Sarah blinked blankly at where her brother had been. The rain is sure to keep Mom and Dad where they are for a while, she thought rationally on some level of her conscious thought. It's midnight and storming fit to be tied. They'll choose to be safe, knowing I'm here with Toby to watch him.

Her heart, however, was beating as if it would like to fly up out of her mouth and dance over the floor. She squeezed her eyes shut tightly to try and get hold of herself. It had been nigh on fourteen years since she last had anything remotely like this happen, and though the warm and fuzzy feelings remained, as did her friends, actually having someone vanish in front of you who you loved was still a major form of magic that she wasn't sure her brain could process. She backed out of the room slowly for a moment, the wind wildly blowing through the window, before she realized that it would get all of Toby's things wet, and her parents would ask questions should they arrive and see it open.

It brought her back to some semblance of reality, for which she was grateful, and drove her back into the dark room. She jogged to the window and, unmindful of the way her sleeves immediately started growing sodden by the rain coming in, slid the window shut. She only then exited and breathed a sigh outside of the door, closing it behind her.

She recalled a moment later that she was supposed to write all of these things down, and so kept a running tab on everything that she'd done and felt. With this to focus on, Sarah immediately headed back to her room and dragged out her half-full notebook. With a pencil in her hand, she took it to her bed and plopped onto the end, staring at the blank pages as if a revelation would come to her.

Minutes passed, and her tension mounted as she felt each missed second as a missed chance to help her brother. She knew that the passage of time between this world and the Underground was remarkably different, of course, once one settled the hours down. This wouldn't be a challenge without the hours, of course, and there had to be a challenge in it, either for her or for her brother. Seeing as she couldn't ask him, though, Sarah had to assume that there simply were some. That made the need to get to him all the more desperate for her, because she could no longer remember how many Underground hours she had spent to make up the six that had passed in her own world. If they were still gone when her parents returned, there would be all kinds of Hell to pay.

That made her pause. There was no way that she could get Toby back in time for her parents to not return. But the way that Hoggle had sounded, and acted, she now could tell that there was something about her writing that was important. If she could write herself into the Underground from this world, and Jareth's story had finished, then that logically only meant that another story was starting. And that it was a story that hadn't been written yet.

"If that's the case," she said aloud as the knowledge dawned on her like the flash of lightning that set the branches of her tree outside tapping against her windowpane, "then I can write something that affects this world as well as the Underground! You can't take me from this world to the other without doing so. And if this one is touched, then… what I write can touch it more heavily, if I desire, just this once."

She bent her pencil to the paper again after outlining in her own head what she wanted to happen. She only sketched out the main points, for the moment, knowing that the electricity was fluttering too badly for the use of a computer. She could flesh it out later, if she had to. The major points would bring up memories of the event to immerse herself in for at least a few days. She wouldn't be in the Underground for that long, or at least she hoped that she wouldn't. She slowed down when it came time to flesh out Toby's vanishing and her own responses to it, however, careful to note everything. She was still a little uncertain, even then, of why Toby had acted the way that he had concerning Jareth and her so many years before, and she had to wonder if the boy even knew why he was feeling that way. She let the train of thought go, though, as she came to the point where she was sitting and writing out everything she was currently doing.

The feeling was almost painful for her as she wrote it, and highly uncomfortable, like someone was staring at her through her own window and writing down everything that happened. She knew without trying terribly hard that it was her own eyes, though, and she made that revelation part of the story. She then hurriedly wrote her next part, hoping that her earlier predictions would be correct, and moved a little into the future by doing so.

"She knew," she wrote hurriedly, "that a combination of car trouble and a fierce storm that lasted all night and flooded the roads between her home and wherever her parents had gone for the evening would certainly keep them away until the morning's light dawned cold and clear on the horizon. She had no fears for them, nor for herself and her brother. They would be safe where they were trapped for the night, and she knew the community would allow them to stay wherever they had to in order to weather the freak storm."

She wrote it, and felt a surge somewhere, only as if it were far away and behind a veil of some form. All the same, it left a trickle of electric energy coursing through her as if she'd just done something exciting and her adrenaline had decided to kick on. The hair on the back of her neck rose, and she wondered if this was what the power of creation felt like in tiny doses. Her parents taken care of, Sarah took a deep breath to go over what she wanted to write next. Getting into the Underground had to be done with care, because she wasn't entirely sure of what awaited her there. Jareth had controlled her destination point courtesy of the story of the book, but her brother had no idea as to what he was doing or where he was. She did, to a degree, but the uncertainty of the world's condition left her frightened overall, for the both of them.

"She wasn't sure what to write to get into the Labyrinth," Sarah finally began, hesitant. "But she knew that she would have to do so. Thus, she made is simple. The words that she wrote down were: 'The girl, fearful and yet determined, said aloud the words that would take her to the Underground: "The blood of the king also runs in my veins. I summon the magic we share for my own use." And, with those words, the magic accorded to her brother also came to her, and the girl found herself looking into a mirror. But what was in that mirror wasn't her own reflection, but the Underground, and without another word, she rose and carefully touched the mirror's surface. Her hand passed through, and then she climbed through it herself to whatever lay in store for her on the other side.'"

Having written the words, a larger surge of power seemed to grow and swell from somewhere beyond her. She licked her lips nervously, wondering what was wrong if her world hadn't changed, and then re-read her own words. Taking a breath, she said aloud, "The blood of the king also runs in my veins. I summon the magic we share for my own use." It sounded horrible when she said it aloud, and she grimaced at it. Mental note to change it to something very non-dorky later, Sarah told herself in disgust. She glanced around as the surge swept over her without warning, filling her with a power that she felt would burst through her skin and that surely had to be flowing out of her eyes and mouth where she sat in dumbfounded shock at the sensation.

She wondered if she'd been electrocuted at the last moment before her eyes settled on the mirror. It was filled with a darkened landscape, half-barren, looking as if it were almost dead. The Labyrinth sat beyond it, but it looked mostly decrepit, as if the loss of the magic that had powered it had leeched the strength from its stone. She rose, the notebook and pencil in her hand, and walked towards it. She reached out and touched the surface, disbelief filling her at the way it rippled like water, and then calmly did what she had written she would do by going through the mirror.

"No good deed goes unpunished, does it?" she sighed to herself just before her head passed through.

(To Chapter Two)