Thy Bog Overfloweth

Chapter 3

Sarah really has the oddest dreams, Jareth mused. It was the end of the second day- actually, the beginning of the third, but it was still only a little past midnight, so it could count either way.

Sarah had waited until nearly eleven to retreat to the couch, and the two had spent much of the time with amusing banter and (fairly) friendly arguing. Most of the arguing was about what they'd do once Sarah returned to school in a week and a half; she suggested he stay in her room at the house and he suggested he stay at her dorm as a cat or some such animal. She asked what he'd do all day, he gave her a very wicked grin and told her he'd make sure that at least some of the furniture survived, and so on.

He'd woken about five minutes ago, suddenly ravenous and contemplating what to do about it. Sarah had taught him to use the microwave, she promised to teach him about the stove tomorrow; he could look in the cool-box and see what there was to eat. Having made his decision, he'd traipsed downstairs, ready to storm the kitchens...

Only to stop and feel guilty as he saw the couch and watched Sarah shift uncomfortably on it.

She was asleep, naturally, but her restlessness- caused as much by her location as her dreams- was more than enough to make him feel bad.

And I'm going to be staying here for how long? We shall have to work out something else tomorrow... Jareth stopped and rethunk his thoughts.

Next up, Jimmeney Cricket, he groused, but he made a mental note to talk to Sarah about their sleeping arrangements in the morning anyway.

It was around then that he became curious enough to look in on Sarah's dreams. As the King of the Goblins and the Guardian of the Labyrinth, he was expected to use people's dreams against them. For him to do this, he was granted power of the realm of dreams and nightmares; this was not restricted to 'seeing' the subconscious stories after the person at hand had woke. And so, after having made himself a sandwich (peanut butter and ham, in case you were wondering. A Goblin delicacy...) he settled down on the chair across from Sarah's couch to 'tune in' to Sarah's dream...

Which brought him to the aforementioned thought, Sarah has the oddest dreams.

Most people, he'd found, dreamt in muted colors and the image was skewed, blurry, with the annoying tendency to fade almost completely at random intervals. Had he known about it, Jareth would have likened Sarah's dream to an HD television documentary. Since he had no idea what the hell the author was talking about there, Jareth settled for describing the dream as "crystal clear and blaringly bright."

The dream could be summarized thusly:

Karen told Sarah (from Sarah's point of view, but the dream later flickered between that and third person) to go clean out her (Sarah's) closet. Sarah, for some odd reason dressed up as a giant chicken, had argued that she didn't have time because she had to get to work. Karen promptly informed Sarah that if she ever wanted to see her precious books again, she would march up stairs and clean her closet, "this INSTANT, young lady!"

Sarah, fearing for her books, flew upstairs using the chicken costume. She entered her room and nothing seemed out of place except the owl that was hanging from the ceiling upside down and laughing at her. As she pulled open the closet doors, however, she was surprised to find herself in the Goblin City. Karen chose this moment in her dream to swoop in and tell Sarah to get hopping, the closet wasn't going to clean itself out. Sarah protested weakly that to clean the city would surely make her late for work, and the owl laughed so hard it fell off the ceiling.

Shaking his head at the sheer insanity that Sarah came up with, Jareth finished his sandwich and reached over to shake her awake. Sarah woke with a start and blinked blearily up at him for a few seconds, her brain trying to piece together the yes, that's Jareth, and the yes, he woke me up, and the yes, he does seem to be laughing at me... The last wasn't hard to believe, so it followed that the first two were also true. That didn't mean she wasn't still confused; knowing the what of it didn't mean she knew the why of it.

Lying with ease, Jareth 'explained' himself by saying, "I forgot how to use the microwave."

Just because I have developed a conscious doesn't mean she has to know that.

In the end, she'd just made popcorn and they both sat in the kitchen and ate it. She then proceeded to shoo him away from the couch- which he was chivalrously proclaiming his so she would return to her bed- in order to sleep for another seven hours. She woke to stumble into the kitchen again, commandeer the coffee pot and two mugs, and stumble upstairs to her room.

She found Jareth perched on what looked like an enormous feather pillow, and wondered briefly why it was in her room, but the coffee had yet to be consumed and the pillow/bean-bag chair didn't really register.

"I bring tidings of joy," Sarah announced. Jareth looked up and she lifted the coffee pot. "It comes in the form of a caffeinated beverage." Jareth snorted, but he took one of the mugs from her, so Sarah supposed he was one of the few people capable of dealing with sarcasm before breakfast.

"So what's today's schedule? Baking and work?"

Sarah nodded in answer to his question as she poured coffee. She then gestured to the pillow thing with her mug. "Where'd Poofzilla come from?"

That had Jareth raising an eyebrow, but he replied by summoning a crystal and dropping it, and the end result was another 'Poofzilla'.

Sarah nodded sagely and flopped on Poofzilla Jr. "You ever baked anything?" Jareth shook his head. "Then this should be amusing. Karen and Dad already left, and Toby is at his friend's house, so once we're up and dressed, we'll get started. We can leave it to cool while I'm at work, but we'll have to put it somewhere so Merlin doesn't get it. Sound good?"

"I understood very little of that, so I'm going to go with 'yes'."

"Good enough."

"Assistant Cook Jareth, read the first direction on the box."

"One: Preheat oven to three hundred forty five degrees Fahrenheit, and prepare two circular pans for use," Jareth recited dramatically.

"Good. Watch this." Sarah turned the knob on the left to 'Bake' and the knob on the right to four hundred degrees.

"Uh, Sarah-" Jareth started, but Sarah cut him off.

"The oven's really old- Karen keeps saying she'll go out and get a new one and never does- so when you bake something you have to add fifteen degrees, and when you broil something you have to add twenty five degrees. It's not crucial to remember that since I doubt you'll be baking much, much less without me around, but it's still fairly important." Jareth nodded, and read aloud the next step.

"Two: Add water, vegetable oil, and eggs to cake mix in a medium bowl. Stir for two minutes or until most of the lumps are gone. Seems fairly straight-forward. We need..."

"Two eggs, one-third cup of vegetable oil and one-half cup of water. It's really sad that I have that memorized." Sarah was already pulling out the measuring cups. "The eggs are in the refrigerator, could you pull them out?" A glass bowl made its way to the counter beside the measuring cups. Jareth set the eggs down and watched Sarah take the lid off of the vegetable oil- he wasn't sure when she'd got it, he was busy wondering how mad Sarah would be if he started to juggle the eggs and accidentally dropped one or two.

Turns out, he didn't need to plan trouble, because it came in the form of a Goblin.

When Slidge showed up, Sarah let him sit on the counter, as long as he didn't touch anything. Slidge had agreed to this, but he'd knocked over the oil while trying to watch Sarah fill the measuring cup with water. Jareth swooped in and recapped the oil, but not before a lot of it spilled on the floor. Sarah stepped right into the spilled oil and grimaced, but told the others that she'd clean it up later. She let Slidge crack the eggs, and had Jareth mix the batter. She managed to pour the mixture in the non-stick pans and slide them in the oven, but the journey back to the counter, to turn on the timer, was far more eventful.

Sarah slipped on the oil and went down hard, and while flailing, she hit the wooden spoon that Jareth had used to stir the cake batter. Acting somewhat like a self-shooting catapult, the spoon arced through the air and hit Jareth on the nose, batter-side first. Slidge laughed so hard that he fell off the counter, falling on Sarah, who was attempting to get up, and throwing her off balance so she fell again.

Slidge was, at this point, laughing so hard he couldn't breathe, and Sarah soon joined in when she saw the look on Jareth's face. If you can't imagine it on your own, here's a hint: imagine the Goblin King, standing tall and proud, with an expression that is startled and slightly dumbstruck, rapidly approaching pissed off, with cake batter- the chocolate stuff- splattered across his face, most of it had hit the bridge of his nose but some had been flung outward, so he looked like a dotty raccoon. Now imagine how the spoon fell, hitting Jareth's clean, grey-white shirt several times on the way down.

Yeah, that glare was developing very quickly- or at least, it was until he caught sight of Sarah and Slidge and had to laugh at them. This set Sarah and Slidge into fresh peals of laughter, and the cycle continued until Sarah asked Jareth to help her up.

"Ya alright?" Slidge asked Sarah when she winced while standing.

"I think my ass is one giant bruise now, but it's nothing too bad..."

Sarah had shoved Jareth in the shower and threw his shirt in the washing machine. Since the cake was done before the dryer- and Jareth, which Sarah wondered over; he didn't have that much hair but he took longer showers than she did- Sarah pulled it out and let the cakes cool in the pans on the oven. Jareth sauntered into the kitchen not ten minutes after she'd taken the cakes out, wearing his pants and an oversized t-shirt she had. It barely fit him, but his shirt would be done soon.

"Almost ready?" He asked, and she nodded.

"I'll put the cake in a container soon, and then we'll grab your shirt and go."

Fifteen minutes later, Jareth was once again forced into the evil thing Sarah called a car.

"Why can't we walk?"

"Because it would take too long."

"I could teleport us there, you know."

"Yeah, wouldn't that be fun to explain to my boss. My friend poofed us over here using magic, which is why you didn't hear me walk in and why my car isn't in the parking lot. It really isn't that bad, Jareth. You don't even get car sick."

The muffled thumping that she'd heard the other day hadn't returned, but Sarah listened carefully all the same. Slidge wasn't making that an easy task, since he was following her around and making faces at the customers and such, and on more than one occasion she had to bite her tongue to keep from laughing at one of Slidge's remarks.

Jareth looked up from the book when he heard the doorknob start to turn; it wasn't Sarah approaching and he wasn't sure who it was otherwise. He did the only thing he could think of:

He turned owl.

Which was why, approximately five minutes later, Sarah was ranting.

"Of all the stupid things to deal with... Why this? WHY? And why NOW?"

Sarah's ranting continued as she carried a very disgruntled owl through the parking lot.

"And it just HAD to be my boss who walked in. Sarah, there's a rabid owl in the break room! Get rid of it Sarah! Pah. Rabid owl, my ass. You weren't even doing anything..." Sarah opened the car and tossed Jareth in. He screeched at her, and she glared. "Stay here, got it?" When the owl nodded, she tossed a book in. "If you have to turn human or whatever, make sure no one's around to see you." Sarah then turned and stormed back into the building to be lectured again as Jareth settled back to read 'A Nameless Witch'.

"You have frosting in your hair," Jareth informed Sarah as she (somewhat sloppily) used a tube of frosting to spell out HAPPY BIRTHDAY TOBY.

"Damn it," she growled, and pushed the offending hair back behind her ear with the back of her hand- or tried to, anyway. It didn't quite work, and Jareth smirked at her obvious frustration. Then he took pity on her and gathered her hair into a ponytail for her, magicking up a hair holder.

"Better?"

"Yeah, thanks," Sarah told him, then finished the Y in TOBY and asked, "What d'ya think?"

"It's not as crooked as it would be if I tried, so I guess that's good."

"'Not as crooked'? Are you one of those people with really messy handwriting?" Sarah was grinning.

"...Maybe." It's not like I can help it, Jareth added in his head.

Sarah's grin widened. "Yeah, uh-huh. I bet."

"Oh, and I suppose YOUR handwriting is perfect?"

"No, but it's probably a lot better than whatever chicken-scratch you've got."

"Unfortunately, you are right." My handwriting looks like the scratches of a chicken being chased by Goblins...

"Of course I'm right, otherwise you would have been writing with frosting, now wouldn't you?"

Jareth watched as Sarah as she cut the paper to wrap Toby's presents, then smirked as he watched her struggle with the double-sided tape. It kept sticking to her hands, and when she went to get it off, it would stick to her other hand, and she'd start all over, with the opposite hand. He sat back on Poofzilla Jr. and grinned when Sarah glared half-heartedly at him.

"You could help, ya know," she growled, and Jareth waved a hand lazily.

"But it is so much more amusing to watch you try and figure it out yourself."

"Oh, yeah, well see if I save you any birthday cake tomorrow!" And with that, Sarah grabbed her pajamas, tossed the wrapped presents in the closet, and marched off to the bathroom to get ready for bed... well, started to, anyway.

Sarah was turning the knob to escape to the Batcave to change into her superhero outfit (i.e., change into her p.j.s so she could go to bed) for the night when Jareth called out for her to wait. She looked back at him, raising an eyebrow in a silent, well, what d'you want?

She noticed the breath he took before speaking, and the slight hesitation in his voice.

"I do not mean to undermine your hospitality, but it reflects poorly upon me as a guest to put you out of your room on my behalf."

That's appropriately kingly, isn't it? Jareth wondered. Then, It damn well better be, I'm not going to repeat it!

To both their surprise, Sarah began to laugh.

"A sleepover with the Goblin King! Oh, jeez. Well, what would you suggest for where I sleep?"

"Your bed, of course."

"And you?"

A small crystal was all that was necessary to fuse Poofzilla and Poofzilla Jr. to make...

"MegaPoofzilla!" Something about her own statement had Sarah laughing again. She shook her head and grabbed an oversized t-shirt and baggy sweatpants, still snickering. Then she stopped and looked thoughtful.

"What do you wear for pajamas? You're always dressed when I come in. Do you just sleep in your clothes or something?"

"Of course not. You go get dressed in the bathroom, I will change in here."

"Fine, fine, fine. Mr. Bossy." Sarah stuck her tongue out and dodged the pillow he threw at her- he's starting to pick up on my bad habits, isn't he?- and retreated into the bathroom.

When she emerged, Jareth was lounging regally on MegaPoofzilla, wearing a pair of navy sleeping pants that looked like they could be made of silk. The overall effect was somewhat ruined by the little owls that were sown on it.

Oro: glares Between you two and Quill, this chapter has been much harder to write than it could have been.
Jareth: So?
Sarah: sighs Oro doesn't own Labyrinth. Or its characters (us). She does own Quill, though he might protest using the word 'own'. Quill is the nameless muse Oro found. Obviously, Oro named him.
Oro: Speaking of nameless, I don't own 'A Nameless Witch', either. And Quill is weird. He even looks sarcastic, as much as an owl can look sarcastic.
Jareth: I manage sarcasm very well as an owl.
Sarah: Really? Fascinating.