Disclaimer: I do not own nor do I claim to own the copyrights to any mentioned characters or places.
This is my first published fanfiction, please enjoy and critique. I apologize in advance if I missed any errors, keep me updated on those!
Prologue: Eye of the Beholder
A young man stood at the water's edge. His soft green eyes spanned the horizon's width and breadth, seeking anything; the darting white speck of an aft gull, perhaps a fish mouthing his prayers at the water's undulating surface. The waves gently kissed his bare ankles, murmuring their reverence before bowing backward into the ocean. The man allowed his pale hands to drape gracefully at his sides, his slender white fingers plucking absentmindedly at the white robes that clothed him. His name was Haku and to this sea he belonged--to the water and to each shore it touched. The wind swept through his black hair, cooling the sides of his face as he gazed at nothing in particular.
He felt a firm heat crown the back of his head. The sun crested the bluffs to his back, shortening the shadow in which he sheltered. He didn't care to notice, however, as his thoughts couldn't be further from the serenity around him.
Chihiro. The only soul he had ever loved. Though it had seemed weeks to him since he last held her, years had passed in her world. His eyes dipped to his long toes. He could feel her forgetting about him. As his face left her thoughts, his connection to the mortal world steadily faded. He sighed through his nose. How could she have already forgotten? Her love had been so real to him. Wasn't it...?
'Nobody can love a river,' he thought. Rivers are mere vessels to larger bodies of water. Their significance is often lost to those who, like the current, wash by year after year paying no heed to their passing surroundings. So Chihiro passed him by, leaving the wake of her promises and the sting of her memory behind. He could almost make her out in his mind's eye, feel her dark eyelashes flit against his cheek, hear the docile sweet laugh, the warmth of her arm in the bend of his. These were his dearest memories.
A touch on his shoulder brought him back around.
"Haku, you're needed in the bath house. I'm sorry to bother you, but Yubaba would like a word."
Lin was a pretty girl. Haku had always admired her bold personality yet professional aloofness. However, he despised her sense of timing. He turned slowly to face her, his eyes instantly losing their softness. He couldn't allow a mere worker, yet alone a gossip catch him with his mind wandering.
"Yes, Lin. Please get in the habit of addressing me correctly. I'd hate to see you scolded again for your mistake."
She smiled quaintly, cocking an eyebrow.
"Still got a stick up your ass about Chihiro, huh? C'mon Master Haku, you've got business upstairs."
With that she turned abruptly, wading towards the faint parallel rails of the train track, her blush pink work robes cinched high as to not part the water behind her. Haku stared after her, glad to be alone again. It always amazed and slightly miffed him that she could see through his cold front as though a thin shroud pervaded him. She barely knew him, yet seemed to understand him so intimately. Perhaps this was one last ripple of Chihiro, left to torment and remind him of her fondness of Lin.
He waved these thoughts from his mind as he turned toward the open sea before hindering Yubaba's summons. No change. The sea never held such consistency for him. He remembered when he was a river, young and prone to energy, surging forth with ferocity and grace. He had flowed into the ocean, a single thread in a great tapestry of water that grew neither still nor stagnant. How different were the waters here; how foreign, like himself. He had never felt out of place in the spirit realm; but now that Chihiro was gone, he felt simultaneously yanked into two opposing directions. The water twisted and sighed, settling into a semi-uniform sheet. The briny air stung his eyes and the sharp coolness of the breeze filled him with serenity. It was time to go.
As Haku begrudgingly turned to face the bath house, a glimmer of red caught the corner of his eye. A girl stood on the water naught a league out, her long red hair as bright as freshly spilled blood. She seemed to stare past him, then, as though a vision, scattered as dust before the wind.
Such things were not unusual in the spirit realm, though the sighting bothered Haku. He strode quickly and evenly--or as evenly as he could manage to appear--through the shallows gaping the span between the cliffs and the bath house. He did not care to look back.
Yubaba's office always smelled of finely ground cinnamon. The sharp smell had become an unwelcome nuisance to Haku over the long, droll years of servitude for the ancient witch. His eyes flickered at the familiar sight of Yubaba's cluttered desk--it was perhaps the only point of non-consistency within the premises of the large room. Small crystal vials containing various shades of pigment were scattered in an awkward formation within an old wicker basket hanging haphazardly off a corner. Old parchment, some rolled, most opened and blotted, scattered the desk's surface like ugly butterflies, binding contracts and payments between customer and bath house with a flimsy soundness. Coins and gems littered the plain of papers like gawdy patroners, basking in their glow as the late sunlight bathed them. Yubaba's thick, heavily-adorned fingers scratched at a document, sounding much like a cacophony of rodents might scampering across a bare wooden floor. Her gnarly bejeweled fingers caught the sunlight, glinting shades of green, violet, and ruby across the woven carpet.
Haku patiently stood beside the balcony, his body trained to silence. The sound of Yubaba's pen met a flourish, signaling the finality of her current work. She flicked aside her pen with a clatter, slowly turning one bespectacled eye upon her quiet guest.
"Haku, I can't keep you here anymore. Now that you've stolen your name back from me, there's nothing I can do to bind you to my service. You're worthless to me now. Go make yourself useful somewhere else; I'm no longer paying to feed an extra mouth."
The line of her mouth cinched tight against her chin, drawing taught rivets from her cheekbones to the corners of her lips.
"Yubaba, I have offered to stay and offer my--"
"I told you I didn't want you here anymore. My word on this is final. I have no room for a disobedient river spirit in such a busy bath house. You're only getting in the way," she interrupted.
"Yes, Yubaba," Haku said graciously, bowing his chin respectfully. "I will take my leave immediately. I hope not to be a hindrance after you have offered me sanctuary for so long."
Yubaba lifted a leaf of parchment from her desk, intent on adding to the violent mess of paperwork on her desk.
"Out of personal curiosity, where do you intend to go?"
"To find Chihiro."
Yubaba cackled harshly, tossing back her disheveled head and snorting through her prominent nose. "You think you can enter the world of the living to find that brat? Haku, you're a dead spirit. You are no longer connected to that world. How foolish! If I knew you were so stupid, I wouldn't have kept you around for so long as my apprentice."
He eyed her frostily, though maintained his respectful stance.
"She's still alive and well. As long as she thinks of me, there is a way."
At this, the witch paused, lost in some form of thought. Her eyes glittered malevolently as she turned to face her former apprentice.
"You think you can cross the boundaries of life and death? What a joke. But still, it might be interesting to watch you fail. You truly are an idiot, boy, and you've much to learn about the world of spirits," she sighed pointedly, leaning on one elbow. "Now get out of my sight. You're distracting me from my work."
Haku lowered his chin respectfully once again, perhaps out of habit or perhaps because he never intended to return. Wordlessly he slipped onto the balcony, shuttering the doors behind him.
The wind danced across his face, tearing through his hair with such ambition that he felt it wanted his scalp to sail away. His sage green eyes squinted against the current, tears forming in their corners. He lifted a hand against the onslaught, shielding his face so that he might see. Haku could remember the wind howling by with righteous vindication often, carrying with it morose sometimes, ofttimes naught but new faces. He was ready for change again, for a lack of monotony. He yearned for the open sky above him, that blue beacon of mysterious intrigue that lead him often into his misadventures. One thought struck him as he threw himself from the balcony--'Chihiro, I'm coming for you.'