Chapter 6
"Daddy! "You're home!"
"...How was school?"
"It was so great!... See! Look at what I got!"
"That's great sweetie. Is Mommy home?"
"Hmm, nope!... Daddy, are you okay?"
"What? Oh, of course I am! I'm just bummed 'cause I wanted to have dinner as a whole family, but I guess we just won't for today."
"Yeah. Mommy's been spending a lot of time at work, hasn't she?"
"Hmh. So, what do you want to eat?"
"Takeout!"
"Haha, are you sure?"
"Yeah! Let me get the menus!"
*Runs. Trips. Falls.
"...! You have to be careful!"
"I'm alright Daddy! See!"
*Gets up. Crashes into something. Falls again.
"Sar-"
"Ravie!"
Sudden yelling and shaking wrenched Ravie awake and, as she bolted up, her head crashed into something.
"Ouchy!"
Rubbing her ringing ear gingerly, Ravie then peeked open her eyes to see Mimion rubbing her cheek, her dark mud colored face wearing a tight pained expression.
"Mimion! What the heck?" Ravie exclaimed, "What are you doing?"
"Me? What is yous doing?"
"What do you mean?"
"Yous was tossin and turnin in yous sleep and was whimperin a bit."
"No I wasn't."
"Yeah yous was! And look, you cry!"
Mimion then pointed to Ravie's cheeks, and it was then when, with sudden and almost painfully clarity, Ravie felt their sticky wetness that could only be caused by tears.
While Ravie attempted to sneakily wipe them dry, Mimion very gently and very carefully, as if approaching a wounded animal, asked, "What happen?"
"Nothing." Ravie aggressively exclaimed, quickly clambering out of bed, "Maybe I ate something funny."
"And it make yous cry?" Mimion remark incredulously.
"I don't know. Maybe."
"Ravie..." Mimion faltered for a moment before quickly plunging on, "Yous couldn't have been dreaming could yous?"
"What? No!" Ravie cried out, "I couldn't have! Goblins don't dream!"
"Yeah, but you ain't a very normal goblin."
"What's that suppose to mean!"
No! I didn't means it like tat! It's, oh, It's- yous know what I means! Yous do things easily tat other goblins can'ts. I mean it's good thing!"
"Doesn't sound like one to me."
"Ravie-"
Ravie, however, wouldn't listen anymore. "I have to go to work." She grumbled, "See you later" and before Mimion could stammer out another word, Ravie had disappeared from her sight.
Stumbling her way to the castle, Ravie stubbornly fought back the stinging tears that struggled to break through as sharp stabbing pains surged through her veins. All she wanted to do was run away, or maybe hide, or at the very least curl up into a ball and cry her eyes out; but she couldn't. She didn't have the choice to do any of those options. All Ravie could do was suck it up and stagger along, fighting her way through the pain.
It didn't help that she had biting curiosity about the dream.
Oh yes, Ravie had been dreaming; she'd been dreaming for years, but she never bothered to tell anyone about it; she didn't dare tell anyone about it. Like Mimion had said, goblins cannot dream; it was practically an unspoken law written in the goblin gene and it never had been broken- until Ravie came along. If anyone was to find out, if the Goblin King was to find out: Ravie didn't even dare to wonder.
A sudden jab went through her heart, making the little Goblin nearly scream in pain. Clutching her chest, Ravie quickly staggered to a turned-over caldron , hidden in the shadows on the side of an alley. Flopping herself onto it, she sat there, taking deep breaths, and wondering what the heck was going on.
My dreams were never this much trouble before, Ravie thought miserably, the pain slowly slinking away. I use to only wake up in the middle of the night because of them, the worst thing only being the forgotten memories which would slip back into the depths of my mind the moment I went to reach for them. But now this? This pain? Where did this come from?
The only solid fact that Ravie had hold of was that it started several months ago. Several months ago was the first time that she wrench awake and was met by this strong and excruciating pain that coursed through her, everywhere all at once and it tore at her, ripped at her, was as if a monster had gotten into her bloodstream and was not trying to bite everything and anything it got it's evil fang into. This pain was tearing Ravie apart; it hurt so damn much that she had difficulty in breathing, much less walking, and then there was always the tears. These sudden tears that involuntarily flowed from her eyes, drenching her face. They were humiliating, and Ravie never knew how to turn them off or even what caused them. The pain, or the dreams?
Because the dreams too were no longer as innocent as they once had been, and they had gained a tendency of not exactly disappearing, at least not like before. Ravie could now remember colors before they faded, things she had been doing, emotions she had been feeling, and with this particular dream, Ravie could remember a voice. A voice that she knew- just knew- from somewhere; a familiar voice that had always been with her, but now she couldn't remember the owner. It was as if this knowledge was locked away somewhere, somewhere that the key had been lost long ago.
I'm going insane, Ravie thought, rubbing her clawed hands into her rough face. Better not think of this at all: there's no point, there's nothing to be done. Besides, it's not a good thing to be thinking about this when the Goblin King happens to be breathing in the same room as me. No, I need to move on. I need to forget.
But of course, Ravie would not forget; it wasn't in her nature to forget; and so Ravie went about the rest of her day, making it to the Goblin Castle with only slightly puffy red eyes, even went about conjuring up a fake happy hello upon entering the Royal Study, but never could she forget the faded dream, just begging to be released from the oubliette of her mind.
She was lucky, however, that her strange meek state remain unnoticed by the Goblin King, who he himself had thoughts running around his mind, blinding his usually sharp calculating eye. In fact, his mind seemed to be much more troubled than Ravie's: his eyes remained glued to one spot on the document he was working futilely on; his foot tapped anxiously in a choppy bad rhythmic pattern, and he suddenly seemed to obtain the curious habit of needing to check the clock upon every couple of passing minutes.
These strange new tics slowly alerted Ravie to the Goblin King's agitated state and, ignoring that voice of reason who screamed at her to leave things alone, Ravie very shyly asked:
"Do you want me to do that for you?"
It seemed as if the message took a while to compute in his mind, as his face went from blank coolness, to twisted confusion, to eyebrow raised bewilderment. When his face returned to his normal blankness, Jareth, rather coolly, replied, "No, just go back to work."
Nodding her head, Ravie returned her gaze back on her work while Jareth shifted his position in hopes that it would help him concentrate.
It didn't.
Still shooting him glances, Ravie, after deciding that being flicked in the back of the head couldn't possibly be worse than this morning ordeal, dared to ask, "What's wrong?"
It took him less time to comprehend that and Jareth, with a slightly taken aback tone, answered, "Nothing. Just go back to work."
Ravie, hit with sudden determination, very boldly remarked, "Only if you do."
Jareth's miss-matched colored eyes blinked twice at the statement before turning their gaze down to look at the green eye goblin with a puzzlement. A moment of heavy silence hung about, until, drawling out the words, Jareth hesitatively asked, "Why do you want to know?"
"Umm, maybe because I'm nosy?" Ravie replied with a weak smile.
Jareth scoffed at that , but after a moment of silence, surprised Ravie by suddenly saying, "I'm expecting a visitor today."
A visitor? In the goblin kingdom? How strange?, Ravie thought. She opened her mouth to ask just who exactly was the someone coming to this place and why, but quickly changed her mind. He probably wouldn't tell me, she sensibly thought, so instead Ravie asked:
"Why are you not looking forward to see them?"
"They're going to tell me about an obligation I have to attend." He grumbled.
"Maybe they'll forget this year?"
He chuckled humorlessly at that, saying, "I've been telling myself that for the past couple of hundreds of years, but they never do."
"When do they usually show up?"
"Hmm, well, they usually come-"
Jareth found himself rudely cut short, however, as just then the door burst open and a voice happily hollered:
"Hullo there, elder brother!"
Jumping up with surprise, Ravie's suddenly fell backwards, falling off the desk, and landing with a nasty smash on the carpet below. Rubbing her throbbing head gingerly, she then peeked her head past the desk to get a look at the visitors.
There were two strangers, one male and one female, but both obviously Fae.
The male had been the one who had come bursting through the door, shouting the gleeful greeting. He looked to be a happy-go-lucky sort of a fellow; his sandy colored hair was much shorter than the Goblin King's, reaching the tips of his pointed ears, and it was greatly disheveled. He had dark blue laughing eyes that presently stared at his so called brother with amusement while a big white perfect smile was plastered to his face. By the looks of the lines at the corners of his lips, Ravie guessed that it probably wasn't a rare sight.
The female looked almost exactly like the Goblin King with her long platinum blonde hair, sharp face, and commanding air. She was much more slimmer, however, have the perfect womanly shape and her eyes did not share the Goblin King's mismatched factor. They did resembled his light blue colored eye, though, but hers were very faded in color, glinting as if tiny pieces of ice.
After one cold look around the room, she said with a dignified manner, "Hello Jareth. How are you?"
"The same as always." Came Jareth cool reply, his eyes twinkling with amusement.
Ravie, realizing that she was completely unnoticed by the Fae, snuck off and choose to hide in a bookcase- there was no way she was going to miss this.
"I've come to tell you-" The woman started but Jareth quickly cut her off with:
"That I have to attend the ball. Yes, yes, no need to go through the whole speech, Magenta; I know it by heart."
"Well, I wouldn't have to say anything if you would simply come to the ball without us needing to come here every year to remind you." She replied hotly, all her dignity forgotten.
That's when, for the first time since the entrance, the brother spoke: "Aw, come on sis! You know that if he had a choice in the matter, he'd prefer for us to not remind him at all!" He then nudged her with a wink and she gave him one of the deadliest looks Ravie had ever seen in her lifetime.
"I see you're still as childish as ever, Griffin." Jareth said with a smirk
"You would be too, if you had the choice." Griffin jested grinningly.
"You two!" Magenta scolded, shaking her head and glaring at them, "I'm appalled that, after all these years, you still act like you're children! And one of you is a king!"
"It's better than having a stick up my ass." Griffin mumbled to himself; Ravie, however, heard and found herself needing to stuff her fist in her mouth to keep from laughing.
Jareth, on the other hand, took a completely different approach:
"It is not as if we are in the presence of company, Magenta. Anyhow, you may go ahead and tell Mother I will attend the ball, like I always have."
Magenta simply nodded her head and left the room without another word.
Clicking his tongue disapprovingly, Griffin then said to his brother, "You know, if you would just hurry up a pick a queen, you wouldn't have Mother nagging at you any longer."
"You don't honestly believe that to be true, do you?"
"Hm,yes, perhaps you are right. Then you'll have another woman nagging at you as well." Griffin joked and, with a warm goodbye, followed Magenta out the door.
Chuckling to himself, Jareth then turned his attention back to his work when a unexpected voice suddenly asked, "How come you've never said anything about having siblings?"
Stiffening with surprise, Jareth looked over to see Ravie scrambling to get back on the desk with a gleeful grin on her face.
"Oh damn, I forgot about you." He growled.
With a shrug and a happy grin, Ravie replied, "Yes, it's one of the highlights about being a Goblin. Fae often forget you're there. But, anyway, who's gonna be the new queen?"
Her grin, if were even possible, had widen even more as she watched the Goblin King stiffen to resemble a wooden plank as he seem to scold himself for keeping her about.
When he was finally capable of talking, he growled, "No one at the moment."
Ravie, however, wouldn't let it go: "Oh come one, there has to be someone! I wanna know who my queen will be! Is she nice? Is she pretty? Is she smart? What kingdom does she belong to?"
He gave her a deadly glare while Ravie fell over laughing; he then growled "I swear you're the biggest regret I am ever going to have."
"At least I do your work."
"Some days it's not enough"
He returned to work after that, and Ravie, sobering up at his statement, returned to hers at well. It was a little later on that she realized that he hadn't threatened her or commanded her to be quiet. How odd, Ravie thought with a shrug, he must really despise going to that ball.