#generousuntilnow

What is on the mun’s Netflix “continue watching” list?

The morning newspaper displayed yet another fear-inducing headline: FOURTH INFANT KIDNAPPING SHAKES LOCAL TOWN

Jocelyn frowned as she passed the small magazine stand, irritated and tired. Somebody had been going around kidnapping babies without any apparent rhyme or reason. While Jocelyn was nowhere near a law-abiding citizen, she despised when anybody stoke the spotlight of fear from her or her organization. She had taken it upon herself to attempt to find the culprit and put him or her to rest, but she had had no success. Tonight, she hoped, she would catch the individual in the act and haul them into HQ.

Having asked as many questions as she was able without seeming overly suspicious, she made her way to the small town of Conville as the sun was setting. That is where three of the four disappearances had taken place, so was clearly some sort of hotspot. Only about a fifth of the homes had families with small children, so she posted herself stealthily in a tree in the center of a neighborhood where a lot of them resided. There, she watched as many of the homes as she could, knowing it was a stab in the dark, but desperate to catch the twisted individual before they struck again. As she settled in though, a frantic owl flapped on a nearby branch, nearly startling Jocelyn enough to throw her off of the branch she was perched on.

“Hey!” she whispered angrily, “get out of here!” she shooed it away and it finally took flight towards one of the nearby homes. “Stupid bird.”

Seraphima woke in her bed alone in a cold sweat. Her husband was at work on his graveyard shift, as normal, so it was not unusual for her to wake alone. That wasn’t what was bothering her. She pulled her knees to her chest as she shivered slightly.

“I had a dream . . .” she trailed off. “But not just any dream . . . Queen Maeve was telling me something, something important. Something about the Fairy kingdom that I needed to do or remember . . . .”

She paused and looked around the room. The full moon beamed clearly through her window and directly onto her bed, bathing the maroon sheets in a silver light that made them turn almost a pale crimson.

“One of the damn goblins got underfoot, and don’t you dare. Burn them.”

“Not a chance, Glitter King.” Sarah quickly shoved the photos into her pocket. 

[starter for @generousuntilnow! Marvel Comics Earth 616 and Labyrinth crossover. Future allusions to RP with @the-accursed, who is... probably like Tess’ own baby-eating Jareth. Everything done with permission and discussed with the muns!]

Years earlier, Sarah Williams had left the Goblin King’s realm a bit older, a bit wiser, and bearing treasures far more valuable than any king could offer: a baby boy in a striped jumpsuit and a growing understanding of her own power. All of fifteen at the time, the girl who believed in stories left a permanent mark upon the kingdom and its people. She’d won, after all, and in a sense, turned her back on Jareth himself. No one brushed him aside lightly: not young girls, not leather-faced caretakers, and certainly not his own subjects. That glittering realm--bewitching and horrifying in turn--remembered. 

In contrast, Tess McKay would be remembered for the way she’d literally come falling out of nowhere, brown arms and legs windmilling in the air and coarse red hair streaming behind her like a banner in the seconds before she plunged into the Bog of Eternal Stench. (There was a story behind her own arrival, but then, there was always a story that came ‘before’.) She disappeared beneath the surface with an indignified flrrrrrrrppppt!, stunned by the impact and the sheer, unimaginable reek of the bubbling mud sucking her down.

(Normally, there would be a fine, noble knight guarding the nearby bridge. Unfortunately, he was away for his sister’s wedding at the time, and--well. Suffice to say, the hero left to stand in his place over the next few days had already proven less than heroic; the bridge was unguarded, and no one was going to help Tess from the bog but Tess herself.)

God, she’d never smelled anything like it, she realized, coming back to herself in a horrible moment of awareness that left her gagging, kicking toward the shore as she fought for survival against the last clever fart joke the universe had left to offer. The will to live was all well and good. However, it was only due to a conveniently fallen tree half-stuck in the bog that she was able to claw her way free as she was: very human, going blind from the fumes, and no longer able to smell anything at all.

The mutant rolled from her tree bridge the second she reached the shoreline, landing belly first and retching. Small twigs snapped beneath her weight, and a less than solid patch of ground gave a mocking ‘braaap!’ as she did so.

‘Dark elves,’ she thought viciously--or would have if she were able to acknowledge anything but the desperate need to breathe in-between bouts of vomiting. (Tess couldn’t see anything, and her eyes burned--)  ‘Goddamned baby-eating eating dark elves- and their goddamned sociopathic man-child sorcerer-king.’ 

“Now, Jareth, darling---  Do you really think so highly of your abilities,that you believe a simple kiss from your lips could cure my woes?”It’s said with a teasing tone, but there is a hint of a challenge there as well.