He could feel her. Her delicate, soft pale skin against his, her warm breath on his chest. Her fingernails as she intertwined her hands in his hair and on his back; her scent dancing on his nostrils. The faint sounds of her moans and gasps….

Jareth jerked himself awake. He hated his subconscious for doing this to him again. He cursed his own mind for the torment that plagued him almost every night. Why must he think of her when she was lost again to him? He longed for her every second of the day.

He reluctantly stepped out of bed with a blanket of sweat covering his naked skin. He walked over to the adjacent bathroom; the cold stone floor cool to the touch. Walking to the mirror, he grabbed a towel to dab at his face and neck. Jareth let out a gasp at his reflection looking back at him. He was looking more and more aged with dark circles under his mismatched eyes. This had to stop. He was killing himself slowly with the longing of his lost love.

He rubbed the towel over his body, put water over his face and marched out of the bathroom toward his armoire to grab his body armor. He needed to make this right. He at least needed to try again.

Sarah dragged herself to her next class. She did not want to be there-not now at least. She had had a hard night's sleep again. What she wouldn't do for a restful slumber instead of sitting in the dark, alone with her never-ending thoughts and a feeling of longing. She could feel it right down to her soul that something was wrong. She wondered if she was just going through the school-time blues, but had a deeper feeling that that was not the root of the problem.

She was just beginning her graduate student career getting a Master's in English Literature and Folk Lore. Ever since that "incident" happened almost nine years ago when she was fourteen, she knew that her greatest passion would always be just that. Ever since she was a child, she had treasured all the night-time stories her father would tell her at bedtime. She wanted more than anything to live in the magic of the tales; to be the princess with a castle, to live along the faeries and dwarfs and dragons. Her mother died when Sarah was still a young child and her father comforted her with stories of how her mother had gone to a magical place just like the stories in her fairy tale books. Oh how she missed her mother but was envious that she was living Sarah's dream.

Even though she was still a younger girl, she was almost forced to grow up when her father decided to remarry and soon after she had a baby half-brother. Deep down she loved the new additions to the family, but she couldn't help feeling like she didn't belong. To her, it seemed her father had moved on to start a new family and she was just a third-wheel. After what happened to her in the Labyrinth, be it real or just a dream like her father and several therapists told her it was, she felt closer to her brother and she saw that her new family was important to her more than she thought.

Sarah still believes that that "incident" that happened, changed her way of life and made her focus on questions of the paranormal of unseen worlds unknown or how people's subconscious ideas can create such a make-believe place that felt real to escape something that was troubling them. In school, grade or college, she never met anyone with her sense of wonder of desire for magic to be real as much as she did. Everyone seemed more "practical", which both her father and step-mother warned her that she needed to be. They hated that she was a folk lore major, but she promised them that she would make a career that was "practical" with it.

Her way of thinking, or she herself, seemed to push everyone away. This made her have very little friends. She had not once been interested in any guys that surrounded her in the hallways. She knew, or at least hoped, there was someone one day that would want her for not only her looks but for her likes, interest, and ways of viewing the world. She wanted someone like the Goblin King that either she made up as a teenage girl or if he was really a king that lived in a magical world she wished she was in.

He had to have been a dream. His gorgeous alabaster skin, the way his hair was wild and yet complemented his personality, his mismatched eyes staring right through her soul, his strong hands she wished would hold her, his tight pants that she kept having to drag her eyes from—couldn't be real. He was too perfect. She wished in her dream that she was a little older to understand what feelings she was having for him. The new thoughts that were popping into her head scared her. She thought the heat radiating from her body and the wetness in her loins was something to be feared and decided to act tough and turn him away. God how she wished that dream would come to her now; it would have a totally different outcome this time.

Jareth shuffled his way around the goblins that surrounded him in the hallways toward his throne room. The goblins slid out of his way while still maintaining their game of toss with a chicken and another small goblin. Jareth paid no attention to them as he walked into the throne room, past his throne, to a pedestal that held a huge crystal orb. He gazed into it thinking only of her. Gray smoke swirled around inside the ball until the particles started to form objects. He could see a gray and white silhouette of his love. She was in a room with quite a few people looking down at a man talking. She looked in a daze-like she was in a daydream trance. He wanted to reach down and feel her gentle skin on her cheek. He would very soon he knew. He waved his hand over the orb until the smoke crushed in on itself causing the image of Sarah to disappear. He walked over to the open window and hopped out onto the ledge. He peered down at the castle grounds. For too long his Labyrinth had suffered without her just like he suffered without her. With this thought, he dove off the ledge. He fell past countless windows and balconies. He started to feel the tingling of the shift quickly and fiercely in and on his skin. He felt himself become lighter; felt the harsh prickles of soft feathers envelop his entire body. He opened his mouth to scream and out came a screech of a barn owl. He flapped his new limbs and began to soar instead of fall toward his Labyrinth beyond the Goblin City. He would be with her soon and he couldn't wait.