Chapter Two: Changes?
Once upon a time there was a young girl who learned how to grow up under the most amazing of circumstances. Four and a half years later, she felt as though she hadn't made any progress after all.
Sarah sighed and began to gather up the sheets that had been tossed aside when she had jumped out of bed. She couldn't quite remember what it was that had startled her, but she was sure it had been something unusual. Not that it wasn't entirely unexpected; unusual things seemed to happen around her on a regular basis. Once the bed was straightened she looked out the window and decided it wouldn't be worth it to go back to sleep since the sun was already coming up.
"What a terrible way to start the morning," Sarah mumbled while making her way to the bathroom for a nice hot shower.
The pilot light was being slow again, so she took a good long look at herself in the mirror while waiting for the water to warm up. Looking into mirrors was always a bizarre experience for her. It was as though everything about her had changed, and yet managed to stay the same. At fifteen she had had smooth brown hair, serious hazel eyes, and a lanky figure; at nineteen her hair was silky black, her eyes a laughing emerald, and her figure had filled out quite well, bearing curves where there had once been nothing. But if she looked hard enough she could still see the wistful air she carried about herself, still see the longing in her eyes for something more than she was getting, still feel the utter yearning for danger, adventure, and romance. There just seemed to be some things the soul could not shed itself of.
Sarah stepped into the shower, hissing slightly as the now scalding water hit her skin. She let her thoughts wander as she washed, and they settled, inevitably, on the Labyrinth. Four and a half years and she still couldn't figure it out. In her mind she knew it wasn't possible. People did not pop into different dimensions and run giant mazes to save their little brothers; it simply wasn't done. But in her heart she knew that even if the Labyrinth hadn't been real, its lessons had.
And that was where it all broke down, because sometimes it felt as though nothing had changed.
Lesson one: be careful what you wish for and mean what you say; which she thought was asking an awful lot of any teenager, seeing as they were all ruled by hormones and emotions, and some things just slipped. It wasn't an excuse, it was a fact.
Lesson two: take nothing for granted, which was certainly harder than it sounded because she found herself taking things for granted all the time.
Lesson three: make sacrifices and embrace maturity, but there were times when she wanted nothing more than to kick and scream until things went her way.
Of course there were times when it seemed as though everything had changed, and she had well and truly learned her lessons but, as they say, nothing lasts forever and she would always find herself slipping back into some old habit.
'It's just all part of growing up, I suppose,' she thought dejectedly, while lathering her hair. 'I just want to be done with all this back and forth business, between being a child and being an adult!' But somewhere deep in her mind, she knew the thought of fully growing up scared her, that somewhere along the line something that essentially made her who she was would be lost for good. 'There's no point in clinging on to this, I'm not a child anymore!' But the feeling was still there, niggling at her soul and warning her that some things were meant to be kept forever.
Sighing at the turn her thoughts had taken, Sarah turned off the spray, and rung the extra water out of her hair. 'I always thought there would be so much more to the world than just confusion,' was her last thought before finally getting ready for the day.
The humans had always been skittish around him and his kind, but something was wrong. Mortals that had lived in villages on the outskirts of his kingdom had vanished. Trading posts that did regular business with the races of man were suddenly reporting a complete lack of activity.
Something was terribly wrong, and he had a feeling it was only going to get worse.
'The park sure is empty for a Saturday,' Sarah thought while keeping an eye on Merlin, a great big Old English Sheepdog now pushing nine years, who trotted ahead of her at a much more sedate pace than he had once used. "I suppose no one wants to be out in the cold, huh Merlin?" She asked the dog, while subconsciously pulling her long coat tighter against herself. He spared her a brief look, raising his doggy brows, before diving into the nearest snow bank and hopelessly matting his fur with little snowballs. "Some things never change, do they boy? Snow still makes you act like a little puppy!" Sarah laughed while he rolled on his back, paws waving merrily in the air.
"Your dog is weird." Sarah nearly shrieked, until she turned around to find Toby standing behind her and giving Merlin 'The Look'.
"I thought you were staying home," she commented once her heart had slowed down.
He shrugged as gracefully as any five year old in a giant winter coat and several layers of shirts could manage, "Changed my mind."
"He's your dog too, you know," she said in response to his first statement.
"Nah, he's only mine when he does something cool. He's all yours when he's stupid." Sarah never would have used flippant when describing a kindergartener, but sometimes there was no better way to describe her half-brother. There was just something about the way he carried himself, the way he talked and acted, that made Toby different from every other child she had ever met. He was special, she just couldn't entirely figure out how or even why. Perhaps he was a child prodigy, like Mozart.
Together they stared at the dog for a moment longer before silently agreeing to let him have his fun while they had their own.
"Snowman?" Toby suggested.
"Sounds like a plan," Sarah agreed.
It took them a while, since the snow wasn't exactly perfect for packing, being a bit on the powdery side, and Toby seemed hell-bent on throwing snowballs whenever Sarah turned her back to him, but eventually they completed it.
"It doesn't look like a snowman," Toby said, blue eyes grinning while he brushed snow out of his dirty blond hair.
"No, it doesn't," Sarah agreed. "I guess it's a snow… blob," she said laughing. Whatever it was that they had created was short and squat, bearing a mild resemblance to a smiling piece of lumpy clay.
"Like a gremlin or something," he suggested.
"Or a goblin," she giggled, easing in two sticks for arms while Toby tried to use some chalk to color in the grinning mouth.
"Yeah, a snow-goblin. I like that," he mumbled while finally managing to smear some color onto the white crystals.
They stepped back for a moment to view their lopsided masterpiece, and both burst out laughing at the sheer crookedness of it.
A child was missing, a human child, which explained the sudden absence of mortals near his region. His kingdom was suspected, and that hurt. He had never done anything to actually harm the humans, but they always seemed to forget that when they needed someone to blame. He had no idea where the child was, but he sincerely doubted it was in his land. Surely he would have noticed a mortal among them! But it wasn't going to be so easy to convince the humans of that. There was a battle in front of him, and as confrontational as he was, he didn't relish the strain this was going to put on his people, not to mention the relationship between the two species.
This was not the change he had envisioned.
The rest of the day came and went in a haze of snowball fights and hot chocolate. The night had been fast in coming, and Sarah had felt sad to stop the time she was having with her brother because of it. But the night hadn't been all bad, it had started flurrying just after dinner, and so she sat in her darkened room to watch it.
It was snowing in earnest now. The large flakes danced down from the sky like graceful confetti, and glinted silver in the porch lights below her. A gentle wind picked up and rolled the crystals in mid-air, bringing them to rest on the roof by her window. Sarah loved snow, there was no doubt about it. There was just something that made her want to go outside to play around and admire all of it. 'Besides,' she thought, 'it's almost Christmas, and that makes this snow special.' She continued to watch the outside for a while longer, before deciding to go to sleep.
Sarah hesitated slightly before climbing into bed. She couldn't remember what it was that had bothered her that morning, but she had a feeling it hadn't been good. 'I'm being silly!' She thought with a laugh. 'I think I had a nightmare, and so I'm afraid to go to sleep? Please, I'm too old for that.' So she settled down, burrowed under the covers, and never once took notice of the snowy white owl perched outside her window.
A/N: Okay, sorry that not much happened here. It will get more exciting, I promise. Anyway, tell me what you think. Please review!
Disclaimer: I do not own Labyrinth or any of its characters.