He had a contract that no amount of goblin magic could get him out of, but it was only until the next month. Sarah, eager to be away from the lodge and its resident prying eyes, agreed to spend that remaining time at Jareth's cabin. He spent most days finishing out his lessons on the slopes, and she spent those days mostly indoors, reading or jotting down ideas that had been germinating for a while now.

For a while she had made use of his glamour, but she found that the invented stories that had to go with it were mentally taxing - a new face needed a new story, a new hometown, a new motivation. Had she said she was from Kansas, or Tennessee? Did she give her name as Carly or Carey? Would the people she had spoken to for the last few months recognize the timbre of her voice?

Besides these things, she found that she felt intrinsically adverse to using a glamour - catching glimpses of this new face in reflective surfaces felt so unsettling until she finally asked Jareth to take it off. Perhaps, she had explained to him, if she had grown up with such concepts and abilities it would feel like second nature to change her face so dramatically - in the same way she felt fine using winged eyeliner or bronzer powder. But this amount of magic was simply too much for her. She wanted to wear the face she had had her whole life.

So she stayed inside where she could be her own self without having to worry about ending up on a tabloid site with captions of "who is this mystery man?" underneath photos of her and Jareth.

She spent her days in a cloud of Pinterest recipe attempts and YouTube yoga classes and marathon book reading sessions and daydreaming the plot of next writing project and of course, she spent her days thinking. She had a lot to think about.

Jareth would get home from work, and they would talk. She'd spend the next day thinking on their conversations, tagging things in her mind that she wanted to bring up with him again.

And so the topic came up one late night as they sat on the couch near the fireplace, looking out the window at the moon illuminated snow that was gently falling.

The hour of the night hung heavy on Sarah, her eyes wanting to close but she willed them open, intent on watching that frozen scene silently and steadily progress. She leaned on Jareth, who was reclined on a stack of pillows settled over the armrest of the couch. One of his arms encircled her shoulders, the other was behind his head as he stared at the ceiling, likely lost in his own thoughts.

"Jareth?"

"Hmm?"

"Why me?"

"Why you what?"

She rolled her eyes.

"You know... Why did you pick me?"

He frowned.

"Pick you to do what?"

She couldn't help but giggle, almost certain he was having a go at her. He was going to make her say it.

"I mean..." She drew her words out. "Why do you love me?"

"Hm, well. Let's see. I think it mostly has to do with your personality and with your mind, but I'll be honest here, Precious, your looks certainly don't do you any disfavors."

She scoffed.

"I'm flattered, but that's not exactly what I meant. I want to know, out of all the possible beings Aboveground and Underground... and any other directions that may exist, what drew you to me? Why Sarah Williams, out of all those countless others?"

"It's a bit of a long story, actually. You see..."