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"Papa!" The voice which sounds through the opening front door is a young woman's, light and sweet and eager. The voice's owner follows in a billow of skirts, glancing back over her shoulder into a homey little hallway as she calls to someone unseen. "Papa, are you quite ready?"

She turns her head -- and falters in astonishment as she crosses the threshold, and her boots hit the Milliways floorboards.

"Papa...?" Her hand falls away from the doorknob, and it swings delicately closed behind her.

She's a young woman of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, her rosy face framed by delicate ringlets escaping from a silk-covered bonnet. Her dress is of blue wool, sloping down at the shoulders, puffed out wide at the sleeves and gathering again at the wrists, her skirts a bell over layers of petticoats, a warm shawl wrapped about her shoulders, gloves on her small hands, a basket over one arm, small boots just visible -- in other words, the height of dainty femininity for 1832, and doubtless extremely impractical and peculiar to the eyes of most of Milliways' patrons.

Welcome to Milliways, Cosette.

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"Door to this place appear by magic in all kinds of times and places, instead of regular doors," Father Harman says. "It sounds like magic, but might just as well be very, very advanced science. This place is called Milliways, and it exists outside of the usual time and space. I suppose you're from the 1830s, judging from your clothes?"

She understands the words, but not what he means. She has no concept for any of this; she can't fit it into her thoughts and make it work with the rest of the world she's seen.

"Yes, of course -- it's December of 1832."

What else would it be?

"Where I come from," Father Harman says, "it's the year 1998."

A short, astonished silence.

And then Cosette laughs. What else is there to do?

"You're joking with me, father. It isn't nice! People can't come from different years, never mind different centuries. Unless you say I'm dreaming. Am I dreaming? That would make sense -- perhaps I am. It's a funny dream if so. But then dreams are often peculiar."

"I'm not joking, and you're not dreaming," Father Harman says. "Look around you, look at all these people: do you think they could be found in 1832 France? Or that you'd dream them up?"

"I don't know," says Cosette, entertained, as she looks around herself. Her spirits are somewhat restored -- if it's a dream, that makes more sense than anything else, and there's nothing for it but to carry on until she wakes. "I often forget my dreams. Perhaps I dream of people like this all the..."

This is about when she actually focuses on one of the scantily clad men, and goes bright red, and looks hastily away. The next fellow her eye lands on is no better, and in a muddle of crimson shame she drops her gaze to the floor.

"--time," she finishes weakly.

She's talking to a holy father. And none of these men are Marius -- she's faithful, she's not promiscuous in her heart, surely she doesn't dream like this, except that she is. She will ignore them all, there -- ignore them with disdain, and speak only to the priest.

"I don't -- that is, not precisely them, but -- dreams are peculiar, father, that's all."

"Not exactly them," Father Harman says, only partially following her glance as not to embarrass her further. "Just so. Now, is there anything that would prove you're not dreaming? Like pinching yourself to make sure you'd wake up, if you were?"

Cosette crosses herself, reflexive and still deeply embarrassed, staring at the floor.

"I don't know, father."

In dreams, she rarely knows she's dreaming. In the waking world -- well, nothing at all like this has happened in the waking world. The timeless silent joy of sitting in the garden at night with her beloved Marius felt like a dream, now and again, but in a very different way.

"Then I don't have a way to prove to you you're not dreaming," Father Harman says. "Who says that anything whatsoever is not a dream? If you can take something from here to your home, then you might believe this is real."

Beat.

"I should probably introduce myself. I'm Father Pearse Harman, of the Society of Jesus, from London in the year 1998."

Cosette keeps her eyes modestly dropped, but she drops another curtsey.

"Pleased to meet you, father. I'm Cosette Fauchelevent. I live in Paris."

Father Harman had actually suspected to.

"It's a pleasure to meet you, Mademoiselle," he says, standing up to bow to her, even though he suspects that priests might not have been expected to do so, in her time.

It's unusual, but a venerable priest can be eccentric if he wants, and Cosette's life has taught her to be tolerant of harmless eccentricity. She is, in any case, barely looking at him.

...And she has no idea what to say now. Her usual store of small talk falters at the challenge of a dream-priest who wants to convince her that she's not dreaming.

He remains standing.

"Can you see the door you came in through, Mademoiselle Fauchelevent?" he asks.

Cosette darts a quick bird's glance past the brim of her bonnet towards the wall.

"Yes, of course," she says, confused once again. "It's right there."

With, thankfully, no one indecently clad in front of it.

"Can you open it?" the priest asks.

Cosette gives him a bewildered look. But, obediently, she crosses the floor to take the doorknob in her small gloved hand.

It opens easily to reveal a hallway, decorated in modest bourgeois style with the furniture and decor of early 19th century Paris. Nothing is moving in the hallway, but then again there is nothing living in it to move, just now.

"Now close it again, please, Mademoiselle Cosette?" Father Harman requests.

Cosette turns, her hand still on the knob.

"But why? I don't understand any of this."

She closes the door, however, her obedience well ingrained.

Father Harman opens the door again.

There is a windowless, featureless, evenly lit blue corridor on the other side, with some wooden doors, very plain, all closed.

"That is where I come from."

"Oh!" Cosette peers at it with great interest. "What a strange hallway. Is that in London?"

She knows she's dreaming for certain now. She was fairly sure before, but now she knows it; nothing in the world is lit the way that hallway is.

"It is," Father Harman says. "It's the building where my office is."

"Then it's your church?"

What peculiar scenery her dream has given that church. Well, these things happen in dreams.

"No, my office -- I have no congregation of my own, except the hodge-podge little one, here," Father Harman says.

Well, there are priests with other duties.

Cosette casts him an interested, inquiring glance at that last, though she doesn't ask aloud.

"There's people here who can't go home and miss practising their faith," Father Harman says. "For them I opened a little chapel room upstairs and read mass on Sundays. I can't leave them in the lurch, can I?"

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