Thy Bog Overfloweth
Chapter Nine
As it turned out, Faolan kept Jareth pretty damn busy, and between escaping the dorm to explore the city and running around Underground, the two were kept out of Sarah's hair enough for her to work on her classes... and go plotting with Chame.
But it was mostly school work, honest.
In fact, the only rules Sarah imposed upon the two Fae-- because yes, she knew all about Faolan, Jareth hadn't figured that out yet, but she knew-- was that they had to use a glamour to look human (in Faolan's case) and canine (in Jareth's case)... hey wait! Reverse that. Normal-dog-look for Faolan, normal-guy-look for Jareth. Right.
The second rule was that they were never, ever, ever allowed to go to see Star Wars anymore. After three days of Star Wars quotes and puns on Jareth's part, and Wookie imitations from Faolan, they were Restricted with a capitol R.
... Sarah had made the mistake of telling them they could watch movies or listen to music on her computer, so long as they kept the volume low. Of course, at the time, she hadn't known that Jareth had borrowed the complete Monty Python's Flying Circus box set from one of her dorm mates, Rachel, who lived in the room next to Sarah's.
Said dorm mate had been stapling posters, advertizing LOST: Monty Python DVDs. Please return to Room 69. It really isn't funny, people. Those were a gift! The poster even had a picture of Lemming of the BDA on it. Sarah had stopped to talk to her neighbor about it, actually. The conversation went something along the lines of:
Sarah: Someone took your DVDs?
Rachel: Yeah. Can you believe it? I need those DVDs for a paper-- I'm writing an essay on the way Monty Python's satire can illuminate the cultural differences between England and America. Of all the times for them to disappear... I'd lend them out if someone asked me, but I need at least four specific disks!
Sarah: ...Wow. That sounds like an... interesting topic. Which class is that for?
Rachel: Oh, it's for the persuasive essay in Creative Writing. Didn't you say your topic was the biases in faerie tales?
Sarah: You actually remember that?
Rachel: I remember everything I don't need to. Whatever would be convenient for me to remember, I forget. It is quite possible that I just moved these around my bookshelf and can't remember it...
Sarah: Well, at least you can always rent them if they don't show up.
Rachel: You know, I didn't think of that. Thanks, Sarah!
Sarah watched her neighbor walk down the hall, presumably to the video store. She also saw something, the faded color of ash, flutter around Rachel's shoulder before perching upon it.
Slightly spooked, Sarah had burst into her room... only to find Jareth trying to say "Johann Gambolputty de von Ausfern-schpleden-schlitter-crasscrenbon-fred-digger-dingle-dangle-dongle-dungle-burstein-von-knacker-thrasher-apple-banger-horowitz-ticolensic-grander-knotty-spelltinkle-grandlich-grumblemeyer-spelterwasser-kurstlich-himbleeisn-bahnwagen-gutenabend-bitte-ein-nurnburger-bratwustle-gerspurten-mitz-weimache-luber-hundsfut-gumberaber-shonedanker-kalbsfleisch-mittler-aucher von Hautkopft of Ulm" in two breaths. Note the trying. He kept losing his second wind just after "luber" and he was turning more than slightly red.
It didn't take Sarah long to figure out how Jareth must have come across such a name (but come to think of it, she was very, very glad he hadn't known of it when they'd named Faolan five days ago), and then Sarah started turning more than slightly red herself... but from anger, not lack of breath.
"It's you!"
"Oh, deities, Sarah, not this again. Yes, I am the Goblin King, can we get on with our lives now?"
"No, not that, you idiot! You're the one who stole Rachel's Monty Python DVDs!"
Jareth pretended to gasp in amazement. "Your chief weapon must be your keen observations! ...And your logical thought process! Your TWO chief weapons must be your keen observations, logical thought process, and ability to point out the obvious! Wait... Your THREE chief weapons must be your keen observations, logical thought process, ability to point out the obvious, and your sterling moral codes! ... AMOUNG your chief weapons are--"
"Shut your festering gob, you heap of owl droppings!"
"So you are a Monty Python fan!" Jareth grinned widely, and Faolan's tail thumped against the bed, making it shake and throwing Jareth off balance.
"That's beside the point. You went sneaking around other people's dorm rooms and stole stuff! What else did you take?"
"Well, we didn't take anything else, but Slidge took four assorted socks for his cousin."
"Go return the damn DVDs, ass. And you--" Sarah turned to Faolan. "We just had this conversation about stealing stuff, didn't we?"
Faolan's ears drooped, and his tail stilled as he nodded.
"Then why didn't you bring him to heel, hmm?" Jareth started sputtering from where he was packing up the set of DVDs.
"Do I look like a leashed dog? I am not something to be 'brought to heel,'" Jareth snapped. Faolan rumbled, hiding his face behind his paws.
"Am I talking to you? No. I am talking to Faolan. Go put those DVDs back where you found them, now."
Jareth and Faolan looked at each other and wondered just when Sarah learned to look scary.
"Sarah, when is the fourth semester over?"
Startled, she replied, "May sixteenth. But what's that have to do with anything? You're just trying to change the subject!"
"No, no, of course I'm not--" damn right I am "-- I was just thinking you might be lashing out because you're under pressure. And I know it's stressful, but Sarah, yelling at me (and Faolan) isn't going to help anything. You need a vacation."
"I just got back from Spring Break, dummy. Why did you think I was home?"
"... That doesn't change anything. You are in a very stressful environment, but Sarah, there are ways of working around that without yelling or having your head explode."
"I think I know a couple," Sarah said, absent-mindedly tossing a paperweight from hand to hand.
"And none of them include violence!" Jareth yelped.
"Damn, there goes my lot. Back to the point: return the DVDs. Move it, kingie."
Jareth grumbled, but disappeared with the box of DVDs. Sarah looked at Faolan. "So why didn't you stop his Royal Idiocy?"
Faolan shrugged.
Sarah woke late that night to find herself Underground. Looking about, she wondered sleepily, where the hell did my dorm go? Maybe it ran off... Dorms randomly run away? Ehh...
Then she spotted Faolan and Jareth playing fetch with a laughing Goblin, and realized they must have come here for a midnight run or something. The Goblin noticed her looking at the Undergrounders and waved merrily whilst flying through the air.
"Sarah-lady! You play, too?" The Goblin yelled this as it flew further away. Sarah shook her head to clear some of the fuzziness from it, then dragged herself up to go join the boys. And the Goblin.
"Now four to play!" The Goblin, hanging comfortably from Faolan's mouth, continued, "We play Annie!"
"Who's Annie?"
"Not who, Sarah, Annie is a what. A long time ago, one of the wished away taught the Goblins how to play Blind Man's Bluff. They've adapted the game a little, and they call it Annie after the wished away."
"So is Annie any fun?" Sarah asked the Goblin.
"Annie pretty neat," the Goblin told her, shaking his head vigorously. "No rules 'cept nobody has eyes open!"
"Since you thought of it, you get to be the Annie, Gobling," Jareth told the little fellow. The Goblin-- Gobling?-- yipped with joy and raced off to start counting.
"Fi'teen, fou'teen, thi'teen..."
"I thought they were Goblins..?" Sarah queried.
"Twelve, 'leven, ten..."
"Young Goblins are called Goblings. It was either that or Goblets. They choose Gobling. Anyway, once our dear "Annie" finishes counting, you have to close your eyes. Then you run around and hope to hell you don't trip over the Annie. It's interesting to play, but much more fun to watch."
"Eit... Eit... What's affer eit?"
"Oh? And how would you know, if you're playing?"
"Ooh! Right! Se'en, si'..."
"Who says I always play? Stop by on a Tuesday after the renovations are done. The Goblins have a weekly Annie tournament."
"Two, one! Ziik gonna get you all!" Sarah promptly closed her eyes and stepped sideways slowly, making sure she didn't make any noise. Faolan, too, closed his eyes, but with the wolf's hearing and sense of smell, the loss of sight didn't matter much.
Jareth stayed right where he was, one eye open, the cheater.
The little Gobling, Ziik, found Faolan first, mostly because Faolan decided to follow Ziik. Sarah was found next, if only because Jareth was cheating and because she'd gotten stuck in what seemed to be a giant spider's web. Jareth didn't get caught at all, because the Gobling, the girl, and the Fae wolf got tangled in the web and couldn't reach him.
"You're cheating, Ziik. That means the game is over. Sarah, how the hell did you get stuck upside-down?"
"Hell if I know. Hey, wait... This is a spider web! Where are the spiders? Are they going to eat us?"
"The spiders aren't going to eat you, since there are no spiders. That's a dream web. You wove it while you were sleeping."
"I did all of this?" Sarah sounded amazed.
"And in pretty color, too!" Ziik laughed as he scampered down the web. It was, indeed, a beautiful green-silver.
It was also quite determined not to let Sarah go. It took Jareth and Faolan nearly twenty minutes to detangle her, while about thirty or so Goblins stopped by to watch. Jareth remarked loudly that Sarah had always been reluctant to let go of her dreams, but it now seemed they were reluctant to let go of her.
Sarah's response had been to curse and thrash, trying to free herself. The dream-web wove itself tighter around her.
"Jareth? What will this do if it eats me?"
"I already told you, nothing is going to eat you! All the web will do is weave around you, probably forming a cloak of some sort and acting as a sort of... armor, I guess, is the closest word to it. Anyway, it would just pull around you and become barely visible, like mist. The only problem we have with this web is that you're in it upside-down and from that height, it would be rather dangerous."
Having extracted Sarah from the web, Jareth declared the outing to be over and teleported himself, Faolan, and Sarah to the hall outside the dorm room. Sarah started to ask why he hadn't gone directly into the room when something grey and fluttery flickered at the edge of her vision. Startled, she jumped back-- into Jareth, who'd been sketching a rune on the door. With the rune skewed, two warning pulses of deep purple light flashed before a wave of equally night-shaded purple flame rolled over Jareth and Faolan. It would have hit Sarah, too, if she hadn't tripped as she fell back. As it was, the two Fae were left smoking, singed, and (in the case of Jareth's hair), still aflame.
"Should I be more worried about the fire or the mist?" Sarah was half-amused, half-wary. Jareth summoned a crystal to rid himself, Faolan, and the hallway of scorch marks.
"The fire probably wouldn't harm you, and I don't know what mist you're talking about."
"The mist seeping through the door there!"
"I don't see any mist... Sarah, to whom does that dorm room belong?"
"It's Rachel's. Why?"
"Is she, perchance, a writer, or an artist?"
"Yes..."
"Then you don't need to worry about the mist. It's the... magical manifestation of creativity; it shrouds the artist in question to keep their muse from faltering and helps the artist to focus upon their work and not the real world. What I am concerned about is why you can see it... Most Undergrounders can't unless they're bards or Muses, from what I've heard. I think it may be time to teach you some simple magicks."
"... You can start teaching tomorrow. I'm going back to sleep now."
Oro: (runs in from way far back in the background): ... ... It's-
Quill: Thy Bog Overfloweth's chapterly disclaimer.
Sarah: She doesn't own the Underground.
Jareth: Or the Labyrinth.
Quill: That's in the Underground, stupid.
Oro: ANYWAY, I also don't own the characters from the movie, nor any Monty Python references, nor the three David Bowie references hidden in this chapter. The lines are straight from the lyrics, so I doubt I was very clever at hiding them... Miss Selah, thank you kindly for the music recommendations! I did like the songs.
Quill: Wrap it up now, lady.
Oro: Hush, you. (turns to readers) Happy Sunday! Enjoy reading this while my teachers kill me with over-the-weekend-homework!