7 Awakening
As she awoke the first thing she noticed was that she was back on the beach, and that the pain had entirely disappeared. She stood up and wiped herself off, bent down to pick up her boots and then took another look around. As she did so she remembered the vague vision of the man bending over her. She could hardly remember him now, but one thing was for sure, she had never seen him before in her life. It wasn't Jareth, of that she was certain, and she felt a wave of sorrow pass over at realisation that she still hadn't seen him.
She'd been here for hours now, she wasn't sure exactly how long, she had no watch, and what vague sense of time she'd had was now gone due to her stint of unconsciousness. It was still sunlight, but that meant nothing, in the labyrinth, time worked differently here, as did the weather and things she normally took for granted such as normal hours of sunlight. One good thing that had come out of her first visit to the labyrinth was that she had begun to appreciate everything more, stop taking things for granted. Take Toby for instance, every day she would look at him and there would be a slight twinge of pain as she realised she'd nearly lost him, but that would instantly be followed by such a sense of love that she knew she'd never lose it, she'd never lose him.
But he'd lost her.
If she was here, she couldn't be in his world, but then again she'd had that vision of the man, he wasn't here, he wasn't in the labyrinth, so maybe she wasn't either. What if she was in the hospital, her body anyway, what must Toby be going through? She couldn't even imagine what she must look like if her body was aboveground, she didn't know what they'd done to her after she'd passed out, who knows what injuries she'd sustained. She couldn't bear to think of what Toby must be going through right now, she'd either disappeared, or she was in hospital unconscious, or she was dead. What scared her more than the thought she might be dead, was the fact she didn't really know, she had no idea what was going on, so once again she was back to her search for answers.
As she looked around her she saw that the bit of beach she was stood on wasn't very long, but it was incredibly wide, it seemed to stretch on forever in either direction, covered with huge shells which were scattered everywhere. She'd never seen such a variety of shells, or in so many different colours. Just to the side of her foot was a shell about 5cm wide with a spire about 7cm tall and it was the most beautiful lilac colour. She bent down to pick it up and as she did so it stood up and started running around, as did all the others. It was only then did she notice that instead of the normal shell creatures she expected to see, each shell was inhabited by a tiny goblin, and they were all running around in random directions. For a couple of minutes she watched their strange little dance in fascination and then as suddenly as they'd started, they stopped and all crouched down still. As Sarah glanced around she realised that they'd left a path open in the sand in front of her free of any shells, that led down to the water.
Looking down in amazement she saw a tiny head poking out from under one of the shells, but as she bent down it disappeared and nothing she tried could prise that creature out of the sand. Sighing she stood back up and looked towards the water and deciding there was no other sensible course of action she began walking down the newly cleared path towards it.
When she reached the waters edge she could see the path that had been made by the shells continued under the water as a clear path through the seaweed that covered the rest of the seabed. She glanced around at the beach once more, then deciding this was the only sensible course of action, she threw all she took for granted aside and walked into the water.