Awakening
The weather was just exactly like that day, 3 years ago.
Clouds covered the sky, blocking out the sun entirely and giving the small town a sad, gray look. The small portion of the people still outside subsided rapidly as soon as the first rumbles broke above.
All but one person.
She, on the otherhand, hadn´t realized the sudden weather change. Sitting still on the marble bench overlooking the pond, she stared absentmindedly into nothingness.
Our young Sarah was not so young anymore. Now 17 she resembled more of a woman than of a child. Her brown locks had grown longer, but were now wavy in contrast to her past straight hair, and reached all the way down her back. Her usually kind, innocent eyes now held a tinge of fierceness even in a simple glance. The full black brows were no longer bushy and out of place, having been plucked some years ago. Full pink lips peaked out from under a small nose and parted slightly, emitting a sigh.
After all these years, she still remembered what ensued on a day like this. Even past the first stage of puberty, when child-like dreams somehow vanish, she held onto that small ray of hope that her memory was not just an act of her imagination. That she had been mentally stable during that first year when her father remarried, and that babysitting Toby hadn't been all that stressful to have caused her halucinations.
She had woken up on her bed 3 years ago with the memory of having thrown a party a few hours before. But there were no signs as to back it up. Everything in her room had been in place.
Sarah kept up with her love of acting and reading plays afterwards, but this provoked the rising memories of the supposed Labyrinth.
She hoped the Labyrinth was real. That Ludo and the others had actually existed and became friends with her, eventually helping her pass the Labyrinth, save Toby and defeat Jareth.
"Just love me, obey me, do as I say, and I will be your slave..."
Sarah sighed again, this time moving her stare down to her hands, which were playing with a hem of the dress in her lap.
Had he meant it when he said those words? Or were they another ruse to keep her in the Labyrinth like she had believed 3 years ago?
Thoughts that had been so clear were now somehow debatable, and caused her to think very much at times.
If only there was a way to find that out. If only there was a way to return to the Labyrinth.
Sarah had sat here the 3 years before on this same day to achieve it. Even under the rain she sat there, in her original beige dress, waiting.
Hoping for the owl.
Her stepmother had found her passed out on the marble bench two years before, soaked and feverish, in the early morning. Sarah had left a past afternoon without eating at all and never even returned for the night. Worried, her dad and stepmother searched the town until finding her there. They had questioned her when she woke up, but Sarah offered no explanation to her crazy behavior.
Last year, after finding her again, they gave her a warning, trying to prevent her from repeating it this year.
But Sarah couldn't.
She had to try it again, just one last time before giving up.
Another rumble broke above, now louder than the rest and closer to the lightning, signaling the proximity of the storm. As if in reaction, Sarah's hands immediatly tensed and her eyebrows furrowed. A few seconds passed and the first drop fell softly into the pond, forming a pair of small ripples. The rest followed immediately afterwards, touching every inch of the park, and Sarah's face.
Looking down, she opened her hands and stared at the drops of water hitting her palms and creating a small puddle. A strong, anxious look replaced the sad faraway one she had before, having realized this meant he surely wasn't coming. After all, how many owls do you know fly in the rain, even half-goblin ones?
A tear escaped her glassy eyes and joined the other drops in her hands, until a sudden movement sent them crashing to the ground. Sarah had stood up, hands now to her sides, her brows furrowing above her glassy orbs.
This was it.
He wouldn't come.
He'll never come. Even if I spent the rest of the years in my life exactly like today, he'll never appear.
Ignoring the wet, slippery soil underneath, she ran. Exactly like 3 years ago, only for entirely different reasons. Not from the rain, nor the fact she had to babysit Toby, but from the fact that she had believed in some silly dream when she had no way of proving it ever happened.
Well, besides waiting next to a pond for an entire day in the rain.
It's just that the memories seemed so real.
The sensation of having lived it was there. She remembered the material of the Labyrinth walls, the dew and mud from the ground, and even the texture and taste of the enchanted peach as it touched her lips.
Then again, maybe everyone was right. The Labyrinth and the beings from it never existed and were only a figment of her imagination, in an attempt to deal with her new stepmother.
She ran faster now, as if the truth was finally dawning and chasing after her, past all the closed houses with wet lawns and wet sidewalks. She cried, but no one would've noticed. Her tears were camaflouged with the raindrops hitting her face, although if someone had seen her, the first and only thought would've been judging her crazy. After all, she was a 17 year-old girl running through the rainy streets in a princess dress, crying.
Sarah couldn't blame them though.
After all, she had believed in a fantasy world she herself had made up.
Not to mention, fallen in love with it's fantasy goblin king.