Disclaimer: Don't own it, don't want to, don't sue me.
No, I haven't been writing lately. Senior year means Pressing Duties offline.
Y'know, like applying to college.
With that said, enjoy.
It was everything she had hoped it would be. Moreso, even. Here was her hero, looking just as ravishing as in the film. Here they were, in the Labyrinth, walking and talking about nothing in particular. This time, there was no thirteen hour limit. She had no sibling to rescue. They had all the time in the world . . .
Someone offered her a peach. Smiling serenely, she took it, knowing what would come next. She bit into it, feeling the juice run down her chin. Versus being drugged, she was very much aware of what was happening to her. Tilting her face upward (the peach juice having since disappeared, wiped away by the magic that was even now twisting her hair up into an elaborate style, replacing her ordinary clothes with an elegant white confection of a dress), she enjoyed the feeling of being lifted gently, irresistibly upward toward the dance that she knew waited for her.
She landed gently on her feet, and the music began. The familiar masked denizens of the ballroom began to pair off. Standing across the room waiting for her was the object of her desire. She sighed happily and, hitching her gown up, ran toward him on feet clad in delicate glass slippers. This was better than she had hoped!
He held his arms open for her and she embraced him. "I've missed you!" she exclaimed, and they began to dance together, a simple waltz.
The musicians began another song, this time much faster. The other dancers, their faces covered by masks, split apart, intent on finding other partners, yet they stayed together, now dancing cheek-to-cheek. She was blissfully happy. "Oh," she sighed, "If only I could stay here forever." Her love merely nodded his assent.
On an impulse, she broke away from him and pulled him toward a balcony they had discovered during one of their previous encounters.
"I came again," she said earnestly, "because I had to tell you something. I love you. I don't care how everyone else sees you. I love you, with all my heart." Just admitting it made her joyous.
"I suppose . . . I love you, too, Shauna" said Hoggle in his gruff voice.
She sighed happily, and bent down to kiss him. Their lips met . . .
. . . and somewhere in a dormitory in California, a girl named Shauna woke with a sigh.
"Drat," she said moodily. "It was only a dream after all."
--Finis--