I know it has been a LONG while since I posted anything, but have been working on all the short stories that were bouncing around my head and numerous note pads (Thank you HRKW...they were handy) and finally decided to post a few. I am still working on the sequel to Corine, and am slowly working on the sequel to Thea (Kael's story), but the mind block is protesting...loudly. So, here is a little something in the meantime I have been convinced into posting – a little daydreaming on my part based on the fantasy film Labyrinth – and I hope you enjoy (but please don't nick or post elsewhere! lol)
Katheryn Ann ~ Sacrificedangel xxx
~~~
Falling...every time I was fell. His voice forever rang out in the background as I faded far from his touch and his magic and fell through the veiled wall between his world and mine. I fell through time; I fell through his power, and slipped from his grasp and each time I landed with a jarring thump that had affected me down to my soul.
Tonight seemed to be no different than the many nights over the years I had awoken from that same dream. That feeling you get whilst you drift between waking and sleep, that moment when your equilibrium is tested and your body awakens to stop you toppling to the ground, is how I woke with infuriating regularity. The wind was battering the trees against my open window, casting an eerie glow from the moon alongside my bed as its chill ruffled along the covers. Always when the wind blew harshly, always when the moon was full and bright against the night's sky, did my delusions swamp my consciousness and bring his voice, the pain on his face back to the forefront of my mind.
Settling back against my pillows with a thump, I groaned in frustration. I had thought I was getting better, gaining control over my imagination. Certainly I no longer talked to beings that were not there, could no longer hear their silent pleas and even though it brought about an intense feeling of foreboding with each one I ignored, I reminded myself of my stepmother's promise to have me permanently committed. Their appearances in my daily life lessened as the days went by – the strength of the apparitions dwindled, my delusions waning - though occasionally, I would see something out the corner of my eye, a flash of colour, an object would move...a voice I would recognise from my dreams.
Mentally shaking my head at my silliness, I sighed and sat up to deal with the window just as my fingers brushed something soft at my side.
Silky and silvery-white, it made my skin tingle where it touched my palm, a soft touch moving on an even path up my arm and across my collarbone to where it rested next to my heart, the heat of it a pleasant weight. The touch was gone as swiftly as it had come, and I felt its loss acutely.
The flawless feather seemed to glow in the moonlit darkness and as I held it up before me, the open doors of my window closed softly and silent on a whisper.
Happy Birthday Sarah...
~~~
In the darkness, as his magic waned, he lunged once more at his foe. Their blood made their grip slick, unsteady as they fought within the stone confines of his throne room. Her belief in him had faded; he began to lose his strength, his magic since the moment she had begun to ignore his call to her. He knew he could not defeat his enemy now; the last of his power was leaving him to protect her...to make her strong.
She was the key to his kingdom now...
The moon's glow caught the twisting smirk of his brother's lips as he caught the tail end of his thought in the expression on his face and understood finally what he had done.
"You will regret that, brother." Shade sneered as he wrapped his hand around Jareth's throat. "I will find her..."
The threat echoed in both their minds as Jareth's rage slipped from his control and with the last of his powers, he threw them both through the window and out into the world.
The human world.
And into the mercies of a woman who no longer believed in him.
~~~
"Sarah, your new agent would like to know if you will be attending the unveiling tonight?" Aster called through to my studio and I tensed. I had been painting for nearly three years in the solitude of my first apartment since I had left the smothering abode of my father and stepmother, but now after selling the first batch of paintings I had my very own studio to work from...and the acoustics were taking a little getting used to. Aster was only about ten feet away yet her gentle call had sounded like a bellowing ox.
"I won't be there for the unveiling; I will come afterwards though, to the mingling part." I replied the brush between my teeth as I used a sponge to soak up the mess I had made when she had startled me with her call. "Langton knows I hate standing there watching their expressions. They all look at me as though I am nuts."
As though I am still nuts
, I silently corrected.
My stepmother had tried to have me returned to their home to watch over me the first time she had seen my work, concerned...nay, convinced my delusions were coming back to haunt me. I couldn't blame her. The canvas she had walked in on me working on was of a giant golden clock, with thirteen hours adorning it with only three minutes left to go and small deformed looking creatures smirking from behind it. That canvas hung at the end of my hallway upstairs where I now lived...I had not been able to will myself to sell it. I felt it was too important somehow.
It had been the morning of my eighteenth birthday I had awoken to find a silvery-white feather beside me in my bed and a whispered voice of a male long since buried in the back of my mind, teasing my senses, awakening a longing inside me I had long since thought was dead. Holding that feather, tight within my grasp as the sun rose, I knew I could no longer keep it all at bay. That voice was real, that feather was real...somehow. Even as my rational side fought it, reminding me of all the doctors, pills and appointments I had endured since my father found me talking to thin air at sixteen. I hadn't thought anything of it, nor thought to conceal it since it began the year before. I had drawn such comfort from my companions...and was then taught to ignore them.
I wondered if I was being punished now. I was nearly twenty one, and ever since I had begun to believe the possibility of their reality, it was as though they now shut me out – refusing to come to me. So now, I painted. Every day since I packed my belongings on the morning of my eighteenth birthday and left my father's home, I had painted. At first it was just the hands of that golden clock. They had tormented me for weeks, after so long of shutting out the visions, the dreams, I struggled to focus on the image that had been branded in my mind. Slowly, the fog had begun to clear, and I could see the clock, see where the hands lay and with every stroke of my brush, my apprehension grew. Bit by bit, the painting was slowly completed, until there was only one small corner left to do...and yet, when I had woken, I found I had completed it in my dreams. His shadow, stood proud and dominant behind his clock. I could not see his features, but I would know his stance, his bearing anywhere.
And then something weird happened. The morning I turned nineteen in my first apartment, I woke to the same sight, that painting at the end of my bed; the morning light illuminating the shadow of him...he was closer. I jumped from my bed and rushed towards it, there was no doubt in my mind. He was closer, though instead of standing proud and strong, the shadow was stooped; grasping the edge of the canvas in what I felt was pain. That was not the only change. The seven goblins that smiled out from the canvas were now only three, their clothes haggard, their sly expressions wary rather than mischievous hiding behind a now black clock.
A clock which only had two minutes left to go.
I spent that entire day begging my imagination to explain it, shouting to every corner of the room for the flashes of movement I used to see – beg them to show themselves and end my confusion. But none other came. My dreams lay in blissful darkness, as though all colour had leeched from the sleeping world I used to be thrown into, and I would no longer wake with that falling start as the world came into mornings light. I would wake with a weight on my heart that I could not explain.
The clock only had one minute to go now, and was now a vivid sparkle of gold once more, though losing its sheen, fading to the pitch it had been this past year...as though somewhere within its realm a battle were fought, gold over ebony for supremacy. And I had no doubt that my twenty first birthday in four days time would be when the clock's time would finally run out. Its shade and ever changing background decided for good. And I felt an ache deep in my chest that the clock would not return to the gold of my imagination.
Though what I was meant to do about this ill foreboding, I had no idea.
Sitting back from my painting, I could feel my eyes growing heavy. I had laboured over this painting for over eight days, desperate to get it finished before my deadline tonight. A patron of my agent, Langton, had commissioned me to do a painting in my style, but revolving around a single peach. At first, I had believed it a strange request from an eccentric, but with every brush stroke I felt a familiarity...a wash of déjà vu I couldn't step back from...much as I had felt when the clock had turned vivid gold once more that morning and had a background of dark bricks. I had been to that place, underground...and his shadow had loomed over me...sweet mockery in his voice.
"Sarah, Langton is asking if you had finished the commission?" Aster spoke beside me, and I realised I had shut my eyes and had been lost roaming the dream. I bit back a small curse at the interruption, and forced a smile.
"Yes, tell him I am finished." I said, my smile leaving me swiftly as Aster walked back through to her phone. I looked back at the finished product and hated it with a passion. My mouth filled with a strange taste, a drowsy sense that flooded me, draining – warning me – something about this was just too close to my imagination for comfort; too close for it to be coincidence. The peach – nestled amongst fallen leaves and deep rooted trees – stirred memories within me that were just out of reach.
As I walked away from it, my drowsiness ebbed. The sooner that painting was gone from my studio the better. Taking the phone from Aster, I cleared my throat.
"Langton..."
"Arthur, please Sarah."
