Disclaimer: Sarah, Jareth, the Labyrinth, and its other characters are owned by the Jim Henson Company.
The Olive Branch
Chapter 2: Decision
by Dreamer In Silico
Sarah blinked and read the letter again. And again.
Of all the things she might have expected Jareth to send with his goblins – a list which included enchanted peaches, vials of Bog water, angry chickens, and caffeinated Fieries from past experience – a civil, even polite invitation to dinner (with absolutely no demands or threats!) was the very last.
"KING SEND LADY-SARAH LOVE LETTER YET?" Sarah's reverie was shattered by Vix's exuberantly shouted question, though she was unsure whether it was directed at her, or at the other two goblins.
Either way, she blushed a brilliant, rosebud pink at the very suggestion.
"No, Vix, he just invited me to dinner, it seems. Sorry to disappoint you," she managed to say despite being both completely embarrassed and trying not to laugh. "… and I'm sure the glittery bastard has something up his sleeve with this," she muttered under her breath.
Woobie heard her, nonetheless. "Dunno who is 'slippery whackard,' but King ALWAYS have something up his sleeve," he offered helpfully. "Usually scary magic ball-thing that make goblins go to the – "
"BOG!" Widget and Vix shouted again. Sarah was beginning to wonder if they practiced this.
"Right, right, I know. He really loves that bog, huh?"
"Oh yes. Is his favorite place in great big maze," Vix asserted with a shudder.
"Woobie not sure about that. King never go there," Woobie pointed out, reasonably.
"How you know that? King poof off wherever he wants, boggy-Woobie," grumbled Widget, who puffed himself up indignantly at the insult. Sarah hastily stepped between them to forestall another scuffle, which would have taken place dangerously close to her kitchen trash can.
"Maybe I'll ask him when I see him tomorrow, then, since this is such a talked-about question," Sarah grated out.
This time, Vix was quickest on the uptake. "Lady-Sarah say yes to invit- inbita- note, then?" he asked.
Sarah's brain, which had been running along quite smoothly, skidded to a screeching, sudden halt.
She hadn't even thought about that before she'd said it. She'd internally rolled her eyes at the long list of qualifications and assurances in the letter and – apparently some other branch of her mental government had gone ahead and pushed the affirmative motion through while the Self-Preservation Committee was too busy being wryly amused. Sarah wasn't sure with whom she was more irritated – Jareth for the deceptively innocuous invitation, or some part of her brain for buying it.
Still more irritating was the fact that even with belated objections raised by the flustered Committee, the "ayes" still soundly held the majority.
I guess I was more sore about being alone tomorrow than I'd thought. I… suppose that settles it, then. I'll just have to watch out for loopholes and make sure I leave if it looks like he's trying anything tricky…
Well, trickier than usual, she silently amended. And… well, a chance for a do-over of the last time I saw him would be… She sighed softly. It would be nice to have.
"Um," she began aloud, then cleared her throat and tried again. "I believe I will, yes. It does sound like a much better idea than staying here to eat my scrawny little chi – … Cornish hen… myself, doesn't it?"
"YES!" all three screeched, nearly managing to startle Sarah despite the fact that by this point she was relatively inured to goblin outbursts, having interacted with the creatures off and on for years. Worrying that enough of her neighbors might be home by this hour to take issue with the noise, she resolved to send the little buggers on their loud, bickering way as quickly as possible.
"Well, let me just write my reply, and then you'd better hurry back to the King to give it to him," she said as she rummaged for a pen, relieved at the easy excuse.
She fished up her trusty ballpoint from the pocket of her messenger bag and almost began writing, but after a moment of staring at the page, put the black pen aside and went back to her desk. If any occasion was appropriate for her favorite, but seldom-used fountain pen and its bright amethyst ink, it was surely this one. Fountain pen retrieved, she wrote out a brief note underneath Jareth's post script in her strong, even hand.
"Thank you for the invitation. I'd love to come. – Sarah"
She'd accept, but she'd be damned if she was going to match his florid prose.
Sarah carefully folded the letter – it fell back into neat creases with little effort – and handed it back to Widget, who gleefully stuffed it in his knapsack.
"We see you later, lady-Sarah!" he said as he slung the sack onto his back.
"Yes, later! Remember, chickens is not for eating!" Vix reminded her.
Woobie looked down his long nose at the other two in what seemed to be an attempt to act superior, but fell rather short of the mark. "Hurry, hurry! King make you both boggy-heads if we not get lady-Sarah's note back to him."
Widget made a noise that was a cross between a snort and a squeak as he opened the window and stood on the sill. "King make YOU boggy-head too, silly Woob- " he said as he jumped, his words cut off abruptly at what Sarah assumed was his transition into the world of the Underground. Vix and a very huffy Woobie followed suit, the latter shaking his gnarled fist at nothing in particular as he jumped.
Sarah closed the sash behind them with a heavy sigh.
Finally.
She took the neglected, steaming kettle from the stove to make her much-delayed cup of tea, glad for a bit of peace at last.
She still was not entirely sure what had made her decide to accept the invitation so quickly, and that worried her to no minor degree. The denizens of the Underground had remained a very tangible – and often quite intrusive – presence in her life ever since she defeated the Labyrinth as a teenager. There had been only a single repeat encounter with Jareth himself, right before she left for college, in which he…
…Come to think of it, she had never thought very hard about what, exactly, he had been trying to accomplish on that visit. She had been eighteen, and the only appreciable change that the three years between encounters with Jareth had wrought on her attitude had been to make her even more stubborn and sure of herself, if that was possible. Jareth had come in owl form on a night when the rest of her family was out late, and sat on her windowsill. In his own immaculately beautiful form, he once again wore the grand cape of white feathers, and he had spoken in circles of games and second chances. She had not understood his point, but she had been so certain that he was just sore about losing Toby to her. And so she had argued without knowing the game they played, quite sure that the appropriate course of action was to petulantly disagree with and shoot down anything and everything that he said.
Needless to say, it had not gone well. Sarah winced at the memory, chagrined now by the imperviousness she had shown toward his initial, altogether rather reasonable attempts to communicate… though he had certainly made an ass of himself since.
After that day, the situation between them had shifted from uneasy balance to all-out goblin guerrilla warfare. Jareth's opening salvo had been a handful of goblins, the Two Hundred-Seventeenth Semiannual Chicken Derby qualifying race, and the attendant flurry of large, loud, and horrendously smelly chicken contestants.
In her backyard.
Explaining the feathers, piles of chicken crap, and occasional spiked goblin helmet that had been strewn all over the lawn when her parents returned from work had been… an interesting experience.
Just getting me ready for law school, Sarah thought with a dry chuckle. I suppose I should thank him for the on-the-spot lessons in bullshit, sometime.
Sarah had caught the next, lone goblin sent to plague her rummaging through her underwear drawer a week later. Rather than acting on her first instinct, which had been to see if Merlin would like a new chew-toy, she had bribed the little wretch – Vix – with a sugar cube, and asked him to bring a whole parcel of "underwear" back to His Majesty. She had then put on thick rubber dishwashing gloves to retrieve baby diapers from the next door neighbors' garbage – thankfully the street lamps had been out that night – wrapped the diapers in an old towel, and sent Vix on his way.
She had fancied she could hear Jareth's roar of fury from her own world as she prepared for bed an hour later. (She had also felt a tiny bit bad for Vix, but she reasoned that a bogging was a much kinder fate than her earlier impulse would have given him. Besides, if he could handle those diapers… she couldn't imagine the Bog could be that much worse!)
And so they had continued, all through college and the following year of her internship in a law firm. Sarah had swiftly gained a reputation for odd habits, talking to herself, and being almost ludicrously prone to comical mishaps. Eccentricities nonwithstanding, she had mastered the less agreeable aspects of her personality well enough by a semester into college that she always had at least a few good friends, and over the years began to consider several of the goblins as… if not friends, at least somewhat amusing nuisances.
It had been several months since Jareth had sent minions explicitly to cause mischief, but they managed enough on their own, particularly after discovering that Sarah always kept several stashes of sweet treats around wherever she was living at the time. She should never have used sugar cubes as bribes, she reflected.
Sarah found it rather surreal to now be contemplating sharing a congenial meal with the Goblin King the very next evening.
What would he say? What would she say? What little catch – because she was certain there was one somewhere – was hidden in this arrangement? How would she deal with it?
The questions chased each other in frenetic circles through Sarah's head for the better part of an hour, until she finally decided to try getting some class work done, if only to quiet the internal dialogue. That effort was only partially successful, and by nine o'clock she had given up entirely, restlessly rummaging through her kitchen with a thought to make a pumpkin pie. It seemed a suitable peace offering to bring with her tomorrow.
Hours later, Sarah fell asleep with her bedside lamp on and a book half-open on her lap, the spicy scents of cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves yet lingering in the warm air.
A/N: I'm glad so many people seemed to like the first chapter! Funny writing usually isn't my thing, so this is a bit of an experiment for me, but it's a fun one. I'd love to see your thoughts and reactions to the chapter. =)
For those who missed the pre-story message last time, Talespinner will be returning next week - this is just some sort fun for the holiday. One chapter to go on this story, or possibly two if Chapter 3 decides to get long.