In the pale cold before dawn, a dark-haired girl drifted, as though in a daze, down a flagstone path, the smooth stones of which were carpeted with vibrant orange flower petals. The silken feel of the petals beneath her bare feet was soothing, but went largely unnoticed. The girl's eyes, blue-tinged pewter in the early dimness, were thrown wide and seemed hollow; no thought or emotion was apparent behind their silvery screens.

Her filmy white gown shimmered as she moved, and its train, trailing gracefully across the path behind her, soon became littered with the fire-stained petals. The dying moonlight glinted off pearls sewn down the length of the garment like so many drops of milky rain.

The brunette's steps quickened as the path ended; her feet trod faster through the thick velvet grass, and a sudden breeze, balmy and faintly spicy, blew through her long hair, whipping it behind her like a mahogany banner.

The end came then, darkness closing abruptly about the scene like the shutting of a camera lens.

Sarah Williams shot out of sleep as though from a cannon, her heart slamming against her ribs in a frantic staccato. Sweat slicked across her fevered skin, and her hair clung damply to her forehead and neck.

She blinked twice in the silent dark of her bedroom, momentarily disoriented. Once she remembered where she was, she heaved a sigh and flopped backwards onto her pillow. Again. That was the third time in a week she'd had that dream, and she was still, irritatingly, no closer to finding what lay at the end of the path. No closer to finding out why this girl, who looked so remarkably like herself, broke into a frenzied run when her feet touched the grass.

After a moment, during which Sarah managed to get her erratic breathing under control, she shut her eyes and attempted to reenter the soft peace of sleep.

Sleep did not come.

With a fair, slender hand, almost feminine in its smooth perfection, Jareth shielded his disparately hued eyes from view. Several of the servant goblins, residents of the castle, huddled in a nervous cluster in the rear of the throne room, not eager to disturb the obviously disconcerted Goblin King.

Tension curled through Jareth's every muscle like thick steel wire; he knew something was coming, but it was not something that his crystals had been able to show him. Something was going to burst into the throne room, bestowing upon Jareth the Underground's Largest Headache…and soon.

A faint tinkling sound disturbed the edgy silence of the throne room. Instantly recalling exactly the creature such a noise heralded, Jareth let the hand slide from his face, not quite containing a moan of displeasure. Seconds later, the tinkling reached a rather musical crescendo, and it seemed the very sound exploded into glitter, which, drifting idly down through the air, came to rest at a pair of ivory feet.

Looking like a Botticelli angel carved from alabaster, a tiny little female, not more than two feet tall, stood before the King of the Goblins, her stance brazen. Gauzy opaline wings arced gracefully from her narrow shoulders. One delicate, pale hand was set at the petite waistline of a rather rich velvet gown, colored a pleasing shade of jade. The other hand teased and fingered tumbling cobalt waves that spiraled down to velveteen elbows. And from beneath such a vibrant coif, orange eyes shimmered as the pixie pouted impetuously at Jareth, lips like plums pursed together in a show of dainty insolence.

"Jareth, my darling lovely!" she exclaimed, her expression sweetening into a sunny, impish grin. Clasping those miniscule hands together, she fluttered nearer to the Goblin King, who could not easily have looked less happy to see her.

"Enyl," he replied dispassionately, the single word wrapped thickly with loathing.

The pixie's grin became a knowing smile, and she alighted at the side of Jareth's throne, leaning over the armrest so that her face drew uncomfortably near to his own.

"You want to know why I'm here?" Enyl cooed, her apricot eyes crinkling at the corners with a touch of wicked pleasure. An azure curl swung forth as she gently tilted her head, appraising Jareth with her usual blazing audacity.

"To involve me with your latest work in the noble art of sadism, of course," Jareth said almost lazily, the words shot through with acid.

Enyl gave him a wounded look, and sank down next to him on the stone seat of his throne.

"No, no, no, my sweet. That would never be an intention of mine," she simpered, stroking the cool white hand with which Jareth clasped his knee.

To an outsider, the scene would have looked almost sweet. Enyl, despite being nearly eight hundred years old, still gave off the illusion of a winged, disturbingly beautiful child, about six years of age. To see such a little person playing blithely with Jareth's fingers colored him as a tolerant uncle, although his sourly thoughtful expression brought to mind anything but a doting relative.

"Kindly unburden yourself of your news, and stop fiddling with my jewelry!" Jareth finally spat, the stony set of his jaw indicating that he was clenching his teeth.

Enyl dropped her hands from the silvery ring she'd been sliding up and down Jareth's index finger, and met his gaze with a fiery one that burned with all her years. Jareth pushed away a thought of the eeriness of seeing such a childlike face wreathed with inner age.

Sighing, the cherub-faced pixie used her opalescent, gossamer wings to hover above Jareth, regarding him with cooled coral eyes, out of which a chilly wisdom radiated.

She placed her child's hands on Jareth's cheeks, and he nearly winced at their wintry touch.

"There's a bit more to your little mortal fixation than meets the eye," Enyl said bluntly. As she caressed the milky slope of Jareth's cheek, he quirked a dark eyebrow in curiosity.

"Tell me more," Jareth demanded, grasping Enyl's slender wrists and wrenching them from his face. His dislike for the pixie ran deep and cold as a stream of ice, but if the wretch had news regarding Sarah, there was no stopping him drawing it out of her.