Author's Note: First I want to thank everyone who has reviewed so far, Natsuko37, Madamoiselle La Lune, helikesitheymikey, Aysuh, notwritten, and Ginabella59, for being my first reviewer ever!
As for this chapter, I'm not entirely sure how I feel about it. The Labyrinth has a really dreamy, one-of-a-kind sort of mood that I'm trying to re-create, in my own way, but I feel like this chapter may not do the job. Or may over-do it.
Anyway, I haven't got the next chapter written yet, but it should be out on Tuesday or Wednesday, I hope, and at that point we'll be seeing Jareth (as a human, or fey or whatever, not a bird). I'm really not sure where this story is going to end up, but I know that I'm enjoying writing it, and I'm so glad that you are all reading it. There shouldn't be any mistakes, but that's never stopped them before, so please let me know if you find any. And don't forget, review!
Chapter 2. Sarah's Morning
It was a trick of the light, Sarah told herself sternly, or an ordinary owl, nothing more, nothing less. But even the thought of an 'ordinary owl' perched outside her bedroom, when her window was wide open, was enough to unnerve her. And she still didn't know for certain that it was an ordinary owl. "Don't be so paranoid" she told herself, getting resolutely out of bed, and padding over to the window. The sunrise was beautiful, but there was no sign of a big white owl, just lots of doves. Sarah tried to laugh at herself, but it came out nervous, shaky. She'd been on edge ever since the storm the night before. Well, ever since the labyrinth, she reminded herself, but that wasn't something she particularly wanted to remember this morning. Or ever.
Sarah slammed the window shut, much harder than was strictly necessary, and then bit her lip, her parents and little Toby were still asleep. She walked quietly out of her room, and slipped into Toby's bedroom to check on him. Her three and a half year old brother was sleeping soundly, sucking on his thumb, and she gently smoothed his covers before going back into her room to get dressed. The plain fact was that no matter how much she wanted to forget about the labyrinth, it kept popping back into her mind with annoying frequency. And in some ways that was good, she had learned lessons in the labyrinth that she never wanted to forget, she'd written a list of them, only a few days after returning home, it was in her desk somewhere. But it wasn't just the adventure itself that she couldn't seem to move past, there were other things too. The goblin king was definitely first and foremost in that category. She had left the labyrinth with plans, plans to be a better big sister to Toby, to be less of a child, and have more friends ('the value of friends' was one of the items on that list). She had expected that in a few years the labyrinth and all of it's inhabitants, save a certain few, would simply be a surreal memory. But it hadn't quite turned out that way.
During the day she went about her life, studying, spending time with friends, babysitting Toby, writing, drawing, reading, horseback riding, singing, whatever happened to be her favorite hobby at that point in time. But at night songs played through her mind, sad lyrics that she thought she'd forgotten, or she relived conversations that at the time had caused her nothing but trouble, and wandered through landscapes that were riddled with bad memories. Try as she might to forget it, every night the labyrinth caught up with her. Sometimes she wondered if the goblin king, or some of his minions had something to do with that. Maybe one of them was managing to mess with her head, so that she couldn't stop reliving what seemed like such a brief time in the labyrinth. She certainly wasn't doing anything that would warrant this strange connection she felt to it.
She had almost lost touch with her friends after that first night, it was too dangerous for them to keep in touch with her, as they had no idea what Jareth would do when he found out. And they all knew that he would find out. Every couple of months she would turn around and catch a glimpse of one of them waving to her out of her mirror, or sometimes they would even have a moment for a few words. But never more than that. And she did her best not to miss them. She loved them and was eternally grateful to them, but they were quite literally worlds apart, and there was (hopefully) almost no chance of seeing them again. Sarah did all she could to separate herself from those thirteen hours, and yet they kept coming back to her.
Maybe Jareth had something to do with it. Sometimes when she was out late she would catch a glimpse of something out of the corner of her eye, something small moving in the bushes, a few dead leaves drifting against the wind, a patch of thin air that somehow did not seem so thin, a whisper that she couldn't quite hear. The uncanny feeling that she was not alone on an empty street. Or she would return home to find something slightly wrong in her room. A trinket or some project of hers just subtly out of place, most frequently the book 'The Labyrinth' somewhere she hadn't left it. Or even more maddeningly, there wouldn't be any physical sign at all, just a feeling, a strong but unplaced feeling that someone or something had been there, a scent on the air that was like coming rain, a smell she couldn't help but remember.
Dwelling on it won't help, she reminded herself sternly, It's all just in your head. Well, hopefully. Fortunately for Sarah she was rummaging through her closet as she went through all that, and she entirely missed the way that a shudder seemed to pass down a small red book lying on top of her bookshelf, as if somewhere inside the volume, something was happening. And the rising glittered off of it, making it glow like a star for one brief instant, before Sarah turned around, and once again it was simply an odd little book that had seen better days. And as she pulled a skirt and top out of the depths of her less-than-neat closet, and vanished down the hall and into the bathroom to shower, she didn't catch a few lonely notes, whispers from a longer song, that drifted through her bedroom, and then were gone as the sun continued to rise.
