The World May Never Know by Aisuru aisuru_chan@yahoo.com

Although Sarah was fully 15, had reached her full height, and was filling out quite nicely, she had yet to leave her childish ways behind her. She felt no shame, and was in fact not the slightest bit self-conscious, to be wandering the park in a frilly white dress worn over jeans and grubby tennis shoes. She divided her attention between the red leather-bound play she was memorizing and her shaggy dog, paying no attention at all to the people passing by. Those people, in turn, paid little attention to her, giving her only quick glances before going on about their business. Seeing the unusual was usual to New Yorkers.

There was something more unusual in the park that day then an foolishly dressed young woman loudly reciting lines of romantic fantasy to her shaggy dog, and that was the snowy white owl. The owl itself wouldn't have seemed too out of place in the park except that it was the middle of the day and the owl was showing not the slightest unease at being so close to a noisy girl and her large canine. It was so close to this pair that it eventually caught the girl's eye.

*Now this will be amusing,* Jareth mused, for this snowy white owl was in fact the Goblin King from the very play the girl was memorizing. *Maybe she will recite lines of my own play to me instead of to her dog.*

Sarah did in fact approach the owl, who had settled himself on the seat of a park bench and was clawing lazily at the chipped green paint. She pulled her skirt up in a very unladylike fashion, fumbling for something in her jeans pocket, before she smoothed down the skirt and knelt in front of the owl on the park bench. Jareth fluffed his feathers in anticipation of an event he had been looking forward to for some time.

"Mr. Owl," she said, addressing him politely before dropping her gaze to something she held in her hands. She fumbled with a paper wrapper, and then raised her gaze back to the bird, grinning as she thrust the unwrapped lollipop into the bird's face. "How many licks does it take to get to the Tootsie roll center of a Tootsie pop?"

Startled by the sudden movement, the owl flew off, disappearing in the branches of a nearby tree. Annoyed at his very owl-like reaction to Sarah, he opened a portal to the underground, determined to come back another day when his ego wasn't quite so bruised. As he slipped into the portal, he heard Sarah mutter, "The world may never know."