Disclaimer: Not mine.
Notes: I haven't yet decided if this is going to get a sequel, though I have a few ideas, but for now, this is it. Enjoy.
The first sign that things aren't quite right is when she wakes up, gasping for breath and actually coughs up the water that, in her dream, she had been drowning in. She stares as the water spreads, creating a darker splash of blue on her powder blue bed spread. Her hands are shaking when she reaches up to touch her face, her hair. Everything is dry.
So how is it possible that she had been drowning in salt water - she can still taste it on her tongue, it tastes like tears - in her dry bed?
She has an answer, and she doesn't like it. Not at all.
It takes nearly an hour for the shaking in her hands to stop and for the taste of salt on her tongue to fade. By then she's found all the information she could muster up at three in the morning in a bed in breakfast, sans internet, in the Irish country side.
She really should know better. She has, after all, survived more than her fair share of this sort of thing. But after four years in undergrad of studying the history and anthropology of myths and legends, she's found that so few of them hold truth any longer, that it isn't worth it to keep waiting. That's how she finds herself, doing research for her masters, coughing up sea water for what will probably be the first night of many. She had ignored a curse. Though curse isn't quite the right word for what she'd stumbled into, and not bothered with the correct respect for. She wonders if her guide will have the same problem, or if he had made some superstitious gesture while she wasn't looking that will keep him safe.
She knows it won't be easy to break, she knows she will lose far more sleep than she should - sleep that at twenty would have been lost in a night of partying felt more important, only four years later. She knows there's a possibility that she will die. But she's Sarah Williams. She no longer complains about life being unfair, instead she takes the path of the realist, the pragmatist, and does things to make sure that life is as fair as it possibly can be - for her. She won't give up without a fight - and considering the prestigious list of those she has won against in the past, a small ocean spirit really doesn't stand much of a chance, does she?
First she needs to do some research. And to stay awake. The first she has already started, the second will require coffee - copious amounts of coffee. She stares, mournfully at the bed for a moment, before turning her attention to one of the books she'd brought with her. The thought of sleeping then is dreadful, but she knows she will miss the warm comfort of bed before the end of this.
It has been days. Days of waking up, mouth like the sea, from every moment when she drifts off for a moment. Nearly all of her books show clear water damage. Days of feeling like she was so close to an answer, but not quite there. Days of trying millions of ways to break curses, with no results.
Someone probably would've checked on her, if not for a throw away comment she had made the night before she'd woken up with the ocean in her throat. Saying, jokingly, that you weren't going to come out of your room and you didn't want to see anyone until you'd finished your report became much less of a joke when, in fact, you didn't come out of your room or attempt to see anyone. The owner of the bed and breakfast had been polite enough to leave trays outside her door, but the noise of the woman's coming and going was really all the contact she'd had with the outside world in...what felt like forever.
It doesn't occur to her to give up. She doesn't ever give giving up much thought anymore, it's something that has been trained out of her since her run through the labyrinth. Just like complaining instead of doing something no longer held any appeal for her.
Her head is down, in a book, when a thunder strike in what had, moments ago, been a cloudless sky, cause her to blearily look up. It has now been one hundred and eighteen hours since she had last slept for more than twenty minutes. It takes her eyes a moment to focus on the figure posing with the window, where lightening is flashing most becomingly, at his back. At which point she contemplates him for a moment before going back to her book.
There are a few moments of silence before a lightly accented voice breaks the silence, "Sarah."
The girl who goes by that name looks up, blinks and tilts her head, before remarking, sounding a bit confused, "I thought it was about right, timing wise, for sleep deprived hallucinations, but I think it's still early for the auditory ones. That really doesn't bode well." She looks back to her book and turns a page, "It's probably because of all the salt water I've accidentally swallowed." She wrinkles her nose in thought for a moment before the name surfaces in her memory, "Coolridge! 'Water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink. Water water everywhere, and all the boards did shrink.' Death of a Mariner? Is that the one? I think it's the one with the albatross…" She trails off.
The gentleman, if such a term can be applied, by the window remains stationary, as clearly bemused as someone who prides themselves on never being nonplussed can be. Finally, after several long moments, he speaks again. "Sarah, what are you babbling about?"
She looks up again, pauses in writing something to consider him, "You know, you should have more glitter. You're kinda drab. I wonder if that means my mind is drab. Hm." She goes back to writing for a moment before looking back up, squinting at him, "Did you ask me what I'm saying? Does my mind really want me to expose to myself? I should probably worry, that simply isn't normal." And back to her work she went.
The theoretically imposing figure by the window, finally, after another long moment of being ignored, stops posing and instead walks - well, stalks, he'd never been good at just walking - towards the girl. "I understand you've gotten yourself in a bit of a fix."
She waves a hand, "Yes. As you well know." She taps, knowingly, a finger against the side of her head, yawns and turns another page before looking up at him critically, "I like it better when you appear without a shirt."
She turns back, nonchalantly, to her book, ignoring the fact that he has, gracelessly, almost tripped on air at her words. "Excuse me?"
She yawns again, rubs her eyes with the heels of her hands and downs the rest of what is now ice cold coffee - without the benefit of being meant to be served that way, "You're excused, just don't do it again." She sighs and tilts her head back, looking up at the ceiling and willing her eyes to refocus, "I wonder what the real you would think of this - would he be upset that a little sea sprite was getting the best of me when he couldn't? Though, I guess the little sprite is trying to kill me, and he never actually tried to do that. He just wanted me to what, love him and be his slave? Which is kind of super creepy to say to someone who's only fifteen, I don't know if he knew that. That kind of offer to someone who's like...I don't know, seventeen or older? Tempting. To a fifteen year old? Creepy."
The figure leans against her desk, by her right hand, and starts juggling glass balls in his hand, "And the dreams?"
She rubs her eyes again, tries to fight another yawn, and waves a hand, "Dreams are always tempting. Even if they were a little heavy handed."
The twirling balls still for a second before they go back to whistling through the air, "Dreams are always tempting. Tell me Sarah, what is your current dreams?"
She chokes on a laugh, stretches, looks at her theoretical hallucination, "My dream right now is to have this whole thing solved - so I can get some sleep without dying. I would really like some sleep without dying."
He tilts his head and the glittering balls still, "Would you wish for it?"
She laughs again, covers a yawn and slouches back, "Nothing good comes of wishes. The price is always too high."
The balls disappear in a crash and rain of glitter, "And if you knew the price beforehand?"
Her nose wrinkles, she tries to take another sip of coffee and finds she's already finished it all off. She slouches and rubs the arch of her nose, "And how would I know the price?"
There is a flash of very white and oddly sharp teeth in the dark, "Why, set it of course."
"Set it? How?" She's only paying half a sleep deprived mind to the conversation anymore, trying to decide if she has enough energy to boil another pot of water for coffee.
"It's simple, you say something like, 'I wish to pay one kiss for eight hours of sleep without death.'" The tone of voice is tempting, and it finally drags her attention away from the empty coffee mug and back to him. Suddenly her focus is caught and she eyes him as she hasn't bothered to since he appeared.
Her words are cautious, "I would hardly think a single kiss would be worth eight hours of sleep."
The teeth flash again, "From you, Sarah, a single kiss could be worth so much more."
She stares, contemplates the amount of energy it would take to leap backwards in fright or make some other dramatic motion and decides it simply isn't worth it. Instead she reaches a hand forward and pokes him in the middle of the chest, once, before withdrawing her hand and just gaping at him, "Well. I'll be damned. You're really him."
He smiles, disarmingly, "Indeed."
She squints first one eye, then the other, and tries to talk her brain into functioning properly for just another few minutes, "I'm sure I'm going to regret asking - but this is just me asking mind, I'm not going to say the 'w-i-s-h', but what price would you take for getting rid of this curse or whatever you want to call it?"
He taps a gloved finger to his lips before grinning, "Just your firstborn."
She has no real intentions of ever having children, loving her little brother but not, in general, feeling a need to add to the over population problem. So she almost opens her mouth to agree before her common sense comes struggling to the surface of her mind and she stops herself, instead eyeing him and asking for some clarification, "Are we talking firstborn in the 'if I ever decide to have one it's your' sort of way, or the I'm then obligated to create one because of the deal?" Her mind pipes up with another alternative and the look she shoots him becomes increasingly distrustful, "Or are we talking in that my firstborn would be yours because it would, in fact, be half yours?"
He blinks, for once taken aback, before throwing his head back and laughing, "My my, but you have gotten much better at this game."
She slouches down in her chair, understanding this answer to mean it's not the first and nicest way of giving up a firstborn (if, in fact, there can be a nice way to give up a firstborn). "Is the kiss for eight hours of non dying sleep still up for grabs?" She holds up a hand before he answers, "And we are talking about eight hours of restful, REM, no nightmares I will be refreshed when I wake up sleep, right?"
His lips twitch, "Yes. It is."
She waves a hand, "Then gimme and kiss and let me sleep."
His laugh rings out again, "You do, in fact, have to wish it, Sarah."
She sighs, "I wish to trade one kiss for eight hours of non dying, REM filled, no nightmares, very restful sleep." She yawns again, then tacks on, "Please." She tilts her head up, for a kiss, but finds herself asleep before that action is carried out. Her last thought before sleep fully claims her is that there wasn't a time frame on the kiss so he's probably going to show up when she's getting married or something and demand a kiss. She finds she's too tired to really care.
She wakes up eight hours, to the second, later, to what has, indeed, been the most restful sleep of her life. She stretches, bites back the urge to thank him - thanking otherworldly beings is rarely a good idea after all, it could imply a debt - and gets out of her bed to return to her desk and research. With her mind well rested and with fresh eyes it only takes her ten hours to put together the information she already has to solving the mystery - and so she marches off to make the required sacrifice to the sea sprite (three cod, a herring and a pair of earrings with blue stones). So about twelve hours after she's woken up, and twenty after she'd come to an agreement with the Goblin King, she finds herself suddenly free and curse less.
Well, as free as one can be who hasn't finished her thesis paper which everyone else assumed she was writing for the past several days. But at least her thesis paper won't kill her in her sleep. In all likelihood at least.
She falls asleep that night thinking of the Goblin King. She hopes she won't have to be so near death for him to show up next time.