The Return of the Goblin King

Child of the Moon:

Hours seemed to have gone by throughout the party. So much jubilee about. Yet, while everyone was having fun, Sarah had eventually begun looking around. Per second, her suspicious eyes would migrate from one side to the other. Where could he be?, she thought to herself, He has to be around here somewhere.

"Who, Sarah?", a voice asked her. When Sarah turned around, she found the voice coming from the Child-Like Empress. "Oh,"Sarah started, "no one really."

Hoggle, hearing the two conversing, approached them, "It's Jareth, ain't it?"

"Jareth?", the Empress inquired, "The Goblin King?"

"You know him?", Hoggle's eyes widened, with the Fantasian monarch replying, "No, I don't think so. Yet...I feel a...connection to him...somehow."

"Must be an awful feeling.", the dwarf scoffed, "He's one horrid tyrant."

"Hoggle's right.", Sarah agreed, "He's a very cruel ruler; kidnapping my baby brother, Toby, nearly forced me to fall for him and not to mention being such a rat."

"Jareth, bad!", cried Ludo as his labyrinth friends. Looking around, the Empress spoke with a hint of grief, "I understand your hurt. But you must not judge Jareth too harshly. So little of his life, his past and his world, is known to all of us. His own heart could be in deep pain for all we know."

"Wait, even you don't know about him?", Bastian spoke up as he heard the Empress's words, "I thought you know all about these fantasy creatures."

"The ones from this world, Bastian.", the Empress answered, "Jareth lives in another world. He is neither from here."

The earthling boy paused for a moment, "You're not from here either, didn't you tell me that a while back?"

"I did. Yet I only know the Fantasians for I was brought here when I was only an infant.", the Empress said with Sarah coming up with another question, "With your parents?"

The Empress's eyes looked down with depression. Right away Sarah knew what she asked was too impulsive. "Oh, your majesty!", she gasped as she hugged her, "I'm very sorry, I-I didn't realize-"

"No, no, it's alright. It's been so long that...I can't seem to remember them."

"Not even their faces?", Atreyu sympathetically asked but the Empress began to think, "Well...I believe my mother had either black hair...or blonde hair like mine. And my father...his hair color is hard to make out. Was it blue or was it green?"

"Try to figure it out later, your highness.", Cairon suggested, "Right now, just relax."

"Yes, Cairon.", the Empress nodded her head, "I will.""

....

Later that night, the party was over. Bastian and Sarah went their home in the human world while the Child-Like Empress was in her room. Lying in her bed and struggling to sleep. Even when the loyal Cairon entered the chambers.

"Are you alright, your majesty?"

"A little, Cairon. Ever since the celebration, I've been thinking about my parents and where I had come from as I was never a Fantasian like you or any of the subjects."

"I see.", the merman's eyes looked at the floor in contemplation. Only for them to go back to the Empress's face once she asked, "Do you know anything about all of this?"

"I'm sorry, dear empress, but I don't; my grandparents weren't even born when you first came along."

The depressed Empress let out a sigh, "I was afraid of that. Perhaps the Old Man of Wandering Mountain might know."