The light is wavery, too bright, yet warm and safe. I pray that she can feel this light. I would give away my very soul so she could feel warm and safe, wrapped in life. Cosette. My darling Cosette. Why is it that I feel like I will never see you again when you are there before my very eyes?

Her vision flickers and I see my daughter laughing, running through barley fields, healthy and happy, almost glowing. I can hear her laugh, a watery echo, but I could never forget that joyous sound. Behind her...

Felix?

No...not Felix. Felix, whom I still love. Do I? Felix, who shattered my weary soul into little pieces. The man who killed hope for me. The man who gave me Cosette...oh, how I wish I could hate him. How I wish I could destroy the part of my mind that dreams that perhaps, perhaps, he will turn around, even after all these years, and return to me. But how can I hate and not wish for the man who gave me my Cosette? I cannot.

But the man running with my daughter is not Felix Tholomyes. It is...Monsieur Madeleine?

Madeleine of the beautiful eyes and the voice of God...oh, how I have dreamed...how I love you...

I do. I love you so. From the moment you first spoke, you cast a spell upon my heart, a silken thread that kept the broken pieces together. Do you remember that moment, when I first came to work in your factory? How long ago it seems! My face had flushed rose, my pulse racing. I do not know what you did to me, M'sieur Mayor, but it is nothing less than magic. I am in love with you. And God alone knows what you must think of me, a broken and pitiful whore, nothing but a shell of a woman and a neglectful mother.

Something within me aches, aches bitterly. I still love you. I love my Cosette. Two people within this world who keep me alive, my daughter who does not know me, and a man who has no feeling for me spare pity!

My life...this cannot be my life.

The barley field is filled with light once more, and I see myself with you, my hands clasped in your own, and I too am laughing. You spin me around as if we were both younger than we are, and your face is alive. Breathlessly, you pull me close to you, and kiss me with all the emotions that I hide away from plain sight. And it is right, and it is good.

Oh, M'sieur, how I much I love you in this moment, be it real or merely a dream, escapes words...

And my little Cosette -- our Cosette -- runs ahead with the other children through the fields of barley, her hair and the field and your heart, all gold. Such a beautiful, unfading light. Monsieur Madeleine, I can almost feel your hands in my own, I can almost hear your voice...I smile softly, and say to you, touching your face and feeling my heart fill with love --

"Look, M'sieur, where all the children play!"

[finis]