Starman:
Sarah sipped her wine and passed her cup over her shoulder to the man approaching behind her. She could sense his surprise but the cup was still taken and she heard him take a quick drink. She let a slow smile cross her face at his chuckle.
"You seem to know when I'm coming up behind you now," He said in a voice laden heavily with dreams and the brushing whisper of sand over stone. "What are you looking at, precious?" He moved to sit behind her on the marble bench, one leg around each of hers. He slid his arms around her waist and held her close to him. She plucked up to glass from where he'd sat it on the seat and took a sip.
"I'm looking at the stars," She said. "They're active tonight."
"Yes, they are," The wonder in his voice made her smile.
"Do you, my love, spend so much time in Aboveground granting wishes that you never have time for a sight so lovely as your own Underground evening sky?" She asked and leaning back against him and raised a hand to run over his cheek.
"No," He laughed. "The last wish made was nearly ten years ago and the particular wisher is now under my full attention at all times. She is quite a demanding wife."
"Oh, look at that one!" Distracted by a sparkling swirling comet colored a deep violet with magenta streams Sarah ignored his comment.
"Lovely," Her husband said, but she knew it wasn't the shooting star that he was staring at with a pair of glittering mismatched eyes.
For a few quiet minutes she watched the ever-changing and shattering Underground sky, counting comets and falling stars, trying to pick star-pixies from the true stars. She adored the night sky, almost as much as Underground itself. But the sky, with its multi-colored stars so brilliant and beautiful that she had been drawn to tears at the first sight of them, her heart was lost to it. Sometimes she wondered if it was lovely by nature or if her love for this world and the King of this world made it seem so. Either way, it was at times like these, in the arms of her love, under the crashing, heart-breaking shine of the sky she knew what heaven must feel like.
"Remember your first night here?" He asked in her ear, his warm breath sending chills through her. Blushing she smiled, remembering, quite vividly. It had been her wedding night.
Newly changed Fae, ex-human of only nineteen years and the wife of her once enemy, dear friend and cherished love she had arrived into Underground tipsy from what she had had to drink at her wedding, nostalgic for returning and near ready to burst into tears with all the excitement of it all, she had been a bit muddled. But Jareth knew she was overwhelmed, but none the less so was he, having never shared a room permanently with a woman, never dreaming that Sarah would be that woman who would join in him forever in his immortal life of ruling and wish-granting. He was also a muddled mess of what he usually was. When the couple were finally able to escape the babbling crowds of Fae and trolls and goblins and dwarfs and yetis and weird little squirrel knights, they had hardly enough energy to so much as smile at one and other. Alone in his chambers, which had been altered for her shared use they had undressed and feel into a comfortable love-making that drew both of them into a very distant land for many hours. It had been some time near one in the morning that Sarah had donned a small nightgown and with a little cup of wine gone out to sit on the bench on the balcony. She was soon joined by her husband, and together they shared the starry night until neither could contain themselves and they vanished to the canopied bed again.
A year or so later their first child, a boy they named Cole was born a wild child with his father's hair and his mother's eyes. The next year was spent peacefully, but on one lovely summer evening their next child was born. A little girl with eyes like her father and long dark hair like her mother. They named her Estrelas. She had been the youngest until a month previous, when little Jareth the second, Juni for short and come into the world. He slept nearby in his cradle.
"We really have so much," Sarah mused.
"I'm willing to try for more," Jareth said and let his hands rove freely over her body.
"I think some may protest the idea." She said, but his touch was raising fine hairs all over her body to stand on end.
"Who dares?" He growled against the skin of her neck and he kissed her there.
"My uterus." She said and giggled.
"You know full well all your body parts, internal or otherwise are in perfect condition." He said, growing agitated.
Sarah laughed and then sighed. She dislodged herself from his arms and turned to stand in front of him. From where she stood looking down at him the stars reflected in his eyes, setting his face, all perfect angles and shapes ablaze with the shine of the starlight. Her heart swelled inside her and her body warmed with the joy of it. She held out a hand to him and he took it. It was a small joy, light and never fleeting that ran through her when his true skin, ungloved touched hers. She pulled him toward her and set the cup down on the ground. She wound her arms around him and laid her head on his chest, loving the feelings and sensations. When she finally leaned back to accept the kiss she knew he was burning to give her heart had settled into a content frenzy.
As the two lovers, the king and his queen abandoned the balcony for the comfort of their canopied bed the stars erupted in color and life. Sending shards of fallen stars down to earth and litter the ground with fleeting sparkle the night was alive with a thing called magic, and it breathed and moved and filled the air. Love and magic, it seemed to Sarah, were two very different things that got along quite well, as if born from the same mother. Maybe they were meant to be.
Inspired by David Bowie's song "Starman", that and a dream I had over a multi-colored sky filled with stars, the sun and the moon all together. It pops up into my stories a lot. Hope you liked it, I may continue with other one-shots of this post-labyrinth world.