for ellie

dated to whenever

It shouldn't, after all these months, but it still feels nerve-wrackingly exciting when, in the middle of several hours of intermittent texting about nothing at all, Ellie asks Eponine if she'd like to come over. (She agrees readily, of course. She was never not going to agree, and she thinks Ellie knows that, too: but the asking is part of the game, isn't it?)

Walking out to the countryside isn't taxing for her, but it does take a little bit, and it makes Eponine think about how much she'd enjoyed riding Lisbeth's motorcycle. For whatever reason, cars still unnerve her -- she even rather likes riding in Jamie's car and Ellie's truck well enough, and she likes looking at Sam's Impala, but she still feels as though she wouldn't like to be responsible for that much weight and size. But the motorcycle had felt powerful and lithe even though she knows it's also more dangerous.

If she gets tired of this walk one day, perhaps she'll save up for one. It does feel nice, though, the city fading into trees and fields that, raised in the smog of Paris and most of her friends living downtown in Darrow, she associates with these visits more than anything else.

She skips up the steps to knock on the door, and calls, with a smirk after a moment, "Open up, it's the police," with a laugh in her tone.