A/N: Chapters 8 (Madame Eudocia) and 9 (The Scent of Roses) were added at the same time. If you haven't read Chapter 8, please go back and do so. Also, Chapter 7 (The Mask) was added not very long before these two, so make sure you also read that one. :) I'm sorry if adding them all at once frusrated or confused you. And thank you all for your reviews; please continue to leave feedback.

Chapter 9: The Scent of Roses

Sarah paused in the doorway, startled to find her husband sitting at the kitchen table. Hadn't he just been upstairs, in bed?

"Jared," Sarah asked, making her way around the table. The more she thought on it, she realized he probably hadn't been in bed—well, he obviously hadn't—and she had just seen a lump of blankets. "What are you doing down here?" She noted the empty coffee cup in front of him.

"I didn't feel well and I didn't want to wake you with my tossing and turning."

"Oh, you know it would've been alright." She leaned forward to hug him to her chest. "Go up to bed now, 'kay?"

He nodded solemnly, standing. Sarah noted he did look a bit pale….


Jareth's fingers drummed incessantly on the arm of his throne. His eyes were narrowed in concentration, staring at the dirty, stone floor as if it contained all the world's secrets. The room was empty of goblins; the only sign that they had been here was the grimy blankets in the indentation in the floor.

A single red rose lay across the King's thighs, glistening with some halfway invisible sort of glitter.

Apparently now a formless being, Sarah floated towards the ceiling. Panicked, she tried to push herself down—she didn't want to go up, she wanted to stay on the floor and watch the Goblin King.

She felt as if a balloon was tied around her shoulders, lifting her up until they bumped the ceiling. Her bottom followed moments later, so that her back was pressed tightly against the cold rocks and her toes scraped the wall. She fought to go back down; she wanted to see his face.

Nothing was going her way. Jareth continued staring down, occasionally moving his fingers to fondle the rose. She could see only the top of his head, his shoulders, and his lap. Frustrated, she tried to scream, but no sound came out. In fact, nothing happened at all. The will to make the noise was nothing more than that; she seemed to have no internal organs, no mouth or nose.

Suddenly, as Sarah marveled over the drastic, inexplicable changes to her 'body,' Jareth stood and flung the rose at her.

Sarah's eyes snapped open, revealing the cream-colored, mask adorned wall of her bathroom.

She glanced down at her body, now whole and naked beneath a film of bubbles. She sighed, turning her face upwards. Dreaming of the Goblin King? That was something she hadn't done in a very long time.

She glanced at the clock near the sink. 8:34 PM, its numbers said. Sarah tried to remember when she had gotten into her bath. It couldn't have been long ago, or the bubbles would be gone. She swished her fingers though the water and held them before her face. The skin wasn't wrinkled. So she had just fallen asleep for a minute or so, dreamed a short, incomprehensible dream, and was then startled awake. She reflected a moment, trying to pinpoint what exactly was so odd….

Pushing the dream to the back of her mind, Sarah allowed herself to admire her mask collection. She had found a place for the new one—the one that didn't get destroyed—directly above the mirror. Others were scattered across the walls at varying heights and intervals; an attractive disorder.

Sarah's eyes roamed over the masks; a burgundy one with rhinestone lips that she had bought the first year she went to the Halloween Fair, a cream-colored half-face mask with beautiful, realistic looking flowers sprouting off one side, a orange, red and yellow one which seemed to be made entirely of feathers….

Her eyes fell on the bottle of bubble bath sitting on the floor beside the sunken bathtub. Lavender scented.

She smelled roses.