Midsummer rituals

Chapter 4

At last a new chapter! I haven't forgotten this story yet,I've just been extremely busy with school. I've been to Norway, learned about mushrooms, did a inventory of otters and fell in love with some one and I have no idea if he likes me back. Yeah I've been busy :)

This chapter starts kind of angsty but I couldn't keep it up fortunately, this story is on the verge of being a bit to angsty.

I'm not totally satisfied with this chapter but I cant think of how to improving it, can you?

True to his word twenty minutes after he left the goblin king returned for Sarah. He entered the room finding her covering up the obvious traces of her tears with make up, she did not notice him at first so he stayed by the door watching her at first. She had obviously done this before judging by the way she expertly added just the right amount of makeup to remove all traces and make it look natural. She added a layer of foundation when she noticed his presence by the door in the mirror.

"How long have you been standing there?" she asked frowning not liking the thought of not having noticed him coming in.

"Was the dress not satisfying?" He answered with a question of his own as he approached the .

" Its just as I dreamed it." She answered not looking at him.

"But not the circumstances?" His voice was calm, Sarah wondered why it bothered her so, did she really want him to rile and shout at her for not loving him?

"No not the circumstances, I... I had thought that I would marry for love. Or at least to some one I had known more than a day." She answered almost succeeding in trying to keep her voice steady.

"Would you prefer the bottom of the lake?" Jareth said bluntly.

"No, no I would not..." Sarah answered quickly for that she was absolutely sure of, death was nothing she wished for. The minute before she came to the labyrinth played thru her mind, the panic, the pain and the fear all coming back to her. "Do you know what happened to my friend Maria? Is she..." She dared not finish the question cause maybe that would make it happen for sure. So many things had happened since the accident that she had forgotten to ask.

"The girl that was in the car with you?"Jareth asked as he stalked across the floor towards her. Sarah only nodded her confirmation, she had something stuck in her throat that made her unable to speak just then. Jareth summoned a crystal that he looked in to for some time before he answered her question.

"Her faith has some resemblance to yours. The Näck of the lake you fell in to seem to have taken a liking to your friend, she lives with him at the bottom of the lake, both prisoner and guest." For a second Sarah felt the smell of a forest lake blended with the sweet sick smell of rutting meat in her nose and she had a vision of a cave full of strange things and a bed that seemed cut out of the rock itself where Maria lay, white as a corps, and beside her stood something that seemed to change between a big white horse and a pale man with a fiddle in his hand. The image was in the strange light you get under water and with a strange red-brownish tint.

Sarah forced herself to not cry again for her friends fate, she could not afford to waste the energy if she was to get thru with her own.

They walk in silences down to the royal chapel where the head of the goblin church waited, the chapel was a stone annex to the castle, it was quite narrow but made up for it in length and height. The high stained glass window showed what Sarah assumed to be religious pictures, there was surprisingly many chickens pictured.

In the front just beneath the large stone altar and a large painting of the goblin king whit an owl on his right shoulder and a black chicken at his feet, stood the high priest of the goblins, he was a... chickentaur?
Sarah had to take a double check but it was really thru, the high priest of the goblin church was really half chicken half goblin creature. Even thru the light of all that had happened the last day Sarah had trouble whit keeping a serious face at the sight of such a peculiar creature.

"Don't laugh, he'll get in to one of his tempers and we will be her all day." Jareth whispered in her ear before they got to close so the priest could hear him.

The chicken-goblin surly did take him self very seriously. He seemed quite stern in his white and yellow robe, the colors of eggshells and yolk.

Mostly thanks to all her acting classes Sarah some how managed to not start laughing the priest right in his face in the middle of the ceremony, who thankfully was quite short.
The vows was mostly about the rulers being equals in all power and the balance they where to represent thru their marriage. Sarah did her best in trying to listen to the words of the priest and not look at his silly chicken legs, his robe seemed to be made to show off the chicken part of his figure.

And a bit to fast for her liking they where at the last part of the vow and they we´re suppose to seal their promises with a kiss.

Sarah turned towards Jareth and thought how strange it was that their first kiss would be their wedding kiss, and then she stopped thinking cause Jareth put her arms around her and looked at her with those miss-matched eyes whit a strange tenderness she never seen before.
And then he kissed her.
The goblin king didn't do the chaste formal kind of kiss Sarah had expected when she at some point had thought about that part of the wedding. It started slow but steeply increased in fire, Sarah barley had time to register his tongue against her lips before it was inside her mouth and she was as in to the kiss as he was, he tasted magic, forbidden things that suddenly was allowed and a hint of peach. The satin of her dress suddenly seemed much thinner than it had felt just minutes before as Jareth's (her husband! That would take some time to get used to) hands started roaming down her body and then up again. Sarah barley noticed that the high goblin/chicken priest disappeared thru a side-door and left them alone in the stone chapel.

There came to a point when Sarah felt that they could ether start backing of or start taking of clothes. This was really not how she had imagined her first time with the goblin king, and there was that stain-glass chicken that seemed to follow them with its eyes in a unsettling manner. So she slowly but surly drew away from Jareth ending the kiss.

The goblin king actually seemed a bit disappointed that she backed away.

"Look its not that I don't like this its just that this seems like the wrong setting for this kind of things..." she started and as she saw him conjuring a crystal she could imagine what he was going to do so she hurriedly continued, "...and you said something about lessons? It sounded important."

"Your right of coarse, and its not like we don't have the rest of our lives to this kind of things." Jareth said with a wicked smile and a look that could have melted anything and almost made Sarah regret not simply letting him have his way with her there on the cold chapel floor.

"Till the world falls down."Sarah said slightly lightheaded.

"Yes that's what I promised you is it not?"Jareth said with some surprise in his voice, as if he did not believe she would remember that. "Come Precious lets start with your lessons."he held out his arm and as Sarah took it she felt as if she had done it a thousand times before, like it was what she was born to do. It was not so bad a feeling as it should have sounded to her as a teenager.

Am I evil for stopping them? Oh well hope you enjoyed it, I'm not that good with steamy bits, hop it was tolerable.

I can't say when next chapter will be out as I'm happy to have my schedule of the next week on the Thursday before... It should calm down in the future but you never know.

Till next time.