Hours passed as one goblin after another rose to face her at her stand and pose a series of inane and ridiculous questions.
The first goblin had been a short, round, squat little entity with a bulbous nose and wild white jets of hair standing perpendicular to its spotted cranium.
Sauntering crudely up to challenge her composure, it held its breath a moment before blurting out in a surprisingly high pitched tone,
"What do you do when you've already sat down on the John only to discover there's no toilet paper in the privy?"
Sarah's eyes had bugged and she'd almost died from an instantaneous fit of coughing. Regrouping her wits, she'd then turned instinctively to Jareth as if to appeal the relevance of such a question.
He smiled venomously and proclaimed with absolute rigidity, "Answer the question, Sarah."
So she did. She answered every question brought to her. No matter how inane, mindless and embarrassing it happened to be.
At first she'd lost all sense of orientation. Then, she came to understand this was part of Jareth's revenge. His hawk eyes scanned her every motion of discomfort and pained forbearance. He drank her suffering. Gripping the path of her vision as it cut across his figure, he held her transfixed as she stammered between breaks in the questioning. She understood Jareth desired her to see him watching her in bitter silence. This part of the trial wasn't about content. It was about endurance.