DISCLAIMER: I do not own Spirited Away or any of its amazing characters. Now please, enjoy. ^.^
...
There she was, completely surrounded by turquoise water. She could feel the sun's warm rays penetrating the surface and finding her face beneath the waves like it always did. Under normal circumstances, one would drown only minutes after being submerged under water like this.
But not her, and certainly not here.
She sighed contentedly, little bubbles escaping her lips and floating to the surface. She had been suspended peacefully within this river for hours now, letting the current gently move her wherever it wished. How many times had she come here? How many more would it allow her? Surely this river would not permit someone to lounge around inside of it without demanding something in return. Surely this river would someday demand the very oxygen from her lungs as payment.
But it demanded nothing so far, so she kept coming.
Her chocolaty brown hair billowed angelically around her face as she took in deep breath after deep breath, inhaling not water, but cool, crisp springtime air. She wasn't quite sure why she never got lungfuls of river water, but as long as the river allowed her to breathe, the method didn't really matter. After all, this was her place, the one place she could come and feel whole.
"I've missed you," the river around her whispered.
At first, she had been shocked when the river spoke to her; she had even convinced herself that it had all been in her imagination. But every time since the first time she submerged herself, the river spoke to her, its first phrase always being the same: "I've missed you." The first time she heard the river say this, she didn't know how to respond. Before this particular river, she had never been fond of water. However, the more she visited this sacred place, the more she grew to miss it when she was away. Finally, there came a day when the river whispered, "I've missed you" and she was able to reply. Now, her reply to the river's first phrase was always the same.
"I never should have left," she smirked as the river swirled around her limbs as it always did when she answered that way.
Sometimes the river spoke to her often, asking her about her days and regaling her with tales of what it had been doing while she was away. Other times it was completely silent after it welcomed her with its inaugural "I've missed you". Either way she was happy; just being with the river was enough for her… most of the time.
"Do you think it will always be like this?" She asked, a hint of sadness coloring her voice. "Will we only ever have these brief moments?"
The river became calm again, but said nothing.
She closed her eyes, a knot forming in the pit of her stomach, "I thought so."
For the briefest of moments, she felt gentle fingers caress her cheek in comfort. As soon as she opened her eyes, they were gone.
"I do not have an answer," the river replied sorrowfully. "This is the closest I can get to you for now."
Unwilling to let the uncertainty of the future ruin her all-too rare visits to the river, she smiled and began to swim with her face towards the sun, "I would rather have this than nothing at all."
...
"Oh!" Sen gasped as she abruptly shot up in her bed, clutching at her chest in an attempt to calm her racing heart. She pushed the intrusive brown bangs out of her eyes and looked around the small, messy apartment she called home. There were textbooks open on the floor, clothes crumpled in piles, a laptop half open next to some homework. Like usual, everything was completely normal.
Everything except her.
She fell back onto her pillow, right hand still held above her heart. Most nights were completely ordinary with completely ordinary dreams; but on the nights when she dreamt about the river she had never been to, she always woke up in a panic. It was like her brain was trying to protect her from something, though she could never imagine what. The river dreams were the ones she both yearned for and dreaded at the same time. It was impossible to brush aside the pure ecstasy she harbored after those dreams, but it was also impossible to brush aside the loneliness and the pain they brought as well. Sen had never been to the river she dreamt about; she didn't even like the water that much. But night after night, she found herself hoping to have that dream because she found herself missing that river during the day. Of course, missing something she had never seen made no sense so Sen actively suppressed any thoughts of the river as much as she could. But every so often, the river would come to her in her dreams and make her miss things she never had; things that she didn't have names for.
"Please," she softly begged the ceiling. "Please let me sleep. I can't handle these weird dreams anymore."
There was no reply, only silence surrounding her in the moon-lit apartment.
Sen let out a frustrated sigh as she ripped the sparkling purple hair-band from the back of her head where it held her long brown hair in a ponytail. Just as she was about to toss it carelessly onto the floor next to her bed, Sen took one more look at the purple band. Without knowing why, she placed the hair-band gently onto her bedside table next to a small picture she had drawn. Sen pulled the blankets up to her neck and looked at the picture, knowing eventually she would have more dreams about that, too.
"I can't keep doing this," she muttered to herself sleepily. "I have to lay off the reading, exams are coming up."
As she drifted off to sleep, calculating what she needed to get on her upcoming exams to pass her classes with a decent grade, the hand-drawn picture of a black figure with no face watched over her hair band. The white noh-mask's vacant expression was the only thing in the apartment illuminated by the light of the moon, the name Chihiro Ogino scrawled delicately at the bottom of the picture in Sen's handwriting.