Okay exactly how drunk did we get last night?
Huh?
Like did we leave your place and go to a tattoo parlor?
I am not understanding a single word you're saying right now.
There's a bunch of wri—. I have a tat—. Forget it, I'm coming over.
Okaaaay.
"I was about to be pissed at you for interrupting my hangover, but I think this is worth it."
Mari was still in her pajamas, her short brown hair sticking out from her face at odd angles. They were sitting at the dining table in Mari's living room, staring at the intricate lines of what appeared to be words trailing from Sarah's palm down her wrist. Sarah could swear that they seemed to move, although admittedly she was still a bit groggy.
"So I didn't have this when I left last night?"
"Uh, I didn't exactly check, but no, I think it's safe to say this wasn't here when you left. Maybe it was, like, invisible? Only appeared after a certain amount of time had passed?"
Sarah snorted. "Yeah, that makes a lot more sense."
"Hey, I'm trying to be helpful."
"Yeah, I know, I'm sorry, just—last night the world made sense and now it kind of doesn't."
Mari turned Sarah's wrist over in her hand. "It looks like…I don't know, sort of like a mix of Thai and Arabic and Elvish…"
"Elvish? Seriously?"
"Don't go snobby on me, you know exactly what Elvish looks like."
Sarah laughed. "Touche."
Mari traced one of the lines of text and then suddenly pulled her phone out of her pocket and took a picture. After scrolling and touching the screen a few times, she moved to the sofa and opened up her laptop.
Sarah sat down next to her. "What are you doing?"
Mari was clicking between websites. "Sleuthing." After a minute or two the image of Sarah's palm appeared on the screen, and then something seemed to cut it into graph-like segments, and then…
"Wow, is that a translation?" Sarah asked, looking at the stream of English words that popped up next to the photo.
"Looks like it. The site says it's…Vaeldre? Never heard of that one."
Sarah started reading the words aloud. "One half to take…long soak…burn until standing…great, this is about as clear as most computer-translated—"
Something about the combination of words caught Sarah's eye, mixing with the very faint memory of the taste of peaches in her mouth.
Drop…wait…soak…turn…
Her mouth fell open. "Uh, don't laugh, but I think it's a recipe."
"Right, what's next?"
Mari, her apron and face splashed with flour, fruit juice, and a few blobs of whipped egg whites, glanced down at the neatly typed instructions on the counter. "Now we let the macaron cookie-parts cool and make the buttercream."
Sarah nodded, carefully moving the light pink macarons onto a cooling rack and moving to the sink to wash some of the enormous pile of dishes and utensils that now filled it. Her own face and apron were splattered with half the ingredients for what they were baking.
"I seriously wonder if we're summoning the devil by following this recipe," Mari mused, dumping butter into a large bowl and turning on a hand-held mixer.
Sarah shrugged. "Maybe it'll just make me go loopy when I eat it. Or maybe the world will end, who knows," she said, talking loudly to be heard over the drone of the mixer.
The bedroom door opened behind them as Mari was cleaning the creamed butter off of the mixer blades. Will, looking about as hung over as Sarah had felt earlier that morning, waved.
"Morning," he said, glancing around at the kitchen, which had been completely taken over by a large box of fresh peaches, flour, eggs, sugar, and a half-dozen different baking tools.
Mari smiled as she passed the butter-filled bowl to Sarah, who began sifting in powdered sugar. "Morning, sweetie. There's a fresh pot of coffee if you want some."
"Yeah, uh…" Will scratched his head and rubbed his eyes. "What exactly is going on in here?"
"Sarah woke up this morning with a tattoo on her hand," Mari said, as if that explained everything.
Will nodded. "Uh huh."
"Which turned out to be a recipe," Sarah added, gently beating the powdered sugar and butter.
"And now we're making said recipe," Mari continued, "which might make Sarah go weird, like other peach-things seem to, or it might unleash armageddon."
"Huh," Will said. A few seconds later they heard the door to the bedroom open and close again.
Several hours later, Sarah had to admit that what they'd produced, while it showed a few signs of haste, at least looked fairly fancy.
The lower tier of the two-tier cake was covered in white frosting and bordered with a ring of delicately sliced peaches. The top, smaller tier was surrounded by peach macarons and topped with a single, peeled, glistening peach, which looked…more than a little naughty, if Sarah admitted it to herself.
"This is pretty spectacular," Mari said.
"Yeah, especially given that we had to bake everything in a toaster oven and a rice cooker."
Mari glanced at the translated words she'd printed out. "I guess whoever wrote this didn't get the memo about how Japanese homes don't have ovens." She folded the paper in half. "So…you really gonna do this?"
"Eat it, you mean?"
"Yeah, and all the other weird stuff that it says to do."
Sarah took the paper from her and read over the words again. "After all this trouble I'd feel kind of silly not doing it."
"Any idea what'll happen? Like, do you remember anything about the last time?"
Sarah closed her eyes. If she didn't think too hard, memories and sensations played at the edge of her consciousness, a pull in a particular direction, pleasurable feelings, but mostly…
"Taste," she said finally. "The taste of something…really good."
Mari laughed. "Well, I sure as hell hope this thing tastes good."
"No, it was more than that, like…"
Mari's eyes widened. "Holy shit."
Sarah blinked. "What?"
Mari pointed a finger at her. "I knew it. I *knew* it, peaches are like some sort of hallucination-aphrodisiac for you. They give you—I don't know, great sex dreams or something."
Sarah blushed. "Yeah, I doubt that," she said, suddenly not doubting it at all.
Mari pulled out several plastic containers from the kitchen cabinets and some small ice packs from the freezer. "Well, whatever effect it has, let's get you home with it as close to its current glory as possible."
Sarah watched as Mari carefully packed the cake in separate boxes, put the boxes in a bag, and tucked ice packs inside. "You, uh, don't want a bite?"
Mari laughed. "Not that we don't share almost everything, Sarah, but I'm guessing this is something you want to do on your own."
Sarah sat on the floor of her small apartment, the macaron-covered cake cutting a striking figure on her tiny fold-out coffee table. She glanced again at the markings on her hand, and then at the text on the paper in front of her.
Well, at least it doesn't say I have to eat the whole thing.
She took a deep breath, stood up, and slowly traced one of the symbols on her arm in the air three times. Looking down at the paper, she recited the last few words on the page, hoping she was pronouncing them right.
"Aes valil, os ehal." As before, so now.
"Aes arhile, os arval." As there, so here.
"Aes mralve, os vellem." As in stillness, so in movement.
Her hands trembling slightly, she reached down and carefully cut a slice of the cake and placed it on a plate in front of her. She could smell the sweetness of the fresh peaches as she lifted a forkful to her lips and took a bite.
A rich mix of cream and fruit filled her mouth. Hell, at least it tastes good.
She barely had time to register that thought before her vision blurred and she sank to the floor, just managing to put her plate and fork down before she blacked out.
She opened her eyes to find herself flat on her back and staring up at gossamer curtains.
Looking around, she saw that the curtains were attached to very tall posters on a large, four-poster bed, the pillows of which were extremely soft and smooth. She was also—she looked down to confirm—wearing a very delicate (and very insubstantial) white nightgown.
She swung her feet over the edge of the bed, expecting the Goblin King to pop out of a closet or from behind a door at any second.
Instead, she heard the sound of slow, measured footsteps approaching the bedroom. In the split second before it opened she contemplated leaning provocatively against a bedpost but then, remembering her penchant for clumsiness at the worst possible moment, thought better of it.
He opened the door and looked only slightly surprised to see her. His hair was partially pulled back, and he was wearing a black, billowing shirt that exposed most of his chest and hung loose over his trousers, which appeared to be the usual leather. His grey boots had silver buckles twisted in strange shapes.
He smiled at her, and she noted the combination of smugness and eagerness on his face. "Well. It worked, then."
Sarah narrowed her eyes at him. " 'Thank you, Sarah. It's not everyone who could pull off making an incredibly complicated dessert without an actual oven and translating a mostly-unknown language. You really are extraordinary.' "
He raised an eyebrow. Her mouth twitched slightly, and she let one of the tiny straps of her nightgown slide down her shoulder.
"That is what you meant to say, right?" she said, taking a step forward.
He nodded, his eyes traveling over her hungrily. "Absolutely."
He kissed her, and if it was urgent at least for once it wasn't hurried. She reveled in the taste of him, the gentle and then not-so-gentle push of his tongue, the soft moan that escaped him when she leaned her body into his.
She kissed his neck. "How long do we have this time?" she whispered.
He echoed the kiss along her neck and down to the rather low-cut edge of her nightgown. "Until you awaken in your world." He slipped a finger under the strap of the gown. "Provided you put considerable effort into the creation of the cake, that is."
She slipped a hand under his shirt. "Let's say I don't do anything halfway."
"Then I'll just pray that you're a heavy sleeper."
She smiled and let her nightgown fall to the floor, keeping her eyes locked with his.
He smiled back, panting slightly as he pulled his shirt over his head. "Ready to dispense with the kissing already, precious?"
She ran a hand down his cheek and over his shoulder. "Not exactly."
She pushed him down until he was kneeling in front of her. "I put in quite a bit of effort to get here, and it would appear that all you've done so far is sit and wait. So in the interest of fairness," she threw one leg over his shoulder, "you're about to blow my mind."
She wasn't sure where the wine had come from, but she was glad it was there. And that it didn't taste remotely of peaches. They'd grown on her, certainly, but it was possible to have too much of a good thing.
Jareth was sipping from his own glass as he ran a hand lazily up and down her thigh. "I do hope this was worth all of that hard work."
Sarah shrugged, affecting a slightly bored expression. "It wasn't unpleasant."
Jareth's eyes widened. " 'Wasn't unpleasant?' " He set his wineglass down and crawled on top of her. She shivered as he reached a hand between her legs. "Precious, I've barely shown you an inkling of the pleasure I can—"
He paused at the smirk on her face that she couldn't hide. "Ah, I've fallen into a trap again, haven't I?"
"Not at all." She closed her eyes and stretched her arms above her head, happy to yet again let him do all the work, at least for a moment. "It's only the third time tonight that I've managed to trick you into—ahhh—proving that you're very good at this."
He rolled her onto her side and kissed her breasts while his hand continued its agonizingly slow stimulation. "A shame, then, that we have only the length of a dream for this interlude," he whispered.
She cried out, one hand grabbing a handful of his hair, kissing wherever she could reach. "Got any other recipes that could make this last for days?" she gasped.
He kissed his way up her neck and bit her ear. "Oh, I do," he said. "I'll even do the baking this time."
She cried out as his (admittedly very, very skilled, damn him) fingers moved more insistently between her legs. "So…generous…of…you…"
"Indeed." She could feel him smiling against her neck. "So glad we finally see eye to eye on that."