A/N: At first I didn't know if I should post this onto cherish, but I decided I'd like to put a happy finale onto Gratuitous so that we get some semblance of a denouement here.
Oo((8))oO
They lay enraptured in each other's arms under a canopy of stars. Barren branches stretched up their intricate wooden lace barbs into the sweet blanket of the night. The air lived with a life all its own, a breezeless motion bringing vitality to the heart of stillness.
The intertwined pair were both in flowing velvet robes of midnight blue, shadows blurring into the edges of darkness. Only the whites of their faces, hands and busts shone out with the borrowed illumination of searing moonlight.
He had taken her out to a hidden wood many miles from the castle gates. Here only the woodsprites dared to roam. Yet, on this night, the fierce clarity of heaven's stars shunned all signs of habitation, that is, all except for the recently joined couple whose tender rustlings stirred the obsidian silence into wordless rejoicing.
She was his, as she always had been. And he was hers. Both had dreamed for years of life conjoint. At last, heaven had smiled upon their weary hearts and offered them the honeyed chalice of nuptial union.
Her head lay folded into his breast, while his hands worked their way methodically through her disheveled tresses. She could feel her being fuse with the energy emanating from his core. Tendrils of his love reached out, around and through her trembling essence. Floating in a cloud of mystical ecstasy, her body spoke in simple sighs at the feast of his tenderness welling from each unassuming caress.
They had reached a place beyond all blind passion, beyond all self-consuming desire. This was the house of true union. Not the naïve, thoughtless and mostly fortuitous sort of casual communion. Rather, their newfound union bore witness to a long journey of trials, thwarted hopes, throttled yearnings, burning prayers, and the long and humbling test of time. Here at last, they had entered the temple of mutual awe and gratitude, where two breaths merge as one against the all consuming tide of the cosmos. Their abode was now the sanctuary of peace and divine indwelling.
Sarah laughed as Jareth drew a slender hand down her warm cheek.
"If I believed in such things, I would say that in another life I met you and prayed to God to walk as your companion for the rest of eternity. And I suppose it is all right for me to speak of servanthood, slavehood, too. As long as we realize we are slaves and servants of God, and that sometimes serving God includes in a special way serving the one beside you."
He kissed her.
"I'm not afraid of forever, you know. Life, death, the worlds to come—it's all one. And I am infinitely grateful to know you are my companion and that I am yours."
He kissed her again.
"I've never imagined eternity with another. My soul could not see it until it saw you. Until it came to recognize the soul you carry within your sacred breast."
They kissed.
"And I tell you, I can feel it. I can feel how life calls out to us, from us. A wise man told me once that when a man looks at his wife-to-be he can see his children following after her in his mind's eye. I never understood it. But sometimes I feel as if a soul is asking for us to help it into existence. Can you believe it?"
He folded her tightly in his arms, humming a moment before whispering a poem into her ear.