I love flashy, sexy, tight pants, Jareth as much as any women, but I've always questioned if that was his true form. This fan-fic is an attempt to think about who he might be when he's not exhausted in living up to Sarah's expectations. Please read and review. Thanks
Sarah loved to write in the barn. She'd even bundle up in the dead of winter to sit for hours at her small table, writing in a leather bound journal. Only when it got dark did she make her way back to the farmhouse. She had bought the property after the sale of her first novel and converted the living room into a study, with a nice antique desk, an assortment of bookshelves and a big soft rug in front of the fireplace. She'd thought it would be the perfect place to write, and sometimes it was, but more often than not she found herself out in the barn. "The owls must help me write." she thought.
She was 15 when her obsession with owls began. She had woken up with a scream. "Toby!" Her parents had found her in her baby brother's room, holding him close.
"I had a nightmare. Someone took him," she'd gasped. Toby was crying by this point and Sarah offered to put him back to sleep to make up for startling everyone. She'd curled up with him in chair and looked out the large French doors. Drops of water clung from the branches. "Did it rain earlier? I don't remember." she thought. The moonlight calmed her and she began to sing softly.
"But I'll be there for you...as the world falls down." Toby's breathing slowed as she sang till he finally calmed and fell asleep.
Sarah drew her fingers through Toby's fine baby hair, then bent her head down to kiss the top of his. As she did she saw something flicker past the glass.
She gasped. A large white owl had landed in the tree. It looked directly at her, meeting her eyes. Sarah sat motionless for a long time and starred back. Finally she carried Toby to his bed, moving slowly so as not to disturb the owl. She tucked Toby in and then turned back to the owl. It hadn't moved and it was still watching her.
She moved closer to the French doors and carefully turned the door handle. The doors swung inwards and Sarah stepped through them. The owl was very close now. She felt her fingers twitching to touch the feathers and felt her lips part as if to speak, "I know you." she said in a whisper.
The owl closed its eyes as if to respond and then before Sarah could react it flashed them back open and flew away. She did not sleep once she was back in her room.
"The park. I saw him when I was practicing...something...at Mayweather Park." She tried to pin down the memory but it was faded and unclear. She felt she'd seen him somewhere else too, but couldn't remember. She felt a flash of something when she rubbed her hand and realized her ring was missing, but again she couldn't place it.
The years passed, and that night remained with her. Owls became her new obsession. When she was young she'd collected costumes and fairytales, fantasy figurines and other toys and would use them in the stories she'd make up. Now it was owls but not just any owl. Her parents gave her a cutesy little owl figurine for graduation. It held a sign up saying, " Who gives a hoot about high school. I'm off to college." Sarah hadn't given a hoot about the figurine and had soon disposed off it. Her tastes ran towards expressive art prints, with gorgeous and sometimes frightening representations of owls, or nature books with beautiful color photos. The part of her that loved telling stories had stayed with her though, and when she was 25 she finished and sold her first novel, "The Owl at the Window." It was children's mystery novel and it had done well for a first book. No "Harry Potter" but enough to buy her a little farmhouse in the country. She'd looked at a number of places but settled on a small piece of property, which still had the original barn on it. The barn owls, which nested in the rafters, had sealed the deal.
The Owl at the Window had been followed by The Owl in Mayweather Park and now she was writing a new novel to complete the series. It was either going to be The Owl in the Castle or The Owl in the Ruins. The common theme in all her stories was a young person who solved a mystery, which helped them grow up. The Owl was an enigma of a character who left clues for the protagonist, with a fine ink drawing of an owl attached. She was planning on revealing the true identity of the Owl in the final novel, if only she could decide what that identity was.
Screech and Barny inspired her but they were no help when it came to actual plot points. The two barn owls who nested above in the rafters had become used to her presence and would sometimes fly down in the evenings while she wrote. They lacked the presence of the original owl in the window, but they still carried themselves with a majestic quality.
One night, she'd dragged her battery powered camping lamp out to the barn so she could write longer. The words had been flowing thick and fast all day and she didn't want to lose momentum. She felt as if the identity of the Owl was becoming clearer to her and she wanted to record every impression. "Thin, strange, beautiful, frightening" the words sketched her character across the page. She would have kept writing save for a flash of feathers in the corner of her eye.
"Do you have a good idea Screech?" she said, looking up. But it was not Screech, nor Barny. It was another owl, a familiar owl.
