Sarah wrapped her hands tightly around her coffee mug. It was the week before Halloween, and the rainy season had started in earnest. The sky was glum, the air was chilly, and she and her roommate had gone out for coffee. Sarah leaned in as Lori complained about the undergraduates she was working with this semester.

"You're kidding!" Sarah said, and took a sip of the rich, light roast in her mug.

"No! She seriously came to office hours and asked me to raise her attendance grade so that she wouldn't have to work so hard for the next exam and still get an A in the course. Looked me right in the face, explained the math to me, and just expected that I would do it! Could she be bothered to put that much effort into actually showing up to class consistently? No way," Lori said.

"Did you tell Dr. Lawrence?"

"Of course I did," Lori responded, "There was no way that I was going to tell her off and not let Dr. L know. Lord knows this kid probably went to her next, telling tales about what a horrific goblin I am!"

"Lori, I have seen goblins. You, my dear, are no goblin," Sarah said. Lori laughed at her friend.

"Should I take that as a compliment, or are you saying that I'm too conniving to be goblin?"

"You said it, not me," Sarah said as she laughed. She took another sip, and a moment to consider her friend.

After she'd come back from the Labyrinth, she figured out that speaking with people about her experience would go one of two ways. The first, and more common, scenario ended in dismissal. It's what had happened when she told her father. Two weeks after her experience, she'd broken down and told him everything. His response was to furrow his eyebrows, look long and hard at her, and ask if she'd fallen asleep in the living room with the television on. Had she been watching reruns of the Twilight Zone, maybe? When she'd insisted that she'd actually run the Labyrinth to save Toby, he'd asked if she needed to go to the doctor.

She decided to tell him that he was right; it must have been a bad dream.

The second scenario played out much differently. So far it only had happened a handful of times. The first time had been with Lori. It was shortly after they'd moved in together, and they were drinking in their apartment. They had gone earlier to a cheap showing of Exorcist III, and discussion had shifted to the supernatural. Sarah had jokingly suggested that they buy a Ouija board to try to talk to some dead celebrity or another- she couldn't remember who anymore- and Lori blanched.

She'd asked if Sarah had gone mad. Sarah hadn't understood her problem. She was just trying to have a little fun. Lori had looked around, sighed, and asked Sarah if she could trust her to not think she was crazy. Sarah's interest was piqued in a way that only a slightly drunk girl with a personal history of paranormal experiences could be.

Lori, it turned out, had used a Ouija board with her older sister. She had been 15 at the time, and her sister had convinced her it would be a good time. They jokingly tried to summon spirits over a few sessions during the course of the weekend. Nothing had come of it, at first.

It had started with knocking, Lori said, and weird scratching at the walls in the room they'd shared. It had freaked them out, sure, but they weren't really concerned about it. A few weeks after the scratching, they started hearing the voices. They didn't really say anything that the girls could make out. It sounded like a small group of people having a hushed conversation just outside their door. They started sleeping in bed together.

Then things started moving.

At first it had been little things being moved around without them seeing it. Lori noticed it first. She was looking for her backpack, which she kept under the foot of her bed, but it wasn't there one morning. She spent fifteen minutes looking for it- tearing apart the room in the process- and was about to leave for school without it when she turned around to find it sitting on her bed. She'd slept on the sofa after that.

It had been her sister that actually had seen something being moved. She'd come in the room to put laundry away when a doll that had belonged to her mother flew off the dresser and slammed into the wall next to her head. She dropped the laundry, grabbed Lori, and went to the library to figure out how to fix the situation.

It took a few days and few different trips, naturally, so as to not make the librarians think something was off, when they came across the idea of smudging. They went to a head shop that her sister's friend knew about, bought the sage, and smudged the whole house. It had helped, but Lori admitted that every now and then she still saw misty gray figures move in the shadows.

Sarah had been relieved to hear the story. It made her own tale seem tame by comparison. When she told Lori that she didn't think she was crazy, and shared her story about the Labyrinth, a new friendship was born. They had been friends before to be sure, but now they shared each other's deepest secrets. They took the opportunity to commiserate about their experiences not being over, too.

Sarah still spoke with her friends, though less and less frequently as time went on, but she enjoyed being able to talk to them every now and then. She did not enjoy the other things that she'd been able to see since her trip, though. It was called 'the Sight' according to the books she'd read, and she'd been careful to not talk to any of the creatures she'd seen because of it.

Lori had her shadow figures and Sarah had her goblins. They were a matched pair. It was an easy friendship, and one that Sarah had come to rely on. The University of Washington had offered her a full ride for her undergrad studies, and then she'd gotten in to their creative writing MFA program with an assistantship. She'd fallen in love with Seattle the moment she'd gotten here, but she was a long way from her family, and it had been a long five years since she left New York.

She smiled at her friend.

"Are you even listening to me, Sarah?"

"Huh?"

"I didn't think so. I didn't realize how late it was. I have to be to class in twenty minutes, and as much as I would love to skip, this is one of my discussion sections. Can't have the teacher playing hooky, right?"

"Hey now, that's every undergrad's dream," Sarah said.

"That may be true, but I enjoy being able to eat. If I lose my assistantship and stipend, it's all on you, babe. And we both know that yours is smaller than mine to begin with." Sarah rolled her eyes. Lori headed her off, "Yes, it's ridiculous, but the sciences pay better and you know it. Should have gone into biology like me." Sarah raised her eyebrow. "You're right. You're right. Let's just grab a couple to-go cups and head out, yeah? Walk with me to class?"

"Always, my lady," Sarah said as she stood up. They both grabbed their raincoats and bags, and Lori took their coffees and went up to the counter to get the to-go cups. Sarah took their plates to the bussing station.

As they walked out the front door into the wind and drizzle, Lori didn't mention the way the shadows lingered a little oddly by the bathrooms and Sarah didn't comment on the fae couple drinking espressos by the window.