Together We Can Make It

Sarah rechecked the recipe, placed the required amount of dried leaves from each container into the mortar, then picked up the pestle and began to grind the ingredients. Once she was satisfied with the result, she poured the fine powder into a glass jar.

“This one’s full.” Sarah passed the jar to Thadie who tied a temporary label around the rim and closed the lid. She added it to the collection of filled jars on her work bench.

“Those ones will need to rest for at least a year before I can use them. The longer the powder is stored, the deeper the colour I can produce.”

Sarah carefully closed the containers of dried leaves and set them aside. “What’s next?”

Thadie passed her the next recipe, set down another set of containers and collected the ones Sarah had finished with to return to storage.

A small goblin took the mortar and pestle Sarah had been using and handed her a clean one for the next recipe.

Sarah opened the containers to see what looked like dried rose petals in various shades of red. She had nearly filled a jar when she felt Jareth’s presence.

“I thought you might have gone to your studio.” Jareth leaned casually against the workshop doorway.

“All my meetings for the day were messed up.” Sarah brushed hair out of her eyes. “The last one I had was with someone who was as baffled about the meeting as I was.” Sarah chuckled. “We agreed to take advantage of the mix up to take a breather. I wanted to be useful, but didn’t want to be readily found, so I’m giving Thadie a hand to build up her stores of the base ingredients she uses for our pigments.”

Jareth nodded at the array of filled jars. “Thadie will be pleased.” He turned one of the jars to inspect its label. “As will I because this is used in the green I’m running low on.”

“Did you have any meeting drama?” Sarah questioned.

“My trouble was security related,” Jareth snorted. “Seals on documents refused to break, doors were locked and cabinets couldn’t be opened. I could get around it, but the rest of the staff were frustrated.”

“What’s been causing this?” If she was going to have to deal with another wasted day, Sarah was contemplating avoiding the drama by staying on as Thadie’s assistant.

“The meeting secretary has a new assistant who takes micromanaging to new levels. He managed to rearrange, reset or reschedule everything he could get his hands on. When the secretary finally figured out the culprit, the lad was screaming that everything would work more smoothly if it was colour coded based on what the meeting attendees were wearing and that all paperwork must be alphabetised according to a long dead Above script. I’ve reassigned the boy so he can use his organisational skills to educate the goblins.”

“I wonder who’ll break first,” Sarah laughed.

“My money’s on the goblins making him cry.”

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labyfic — drabble #236: clock
Part of the Balance!verse

It had taken Jareth weeks to uncover the reason that inebriated, young men kept turning up in the Labyrinth when they hadn’t been wished away.

Their drunkenness was both a blessing and a curse. In the state they had been found, they were all happy to hold conversations with inanimate objects, so being returned Above barely dented their alcoholic stupor. Alas, it made questioning them an impossibility if you were hoping for useful information.

Sarah sat in the bower beside Jareth. “You have to admit it was genius.” She sipped her tea to hide her amusement.

“Yes, yes, very clever.” Jareth waved a hand in annoyed dismissal.

The goblins had managed to create a game that seemed to be a cross between a scavenger hunt and a game of chutes and ladders. Sarah had been horrified that Jareth called it snakes and ladders and was relieved the goblins hadn’t taken that name literally or their wayward visitors may have had more of an adventure than a drunken debate with a goblin where wildly different concepts of fouls were in question.

The ladders tended to be actual ladders that let a participant find an item or skip ahead. It was the snake or chute part where they had gotten creative by using fairy circles as portals to penalise a player.

“I don’t understand why they had portals leading Above.”

Jareth pinched the bridge of his nose and sighed. “I don’t think they do either.”

The problematic chute was supposed to take a player Above, with a second fairy circle in clear sight that would return them to a more distant locale in the Labyrinth to add time to their journey. This was not a problem if you were playing Underground, but it was a different matter if you stumbled in from Above.

“In their defence, it was hidden.” The fairy circle really wasn’t easy to find. Unfortunately, the goblins had failed to anticipate that placing their portal in a park near a popular pub would prove troublesome. Or that more than one person who had been kicked out at closing may have taken a detour through the park, before stumbling off the path to redistribute the evening’s intake of lager in the shrubbery. Heavily intoxicated humans were typically not aware of their surroundings enough that they would notice a fairy circle, and for that matter, they didn’t seem to realise their accidentally stepping through a portal would make hailing a ride home more difficult than usual.

“Fortunately, they were all still in possession of identity documents that allowed me to transport them home.”

Jareth had removed the Above chute from the game and any grumbles were silenced when he threatened to return it, but link it to the bog.

Sarah found it a little sad that there were several young men who had had the greatest adventure of their lives and, not only didn’t realise it while it was happening, but would never remember the time they stumbled into another world.

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labyfic — drabble #235: bottle
Part of the Balance!verse