like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams

[Dated to the 27th and anytime a few days later in the week]

She doesn't know if it's denial or simply that she's got graduation, first, and spends the next couple of days not doing much -- Eponine had planned in advance to have a few days off work, just to rest from finals and process that she was finally done with high school and get to stay in with Ellie, a bit. Whatever it is, she misses the beginning of what's happening, doesn't catch it at first despite her usual determination to be aware of things going on in Darrow, to have one ear to the ground, as it were. 

But then they come in, that Monday, and everyone else is gone. It's just she and Elio, staring at each other in alarm, and looking around at streets that have somehow gone from a little calmer than usual to absolutely desolate. She's been busy, and she knows he's had plenty on his own mind, loss and now -- an odd, different kind of loss to cope with when Oliver had returned, not remembering any of it -- but she can't have missed all this, can she? But their coworkers aren't here, nor the everyday passersby, and though they're all a little strange in one way or another, she's gone to school with the Darrow-born, she's grown to like her manager and underlings at the store, she's gotten used to the presence of people even when some of them can't be trusted. Not all of anyone can be trusted. 

It's only ever been their kind, newcomers to Darrow, that have disappeared before. If it's everyone, how do any of them stand a chance?  

In the following days, she can't keep that from her mind, that horror of someone just not being where they ought, and she knows it must have been on Elio's when he told them both abruptly to go on home. 

It's not what she finds her first concern, though, not as soon as she realizes -- very shortly after she leaves -- that without the rest of the city here, there's more than just bookshops that are locked. With no one to open them, grocery stores, restaurants, clothing stores stay shuttered; others are never closed at all, and of course, she's not the only one that realizes very quickly that the normal flow of commerce is not going to last, nor do they have any way of knowing how long this will go on or when it will end.  

In the pit of her stomach she can feel more than think about those cold winters and hot summers in Paris, those days between meals that she joked to Marius about, scrounging for anything at all to keep even Azelma fed, and when she sees a car crashed into a corner store on the way home, that first Monday, she pulls over. The window's made of the sort of glass that shatters and spiders, and after looking both ways -- even though there's no one to see her -- she kicks the glass out and climbs in. She impulsively, quickly looks for the sort of things that might need replacing and will last them even if the power goes out unmanned or they have to leave the house: tinned meat and vegetables, nuts, powdered milk and juice, bottled water, peanut butter and bread. Fresh produce takes up too much space, but it won't keep here in an abandoned shop and citrus fruit always feels luxurious to Eponine, beside keeping off scurvy, and she shoves oranges and limes on top. Her instincts become more rattled: at the first sound of a car, she hides and darts off, and ducks into another store instead to pick up bandages, painkillers, antibiotic ointment, a lighter, peroxide -- things Ellie would probably die before she didn't have on hand, but that Eponine can't bring herself to think of as worthy of abandoning. Anything she can stuff into the remaining gaps and jacket pockets.


Eponine comes back home weighed down with supplies, her face drawn, her arms pimpled with gooseflesh despite the summer heat. She kisses the nubbly head of the growing goat in the yard, but her stomach twists as she walks back up the drive. She's half-expecting Ellie to be gone, too, she realizes, despite everything seeming to indicate it's everyone but them, as she slowly leans on the door and calls out a hello.


There's something else she wants to do. She'd seen on Elio's face that he wasn't in any sort of state of mind for company, when he'd sent her home, that Monday. But even as she tries -- tries -- to put aside the idea that she and Ellie might run out of something and not be able to get it -- she comes back to that other, more insidious fear. Out in the country as they are, they might not even know if something worse happens or if those not born in Darrow begin to disappear. Like so many have from her life, only it's never been all at once. For a while she hasn't been there, enough, for Elio; has worried quietly over him but hasn't found it her place to say so. And, thinking of that and of the uncertainty of it all, she can't stand the idea that he might have the same fears, be bearing them alone. Hopefully, he's reached out to Oliver, Oliver to him, in some way this fearful time brought them closer together. But if she didn't do so herself and something happened... She can't bear it.

So, a few days later, with some of the nicer supplies -- and a bottle of wine she'd liberated, like a good guest -- she knocks, tentatively, on his door. "Elio?" She winces. "I'll go away, if you want, but if you're here, just -- tell me so, all right?"  

[OOC: Sorry about the title, it was what came to mind, lol. If you're Elio, obviously the end is for you. If you're Rosie or Ellie or someone else, catch her earlier.]