Title: Watermark
Day/Theme: 1st September - here we are
Series: Spirited Away
Character/Pairing: Chihiro, Haku/Chihiro
Rating: U/G
"Chihiro? Chihiro!"
Her mother's voice startled Chihiro out of her daydream and she jerked her head up. "Huh?"
Her mother was laughing at her. "We're here, dear." She opened the car door and Chihiro crawled out. "Isn't it lovely?"
She straightened up and looked at the new house. It wasn't as bad as she'd thought it would be. "It's okay," she allowed. It wasn't any better than the old one, Chihiro still couldn't see why they'd bothered moving at all.
"Oh, she'll get used to it," her father said affectionately, ruffling her hair. Chihiro squeaked and ducked away.
"Daaaad!"
I can get used to anything, she thought. Anything at all.
-
Her room seemed bare, even after she'd moved all her stuff in and put it away and the first night she slept there, she kept waking up every half an hour. The absolute quiet made her stomach twist with nervousness and she strained her ears to hear her parents' loud breathing in the next room, slow and deep.
Chihiro was on the point of dozing off for the fifth time when her father snorted in his sleep and she sat bolt upright, shaking. She didn't sleep again that night.
-
She did grow used to her new home quite quickly. There was a river running through the town and her favourite thing to do was go down onto the bank and just sit there, watching the flow and ebb of the grey waters. Once she caught a teenage boy about to throw a can into it and yelled at him, snatching it from his hand and throwing it into a nearby bin. It earned her a bit of a reputation among her friends; the boy had been much older and much bigger. It didn't worry her.
"Are you all right, Chihiro?" asked one of them when Chihiro waded into the river, not bothering to take her shoes and socks off first, to drag an old, broken-down bicycle out of the water.
"I'm fine," she said, and they didn't ask why she looked so sad.
-
She was sitting on the bank when she first saw him again.
"Haku!" she called. "Haku!"
