The Park, All Day Saturday

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On Saturday morning, the smell of cotton candy permeated the island once again as the booths at Cooger & Dark's Pandemonium Shadow Show began to turn on and light up. There were more attractions to see today than there had been yesterday, and wasn't that just wonderful

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Re: Mirror Maze

[filleauloup]

Sure, more than a few things about the carnival still seemed shady, no less so than they had yesterday, but Éponine still wasn't overly bothered by that. As far as she was concerned, no traveling-show huckster was going to outsmart her; she knew how to play their game.

That did not, however, account for the mirror maze. It didn't take much, really.

She laughed at it, the first time it showed her a memory of her childhood at the inn. "What're you playing at, here? Good lord, it's clearer than I ever picture it in my head!"

And that was the problem. The deeper she progressed into the maze, the older she was in those reflected memories. The day they had to leave behind the inn at Montfermeil, and the way her mother's affections started to become twisted from that day forward. That dreadful winter spent living under the bridges in Paris. Her father informing her that now she was fourteen, it was about time for her to start helping them earn some money, and all the times she'd kept back a little of that money for herself to buy some cheap bottle of liquor and not have to think about what she'd just done, or the things people shouted at her on the street as she walked by. Being locked away alone in the dark at Les Madelonettes every time she gave in to the temptation to sing to herself, and the wardens caught her. Watching from behind the door of that wretched, reeking one-room hovel when the well-dressed gentleman and his pretty little doll of a daughter came to give them money out of pity, sick and dizzy with emotions but determined that she wouldn't so much as breathe and give away her presence, that she would not let Cosette see her in this state, not ever.

For a girl who already teetered on the brink of half-mad from time to time, it really didn't take much more than being confronted with manifestations of what was already in her own head to push her over the edge.