Hi, everyone! Thanks so much for the review on the last chapter. They really inspire me! Hope you enjoy!
CHAPTER 11
Everything in this world was crazy.
She began the night by falling, a dreamy drop through the clouds and the trees until the green of the ground came into view. Her muscles flinched, and she steeled herself for whatever might come like the hard fall she was sure to soon get, but instead her feet only landed gently on the soft, plush grass of her field.
Her bright green eyes took in the scene around her, the life and vitality that had risen form this once razed land.
"He made this for you, didn't he?"
Sarah whirled around, the unfamiliar voice unsettling her thoughts, and took in the youth standing before her in strange clothes and wild blonde hair. But it was the eyes. Mismatched irises regarded her calmly as a slight breeze swept through the verdant utopia, ruffling the little boy's golden tresses.
"Who are you?" She asked, inadvertently moving closer to him.
"I think you know. Somewhere very deep in your mind, you know who and what I am. You know who I belong to. I am the King's son."
"Why are you here?" The words sounded defensive, even to her ears.
"Because I cannot be anywhere else….well, at least not for a while." The little boy told her as he plopped down in the grass, aloof and awkward in his fine velvet breeches and silk shirt and the air of arrogance that resonated from him.
"What do you want with me?" The questions were spilling from her mouth without thought as she stood leaning against the tree that Jareth had danced with her under.
"I was just curious. You should know all about that. I wanted to see how the bond between the two of you fared." He reached down into the grass and placed a thumb to the dirt. "I was bored where I was at, so I decided to come visit." And with that, a single rose grew from the ground. Sarah watched him with wide eyes.
"Aren't they suppose to grow in bushes?"
The miniature King, and Sarah had no doubt that was indeed what he was, shrugged his royal shoulders and frowned slightly. "To me, they are more beautiful this way. What is the fun of picking a beautiful rose from twenty of them bunched together. Father thinks that the most beautiful of all roses is the one that grows alone amidst the simpleness of the grass and dirt. He used to not think it possible." The little boy looked up and grinned, the first sign that he was indeed a real child. "I rather think he was referring to you when he thought that. A queen that grew from a mortal world with no real friends, always aloof in your singular beauty in a setting that was dim and bland without you to add color. I think that he had given up on the humans, but only because he had given up on you."
Sarah smiled at the child, her heart swelling with some strange sense of pride as he created more roses from the dirt around him. "But, I am no Queen."
The little boy looked up and, plucking a vibrant red rose to offer her, told Sarah matter of factly: "You will be, mother. You will be."
She was gasping for air when she woke, struggling to breath in the cold gloominess of the night. Her feet and hands wrestled with the covers to free her from their silky hold. Everything in the room was pitch black, but a ray of moonlight crept in through the open windows, casting an eerie blue light on the strange room she was in. On unsteady feet she rose and padded to a small door covered with windows and flung it open, only to be hit in the face with an ice cold breeze. For a moment, she lingered, the wind cooling her fever and waking her up, until finally she closed the door and turned back to the unfamiliar place she had woken up in.
Only to see a figure standing by the mantel of her fireplace.
"Who are you?" Sarah asked unsteadily.
"Someone you know…" was the only response in the same voice she had heard before falling into blackness before.
It couldn't be, she reasoned with herself, he is dead. Perhaps you have just gone off the deep end finally.
"Yes, Sarah, it is me. You are not dreaming this."
Sarah swallowed thickly, a burgeoning fear rising in her mind. If she wasn't dreaming this, then she was hallucinating it, and that was far worse than simply dreaming it. Tentively, her feet shuffled forward, one arm outstretched towards what she really hoped was only a figment of her overworked imagination.
Dear God, don't let me be crazy….
But her prayers were for naught as her fingers grazed a mound of solid flesh stretched taut over cheekbones. Instantly, she drew all of herself away, raw emotions pricking the back of her throat and eyes. She didn't know whether to run as far as she could or fling herself in his arms and seek solace in what she was sure was the working of a psychotic mind.
The King simply leaned
against the mantel, a wave of cold indifference chilling the
room.
"Are you real?" Her voice was so quiet, so full of
silent emotion that she thought for a moment she might have imagined
saying something too.
"Yes, I am real Sarah." He told her, pushing himself away from the fireplace to stand in front of her, a vision in his grey breeches and white shirt. Intently, he watched her, waiting for one of them to break the silence that enveloped the both of them as she took the sight of him in.
And then finally flung herself into his arms.
"I thought you were dead…." She sobbed quietly, a torrent of pain and regrets that she silently cried over making their way down her cheeks and on his shirt in little rivulets of salt. He held her, rubbing the small of her back as she soaked his shirt, and whispering words of comfort into her hair.
"I thought you were dead…"
Please don't hate me. I will update soon.So what did you guys think? I hope you liked it!
