He could see her mother sitting there, filling out another audition application in her small New York apartment. The woman wasn't happy, but that didn't matter. It was Sarah he was supposed to look for, she was the one running the labyrinth. So why was this woman all he saw? The bird that served as his hat sighed.

"Are you asleep again?"

He didn't answer. He never did when he was having a vision. No wonder the bird hated him, he always had visions. Everyone thought him senile when he tried to explain them.

"Is one ever really asleep?" he asked in response. If no one would believe him anyway, why should he have to make sense with simple answers? At least make them think. The bird sighed again.

"Yes. You. All the time. I would rather pluck the rest of my feathers than try to hold a conversation with you." The bird looked down when he heard snoring again. Was there a wall he would bang his beak against anywhere?

This time the scene was different: It showed a blonde woman in a pink skirt and blue shirt sitting at a table with a man in a suit. The man looked like the runner. The woman had the same eyes as the baby. These must be the parents. It looked like the woman was sad.

"I don't know what else I can do!" she exclaimed. "I try to make a connection with her, but Sarah refuses to let me try! The only time she'll talk to me is to fight."

"I don't know how to help you, Karen. She has too much of her mother in her. Flighty, romantic, trapped in a story." If only he knew how true that was.

"We're all stories," the old man mused. "At least she's trying to write her own."

The bird on his head perked up at this. The old man was awake! A conversation!

"What was that you told the girl earlier? About going backward?"

"I didn't say backward. I said 'back,'" the man said. He was always careful with his words.

"Same difference?"

"No. Backward is a direction. Back is a destination. She needs to get home."

"And how does any of that help her get through the maze?"

"I wasn't helping her get through the maze. I was helping her solve the Labyrinth."

"Again," the bird complained. "Same difference."

"Not at all." The man rolled his eyes. Some creatures never understood the importance of experience. How was she supposed to get out of the maze if she didn't solve the Labyrinth? You don't finish a story without a lesson, and she needed to learn hers. A structure like a maze cannot teach you a lesson, but a journey like the Labyrinth required it. Maturation, understanding, empathy. You can't just *poof* to the baby that was wished away; you had to learn your way through, and learn what it is you would be missing without the child. The way forward is sometimes the way back. Back home, through the maze, through the lesson. Thoughts like this hurt.

"She cannot move forward with her life until she is back to her life. The life she has, not the one she fantasizes about. Where she has a brother instead of a mother. Where her stepmother isn't evil. Where she stops pretending that everything isn't fair. She's halfway there already."

First, she learned that the Labyrinth wasn't fair. Then she realizes that nothing is, and that because nothing is fair, that everything is fair.

"When she realizes that the only fairness in life is that nothing is fair, she can go back, and then go forward.