A few days later, Sarah started writing again.

She pulled out the pages she'd begun on the other side of the mirror some time before, trying to ignore the rush of feelings that the smell and feel of them inspired. She typed them into her computer and kept going, eventually hitting a stride that had her writing well into the early hours of the morning, leaving her desk only when her stomach's protests grew too loud to ignore.

What she wrote bore no resemblance to Moon Gems and had no elements of magic or the labyrinth in it, but as she wrote she could see that it was indeed about power and things unsaid and hidden, and it developed into a quiet family drama that took place entirely over the course of a single dinner at home (something that appealed to Lori, given that it meant the budget would be reasonable).

Lori, meanwhile, had finished her own play, which had turned out to be more of a "choreopoem" in the style of Ntozake Shange, and when the casting process was finished Miguel had a part.

It was a week before Lori's opening weekend when Sarah found herself in a particularly Jareth- preoccupied mood—much as she'd tried to push him to the side of her mind, writing the play had brought back a lot of memories. She texted multiple people asking if they wanted to join her at the bar around the corner for a drink, and when no one was available she went on her own anyway.

It is not fair that Im this drunk but still thinkin about him, she texted Miguel.

U ordered Long Islands, right?

Yes and they usually work, maybe tolerance is building up, I shd have a 3rd.

Sweetie just b careful, don't like it when u get shitfaced without me.

"Goddammit, Miguel, I need you to encourage my bad behavior right now, not rein it in," she shouted, realizing halfway through her sentence that she was speaking out loud instead of texting. Luckily the bar was mostly empty, and the couple at a nearby table and the guy seated a few stools over looked up for a second and then looked away.

She shook her ice cube-filled glass at the bartender. "Rudy, is there anything behind that counter that will wipe my memory clean for at least a few hours?"

Rudy smiled and took her glass with an arm covered in an intricate latticework of tattoos. That plus the spiky hair and the pierced nose were at odds with the gentle, shy-sounding voice that emerged. "If I had something like that, I'd be selling it for a hundred dollars a glass."

"Rough breakup?"

Sarah glanced down the bar, prepared to give the silent treatment (or the "Rudy, tell this guy to go away" treatment) to a middle-aged lech. She was surprised, then, to see that the voice belonged to a set of very attractive biceps in a bright blue collared shirt, face partially hidden but with a full head of black hair and light-brown skin. The two Long Island iced teas kept her eyes on him for a few seconds longer than normal.

"Breakup implies there was something to break," she muttered.

He looked up and smiled. "Sorry to hear that."

It was a very, very nice smile. And then he went back to staring at his drink.

Oh, gonna make me do the work, eh?

"You drinking to celebrate or drown your sorrows?" she asked, resting an arm on the bar and her chin in her hand.

He laughed. "Maybe a little of both." He gestured at the empty bar stool next to her. "Okay if I sit there?"

She shrugged but kept her eyes on him and smiled. "It's a free bar."

He moved closer and she could see that he was on the younger side, maybe late twenties, with a broad nose and a square jaw. "So what's the celebratory part?" she asked.

"Just got a new job."

"Awesome!" She started to clink her glass with his and realized she no longer had one. "Imagine there's a glass in my hand," she laughed, pantomiming the gesture.

"You want another one?"

She laughed at the way he seemed to say that in a rush, as if he were mildly terrified of her response. "Yes, please. Club soda." Damn Miguel, keeping me cautious. "Unless you want me to lose all powers of speech."

"Nah, one-sided conversation's no fun," he said, sounding slightly more at ease. Rudy poured the club soda and set it on the bar, then politely moved down to the other end to busy himself drying glasses near the sink.

"Cheers." She clinked her glass with his—he was drinking Guinness, she noticed. "Sorry, forgot to ask, what's the drown-your-sorrows reason for your drink?"

He shrugged. "Same as the celebratory reason. Got a new job." He took another sip of beer and wiped the foam from his lips. "Which means I can stop sleeping on my friend's couch and eating instant ramen for dinner, but it also means I have to, you know, work."

She sighed. "Lemme guess. Finance?"

"Nope."

"I.T.?"

"Yeah. How'd you guess?"

She smiled and had to stop herself from touching the very, very attractive curves of his arm. "Maybe because it seems like you haven't chatted up many girls in bars before."

He blushed. "Great, computer geek stereotype."

"No, no, just a "maybe hangs out with mostly guys" stereotype." She twirled a strand of hair around her finger. "You're doing a good job of it, by the way."

"Of what?"

She smiled, enjoying a feeling of being in charge that she'd rarely experienced with Jareth. "Of chatting me up."

His name was Vinh (like gin and tonic, with a v, he said, in a manner that told her people had been mispronouncing his name for a long time). He'd moved to New York a month before from Hawaii, and they filled a good chunk of time comparing the two places—Sarah had been once, many years before, with her mother and father. Vinh hated the cold weather in New York, and Sarah teased him that it was only autumn, it was about to get a lot colder. He was twenty-nine, just a few years younger than her, and he called the I.T. job his first "grown up" job.

Eventually she let him order her another Long Island iced tea.

"Growing up is definitely overrated," she said, noticing that her voice was slightly louder than before. "You should do what I do—write & direct plays. You'll go back and forth between abject poverty and relative comfort, but at least you don't have to work in an office. And you keep really irregular hours."

He leaned forward slightly. "You write plays?"

"Yeah." She mirrored his movements and leaned in as well. "I've got one on Broadway right now."

"Seriously? Are you, like, famous?"

"No. Well, I was in a magazine once, but it's a magazine that only theater people read." She took another swig of her cocktail and could feel warmth creeping into her extremities, as well as that familiar feeling of knowing that she wasn't quite herself, but being powerless to stop the change.

"I used to act, actually," she said.

"Anything I might have seen?"

"Well, if you watch any of the crime shows you might have seen me as a corpse."

He laughed. "I bet you were a pretty corpse." The color drained from his face and he coughed. "Shit, I am SO sorry, that sounded totally creepy, I just meant—"

"Yeah, I know what you meant, it's okay." She gave him a playful shove.

"What's your play about?" he asked, still sounding a little nervous. It was endearing, even more so when seen through a third cocktail.

Such nice arms. And lips.

"It's sort of…fantasy, but with a twist." She ran a hand through her hair and watched his eyes follow the movement. She leaned forward slightly. "It's about a king, and a maze, and…you know, I really don't want to talk about my play."

She was leaning in so close that she could feel his quickening breath on her cheek. His eyes widened, but he didn't back away.

"You don't?" he said.

She shook her head, and her hair brushed against him. "No," she whispered. A voice in the back of her head was berating her, but it was very faint.

He's so lovely, and he's gentle, so different from—

She kissed him, and at first he seemed frozen, but then his hand reached up to cup her cheek, and he kissed back. It had been a while since she'd kissed anyone other than Jareth, she realized.

She'd been prepared for the fact that the kiss wouldn't be earth-shatteringly good, and that it wouldn't be accompanied by that intoxicating feeling of need. But still. There was need here on both sides, if of a different sort, and he smelled of a nice combination of aftershave and soap, and the words "I'm just around the corner" were millimeters from her lips…

But before she could speak there was a deafening crash, and they both jumped backward. Sarah turned around to see that an entire shelf of glasses had fallen to the ground. Rudy was holding up his hands in shock.

"I swear I didn't touch anything," he said, looking a bit pale. "It was like…I swear they jumped or something…" He grabbed a broom and dustpan. "Carry on, carry on, I got this."

Sarah laughed and turned back to Vinh, though a small voice in the back of her mind whispered that this was NOT a coincidence.

"Thanks," she said to Vinh, blushing. "That was nice."

His face was also slightly flushed. "You, uh, wanna go somewhere else?"

"Nope. But thanks for asking." She gave him an awkward smile and reached out to shake his hand. He took it and smiled back, his face betraying only the slightest flicker of disappointment.

"Can I text you or something?"

She hesitated and then felt ridiculous for hesitating. You'll kiss a total stranger in a bar but won't give him your number?

"Look me up," she finally said. "Sarah Williams. My play's called Moon Gems, at the John Golden." She resisted the urge to kiss him again. "See ya."

He drained his glass of Guiness. "I hope so."

She waved good-bye to Rudy, who gave her a wink. When she opened the heavy door to the staircase leading up to the street she couldn't help glancing behind her to see that yes, Vinh was watching her go.

By the time Sarah opened the door to her apartment she was feeling a level of rage that was only somewhat due to her less-than-sober state. She fumbled with her keys, threw her jacket on the sofa, and stormed into her bedroom to point a shaking finger at the mirror.

"Was that you, Jareth?" she shouted. "Brings back memories of all the shit you pulled with Chris, you petty, childish…"

She shook her head and took a deep breath, for some reason determined to be as clear as possible. "I know we didn't technically break up but we weren't ever technically dating, either, and we never said we were exclusive, so I am allowed to do whatever I want on this side of the mirror, goddammit. You're probably having orgies with selkies and nymphs over there, so how dare you try to muck up a single kiss…"

She could feel her heart pounding against her chest. The mirror was unresponsive, though given that she'd said his name, she could imagine Jareth simply sitting and listening to her.

"Seriously. Is this some sort of 'If I can't have you no one will' macho bullshit? Because that went out of style like a hundred years ago. And it's not like we're spending time apart over something small, like the usual mortal arguments about money and not spending enough time together and you just want me for sex (which I know was never exactly a problem for us but I'm free-forming here), this was about you stealing children from people who didn't know that they were really wishing them away."

"And don't—" she wagged a finger at the mirror as if Jareth were actually standing in front of her "—argue semantics with me, I know you didn't technically steal them, but you're still taking them from people who in some cases want them back, even though it's not like you have any choice in the matter, unless, you know, ceasing to exist is a choice…"

Sarah sighed. This version of reading Jareth the riot act was not going as planned.

She fell sideways onto her bed, the room spinning slightly as she pulled her knees into her chest. Instinctively she reached under her pillow, but the crystal, of course, wasn't there.

"Dammit, I was trying to not think about you for half a minute," she sighed. She kept her hand under the pillow as though the crystal might materialize if she waited long enough.

"I finished another play," she said quietly. "I wanted to show it to you. I almost said your name to the mirror out of habit. I wanted you to read it. But it's not about you, so maybe you'd hate it. Then again, it kind of is about you. About us."

She sat up and pulled off her jeans, top, and bra, grabbing an oversized T-shirt from her dresser drawer and crawling under her duvet. "Lori still wants to direct your play. I kind of want to see it. Maybe we can work something out, eventually."

Her eyelids felt heavy. She reached out a hand to the side of the bed where he'd often slept.

"Sometimes I wake up in the middle of the night and I roll over and think your body will be there, and then it isn't, and it makes me so goddamn sad."

As she drifted off to sleep she realized that she was waiting to hear the sound of his voice from the mirror, or at least some sound or breeze in the room that would indicate that he was listening. No sound ever came.

"Takes forever t' cut all o' these vegetables on my own, ye know," Hoggle grumbled from within his kitchen, a pile of root vegetables visible within the frame of Sarah's vanity mirror.

"I know. Didymus could help out, though. Or the goblins."

Hoggle snorted. "Didymus has t' turn everythin' into a duel or a quest—can't just cut up the vegetables, he has t' stab 'em. And goblins?" He shuddered and carried a cup of water over to the pot bubbling on the fire. "Never lettin' 'em in my house again, lemme tell ye. They finished all my best cheese in minutes."

Sarah smiled. "Any, uh, earthquakes recently?"

Hoggle thought for a moment. "Nah, been quiet. Maybe cause there ain't been no runners. Then again I don't always notice the shakin' when it happens."

Sarah was relieved to hear that no children had been wished away since she'd last been on the other side of the mirror. At the same time, her heart hurt to think of how Jareth must be wasting away without anything from the outside world to need him.

Maybe if I just—

No. Absolutely not. You go down that road and there's nothing but trouble at the end.

She sighed. "How is he?"

Hoggle became very interested in chopping vegetables. "Ye could ask 'im yourself, ye know."

"Yeah, that's maybe not such a good idea right now. Just…more checking in on you guys. Wondering if he was, you know, more prone to bogging threats than usual, tossing more chickens out the castle windows, that sort of thing."

Hoggle shrugged. "Not that I noticed. He's just sorta…vanished. Like, he's here—we can feel it when he's really gone, the whole place can—but nowadays he's just in his room a lot. Doesn't come out and doesn't talk much."

Sarah felt strangely relieved to hear that Jareth wasn't well (and then embarrassed that she felt relieved). A part of her had wondered if all his changes had been an illusion, if he felt no pain or remorse after everything they'd said and done to each other. And perhaps he didn't—but the fact that he wasn't strutting around the castle barking orders to everyone was…something.

She heard a clattering sound as Didymus entered the frame of the mirror, dropping a large pile of wood on the floor. "Ah, my lady! Well met. Thou wilt forgive my presumption," he reached inside his frock coat, "but I have taken it upon myself to compose poetry that you and the king might recite to one another, as a means toward mending your rift."

Hoggle gave an eye roll large enough to be seen from space. Sarah smiled.

"That's very kind of you, Didymus. Have you, er, shared any of these with His Majesty?"

Didymus cleared his throat. "I have made an effort, fair maiden, and thou knowst I would do anything on thy behalf, but…the King is not exactly…receptive to my plan."

Sarah reached out a hand. "Give him time. I'll be happy to take a look at them."

The mirror shimmered as Didymus passed a neatly folded stack of small papers through its surface. "Fear not, my lady. There is yet no rough course of true love that didst not run smooth again through the power of poetry."

Hoggle shook his head as Didymus headed outside to feed Ambrosius. "Ye keep coddlin' him like that ye'll never hear the end of it."

"It's sweet of him." Sarah glanced down at the papers, which, not surprisingly, contained many allusions to flowers and summer days. "It'd be nice if things were that simple."

"Yeah, and it'd be nice if cheese grew on trees," Hoggle grumbled.

Later, she tucked the poems into her desk drawer along with her unfinished letters. No point wishing for things to be simple when they never will be.

Yeah. She pulled a well-worn romance novel off of her bookshelf and went into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of wine. Won't stop me, though.

RIP Ntozake Shange, whose groundbreaking work I first saw performed in high school. Got three or four more chapters of this plus an epilogue and they're proving to be a bit slippery, but they're being worked on and they'll be up soon.