That Williams Girl

Chapter 1: Prologue

Magic is possessive by nature.

In a modern world oblivious to its rules, it thrives. It covets the fantasies and dreams of the unaware, of the sleeping. When feeling mischievous, it toys with people, makes them confused or annoyed. When happy, it gives luck to the deserving. It gives so much but it takes even more.

When it is angry, when it feels wronged by an unwary passerby. It curses, it kills.

It vanishes and spirits away the uncaring, the uncared for.

The wished away.

It takes things. In its playfulness it whisks away old toys, socks, small trinkets that people believe lost to time or carelessness. Things children take for granted.

Children adults take for granted.

It is as alive as a forest, as immovable as the stars.

Over time, when it became just as clever as the old earth, it decided to give itself a name, a will.

In time, it learned to make creatures of its own out of the earthbound things it so loved. Fae things and changelings whose hearts beat and followed and clung to the physical lives around them. They hungered, just as their magic does, for things that are not themselves.

They had come to love that which is untouchable. They loved the wind, they loved the light and smell of the world's time. They loved the laughter and sobs and screams...

They hungered for the taste of life that lived and died of the earth. They craved mortality and death with ravenous appetites.

For death is unknowable to those who are not touched by time.

Fae are greedy, angry and clever just as the magic they sprung from.

For they are one and the same.

Though rarely, completely impossibly, it comes to love.

Once, only once, the strongest and oldest of them chose to love something...

...........................................................
(1950's, Southern United States)

Jareth knew the dangers of interacting with the mortal world.

Too many of his kind were lost to it, either being consumed by their obsessions or being killed by the humans who called them 'Demons' or 'Monsters'. He had even heard a story once of a rather respectful and high ranking Fae losing their sanity over the deaths of their human lovers.

Ridiculous.

Still, he had to go. Always had to go when he felt the call. It was his duty, his purpose. And quite frankly, he enjoyed taking those he had come to claim. It meant either a new runner for the maze or a new goblin to add to his little 'family'.

His mouth practically watered at the thought of a new game.

It had been too long since someone said the right words. Perhaps it had been 200 years or so? Jareth couldn't really remember, and couldn't care to try. He had been so bored in his desolate castle with nothing but imps and fairies for company, so he was looking forward to this more than he usually would.

Peering through his crystal, he glimpsed at the room he would soon be entering.

Two brothers appeared to be in an argument with one another. They appeared to be about ten or so based on the chubbiness of their faces. One of them, the angrier of the two, was holding a familiar small book.