The Champion and The Goblin King

The Nightmares and Dreams of a Sleeping Champion

The young woman tossed and turned in her bed, dreams that were once sweet turned into dark nightmares and had caused the woman to stir in her sleep. . . It had been like this since her 18th birthday when she called for her beloved whom she called for did not come, they were unable to pass through the portal that had be in her mirror which would allow them to come aboveground to visit her. . .

From then on she would dream of a face that was all too familiar, his eyes of two different colours that haunted her. It was a face of a cruel king whom she once defeated, she dreamt that he found out about the mirror and the visits and she dreamed that he was punishing her dear friends.

These dreams convinced her even more that he was the bad guy, convinced her that he would punish her friends for helping her through the labyrinth and betraying their king. But in reality this wasn't the case Sarah just didn't know what was going on underground.

She awoke with a loud scream, tears filled her eyes.

"Sarah" a voice said frantically.

She sobbed, she had believed her nightmares to be true, flashes of Jareth punishing Hoggle, pushing him into the bog of eternal stench.

"Sarah honey are you alright?" Her father held her tight as she cried.

"Another nightmare I can assume then?" he question, she sniffed and sobbed, nodding her head to say yes. He stroked her head as she was clearly distraught by the dream.

"Dad I don't know what to do. . . every night I see his mismatched eyes in my dreams and each night he plagues my dreams with such cruelty in his eyes . . . I tell him he has no power over me but those words just don't seem to work any more daddy. Please stop him from hurting my friends please." She begged him to do something, but her father couldn't, he had no clue what she was talking about a pair of mismatched eyes, he didn't really know anyone like that.

"who's eyes. . . Who are you talking about?" He asked curiously, he wondered if she had a past boyfriend he didn't know about, perhaps he didn't treat her right.

She didn't want to talk further on the subject with her father he would most like pass it off as just a nightmare, but to Sarah it was more than that. . . She wasn't going to discuss any of her past run ins with Jareth or the labyrinth. He would think her half mad to think it was all real.

Sarah's father laid the 20 year old down as she had calmed down and kissed her on her forehead. This had almost been a routine for him now to see to calm his screaming daughter when she wakes from her constant nightmares. "Please try and get some sleep Sarah, you got work tomorrow"

He started to make his way out of the room when his eyes were drawn to a wind up music box with a girl in dress on top which twirled around as the music played. He looked at Sarah and smiled at her. He wound it up and it started to play a tune which he had never heard before. . . but it was a tune Sarah knew all too well. He left the music box to play on Sarah's dressing table and made his way back to his own bed for the night.

Her father didn't know, nor he seemed to care but the music box was a gift from Hoggle for her sixteenth birthday since he learnt that in the aboveground that birthdays were a thing to be made a celebration of.

The tune played familiar to the one which reminded her of the ballroom peach dream she had, after eating the peach Jareth had tricked her into eating. She closed her eyes singing along with the melody in a almost whispered tone.

"There's such a sad love deep in your eyes, a pale jewel. Open and closed within your eyes, I'll place the sky within your eyes."

she took a deep breath as the music relaxed her, she sang the lyrics to herself and thought about the obscure lyrics, they had deep meaning in them of course, why wouldn't they it was the Goblin King who wrote them.