Drabble #196: Taking Things Into Your Own Hands

[jalenstrix]

...we had a nice response to my last posted drabble prompt of Drabble 191, with entries by redwolf and apachefirecat, and commenting by the fabulous redwolf. Huzzah!

As always, special labyfic love to redwolf for adding entries and comments for several previous drabble prompts. Onward, fearless drabbler!





For this prompt, we continue with our one-word/phrase drabble roots:

Taking Things Into Your Own Hands

Who's taking what into their own hands, and why? Tell us all about it. Labyfic-style, of course.




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
$your_beautiful_drabble


I'll aim to get my next drabble challenge out on the first Friday of next month (Mar 7).

I'm also very happy to take suggestions if something in particular strikes your fancy -- comment on this post or PM me with your suggestions. You can see our current collected suggestions here.


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

Reckoning

[redwolf]

Word count: 500

There had been a lot of debate over how to integrate the girls into their new families. Typically, they would have been given a choice to retain the memories of their lives Above, but that was in the case of those who were wished away, and all of the girls had wished themselves away to escape trauma that they didn’t understand.

While the girls' ages ranged from six through sixteen, they had been so infantilised by their parents that they had no concept of what had happened to them and no way of explaining it to others. Their parent’s insistence on homeschooling their children to protect them had backfired spectacularly when it gave a predator free rein to molest them.

In the end, as all of the girls were so lacking in education and socialisation, it was decided that when they underwent a transformation to fit into their adoptive families, their ages would regress to roughly match their arrested developmental states. It was no shock to anyone that none of the girls ended up appearing older than eight.

Sarah stretched as she finished recording the details of the girl who would be gaining a pair of wood elves as mothers. The ladies had been trading off sitting by their daughter’s bedside to hold her hand as she slowly transformed, with setting up their home for a long hoped for addition.

All of the other adoptions were proceeding in much the same manner and, as there were such an unusually high number of children involved at one time, the new parents were exchanging information and bonding in ways the Kingdom rarely experienced.

The discussions over how to deal with the man who had assaulted the girls was just as fraught. There was no shortage of people willing to educate the man on the error of his ways in a manner that would be unlikely to leave anything beyond an unsightly stain on the floor. Sarah couldn’t bring herself to care beyond a concern for the disgruntlement of those who missed out on administering their own justice, but Jareth had curtailed those urges by pointing out the man was beyond the bounds of the wish.

The foxes had confirmed the church leader as the perpetrator and, once the Above authorities were pointed in his direction, they ensured that his supplies of date rape drugs and his extensive library of video evidence of his crimes were not quite as hidden as he’d assumed.

While there was a disturbing history of sexual predators being given little punishment for their crimes, authorities tended to be a little more ardent when it came to child murderers. The Labyrinth has allowed the community to believe the girls were dead at the hands of their assailant and nobody had a problem with the parents getting called out for their own shortcomings. However, as the Labyrinth hadn’t erased the memory of the children, it gave Jareth a handy loophole to allow the goblins to make a nuisance of themselves.

Re: Reckoning

[jalenstrix]

Dark and beautiful. And so very satisfying with meting out justice more directly than we're often able to.

Re: Reckoning

[redwolf]

Thank you! Jareth does have some restrictions placed upon him by the nature of the wishes, but he's quite good at working with loopholes. 🦊🧡

[apachefirecat]

Word Count: 500



He wasn't coming back to her. She has lived, and waited, and tried to plead, barter, and beg him not just with her soul but with the lives of far too many children. She likes to believe that she never would have allowed him to keep a single one, but maybe, with them not being her own brother, he may have easily persuaded her. He does still have a hold over her. She knows that. She's always known that, and she's never let anyone stop her from believing in what she knows truly happened that night.

Or in the place she knows she should be or with the man beside whom she knows she should be standing. She should have stayed, back then, so many years ago, when she was only fifteen. She should have found a way. But she will make a way.

The revelation had come to her the moment she had heard of another girl who remembered the Goblins taking her away, and remembered a powerful man with ethereal beauty. Her memories had not been as vivid for Sarah's for whatever reason. Maybe she had not loved Jareth as Sarah does. Maybe the doctors or the pressure of this world had gotten to her. Maybe she had not found the lifelong friends Sarah herself had made during that first and only, thus far, trek through the Labyrinth.

For whatever reason, that first girl had not found the Labyrinth or its King worth her sacrifices or fight. Others had. There were other women like Sarah who never married because no other man had ever been able to live up to the King they still remembered. At first, Sarah had been jealous of the others, but she's come to realize they don't matter. None of them are willing to fight their way back to his side. Only she is.

Only she has worked this hard to piece together all the mystery pieces left throughout the centuries, and it has been centuries throughout which Jareth has ruled over the Labyrinth. It's hard to say exactly when he took charge. There have been other reports, of a dark-haired King, of a short King, of a dark-hued King... They all sound beautiful, mesmerizing. She is certain they all wielded power and an element of enthrallment over their girls. But none of the others were him.

She doesn't care about the others, of that world or this. She only cares about reaching back to him, and she is willing to pay any price. She is willing to sacrifice anything, everything, to be back by his side and allowed to stay. She is prepared for anything. Or so Sarah tells herself. She was shocked to find the author of the earliest tale to rumored to still be alive, but why not, when Goblin Kings can reign for centuries? She is not, however, prepared for the dragon who answers her call on her last research mission, the one that will finally lead home.


The End

[redwolf]

I have to wonder what price a dragon will demand to share knowledge. And will Sarah be willing or able to pay 🦊🧡

[apachefirecat]

I'm hoping my Muses let me find out and revisit this idea. :) I've had head!cannon for Sarah hunting her way back to Jareth for decades, but the dragon just came to me the other day when I was fighting for a (plot) bunny. LOL

[jalenstrix]

So seconded. Sarah clearly has the will, and the question is what way the dragon will demand.