Drabble #46: Poisonous People

[redwolf]

Digging up an old challenge from Livejournal:

Inspired by suggestions from my_quorum, I offer a lyric snippet from Bowie's Sweet Thing/Candidate/Sweet Thing triplet (performed here):

I'm having so much fun with the poisonous people
Spreading rumors and lies and stories they made up

It begs for a storylet, I tell you, absolutely begs.

Given our entries from recent months, let's continue with the suggested limit for this month of 500 words. Though remember that shorter pieces are most definitely welcome!

Your entry should take the following format, posted as a comment on this entry:

Word count: # of words
Drabble: $your_beautiful_drabble

Remember: Feedback is LOVE. So do reply to your fellow labyficcers' drabbles if so inclined. (Though be careful of concrit unless specifically okayed by the author beforehand. Authors generally write for love.)

Comments

Chicanery

[redwolf]

Word count: 500
Drabble:

The one good thing Sarah could say about having to go through her first rescue drill was that she was pleased that her instincts were correct in who her team were. Although, as they were all part of the Labyrinth’s long game, she shouldn’t be too surprised that they had been drawn to each other.

Sarah was just happy that their recovery was relatively brief and it had definitely helped that Jareth had taught her how to weave the magic that allowed them to feel each other's heartbeats. As they’d worked together throughout the day, she couldn’t help smiling every time she glimpsed the cherry blossoms that wound brightly around Angel’s pale wrist, while a similar design almost glowed against Bishop’s dark skin.

The sense of unease that had settled over the Labyrinth of late and was responsible for her recent adventure, was starting to coalesce into a recognisable threat.

The only child of a neighbouring kingdom had recently been declared heir. Sarah had been pleased to hear that the young princess would eventually become queen regnant. However, the news had not been quite as cheerfully received by Jareth, but this was not due to any shortcoming on the part of the princess.

Jareth had been monitoring the kingdom long before the birth of the child, so he viewed the announcement from a political standpoint and he had a couple of loose ends in his sights. There was a pair of young lords whose indolent lifestyle had apparently been kept in check by their family telling them that they would be named as heirs to the throne.

Sarah would have wondered how they could fall for such an obvious fabrication, but Jareth had pointed the pair out during a social engagement and even at a distance, their sense of entitlement was palpably offensive.

As was their lack of commonsense. There were two families involved who had both told their not terribly bright offspring that they would be the next reigning monarch, yet both of the young men had grown up together and had never questioned which one of them would be king if the fabrication was reality. Sarah lived in a kingdom full of goblins and she was fairly certain that none of her subjects were that mind numbingly clueless and these were creatures who had a tendency to eat things first before determining if they were food.

Not all of the guardians served as personal protection, there were many that worked for the protection of the kingdom and it was this contingent who had been providing an insider view of the situation.

Reports had ramped up since the succession announcement and it looked like the young men had redirected their future ambitions beyond the borders of their home kingdom. The intelligent way forward would have been to court the daughters of other royals, but it seemed their ambitions erred towards taking what they wanted immediately and current reports indicated that they viewed the Goblin Kingdom as a soft target.