake would cost her life. That wasn't a price she was willing to pay.
Time blurred together, endlessly. She lived and breathed but Eponine did not
live. She survived but she did not enjoy it. She was trapped in a neverending cycle with no one to break it.
A stray cat wandered in one day, squeezing between weakened boards. It woke something in her. She
wanted to find someone, someone living, but if she couldn't then she would take what she could get. Eponine scavenged daily for supplies. Cat food and litter and toys were stocked, and soon she had a half dozen cats regularly in an out, and another two that made themselves at home. It helped. She didn't feel so foggy headed and goals became more clear.
The birds came after, housed separately in the vast greenhouse that was formerly a butterfly garden. They came on the heels of Ghost - who Eponine chased tirelessly for weeks before she could convince the reclusive bovine into teaming up.
The loneliness cleared and thinned into something manageable. Eponine finally had ahold of herself again. Ghost was company and Ghost was there. She finally, finally wasn't alone after so many long months. It was like coming out of a dream and stepping into the waking dawn. She felt alive. She felt like she could do anything.
It's only in quiet moments that it creeps upon her again, and she beats it back with fierce fists. She won't fall beneath that lonely call again, to be in a waking slumber - it would make her no better than the creatures that hungered outside. And she refused that fate long ago.