(a/n: freaking why did you change the aspect ratio of covers i hate you as;dflkj;lsdfkd
oh and mr. miyazaki please don't kill me i am a disturbed personage)
Red Like Glass
by L.C. Li
The Chihiro that entered the car at the beginning of the road trip was vastly different from the Chihiro that exited the car at the end.
She was quieter. She glowed. She found new confidence, her mother observed.
She credited it to a Spirit World, a world beyond material. It was her home, she said. Her true home, to which she hoped to return one day. And if not... then surely she would meet the most important person to her.
She would stand in the streets late at night, looking at the moon, searching for something and nothing. Her face was lifted in hope. Her mother was concerned, but her father waved it away.
Leave the child, her father said. It's just a phase.
So they left Chihiro. They left her mind in the clouds. They did not realize the danger in doing so.
::-::
She began to trace patterns on the wall until her fingers bled. Her eyes were afar and the smile on her mouth was too waifish to be considered cheerful.
Chihiro, gasped her mother, snatching her hand. Not again, oh, no.
I see the waves, Chihiro said.
You see nothing, her mother reprimanded. Now, child, I don't know what's gotten into you, but your father and I are getting very concerned. Look at your hand!
Chihiro smiled.
Hand, she said. Haku's hand, she said.
Rivets of blood were still tricking from the tips of her fingers.
This is ridiculous, her mother said, and we are going to get you a doctor. Now.
Her mother stormed off to the phone. Chihiro blinked, paused, then continued to run her fingertips along the wall. She saw waves and shadows and masks. She saw the face of a wrinkled old woman, the scales of a dragon, and the quiet gleam of paper lanterns.
The spirit world, she said airily. It calls to me.
The walls heard her and smiled back.
::-::
The Doctor came. He poked and prodded her and asked many questions that Chihiro did not want to answer. He was a man with a pointed nose and hard eyes. He looked like a crow.
He then rubbed at his temples and turned to Chihiro's parents, saying many long and complicated words that Chihiro did not understand. So she did not try. She returned to the walls, staring at the traces of dried blood that her mother had tried so hard to scrub away.
I'm sorry, sir, ma'am, said the Doctor.
Chihiro's mother was crying. So was her father.
We pulled her out of school because of this madness, her father said tightly, and now you're saying that there's no way to cure her?
The Doctor said many more complicated words. Chihiro's mother mother snorted up tears like she had when she was a pig and Chihiro laughed.
Darling, why are you laughing, asked her mother.
Oh, nothing, said Chihiro. I was just remembering when you and Daddy were turned into pigs.
Her mother blanched. Her father gripped her by the collar.
Enough of this, her father said.
He pushed her into the basement and locked the door as Chihiro's mother wailed.
::-::
Chihiro had a bed and Chihiro had meals, but she had no light. The faintest trickle bled from the cracks in the door, but they were sluggish and quiet. And the light was yellow. Not blue or silver, the lovely colors, but yellow. Chihiro closed her eyes and began to trace on the walls.
Haku, she mumbled.
::-::
The Doctor would visit every day. He would sit down and try to manipulate her. He kept asking questions. Chihiro did not like tests. She preferred running, or flying, or anything but answering endless lists of empty questions.
So she eventually stopped talking. She did not answer the questions. She stared into silence and traced the walls, ignoring the throbbing in the tips of her raw fingers.
::-::
The Doctor stopped coming.
She heard his footsteps, assymmetrical and thud-THUD against the flooring as he pushed her platter of food after cracking her door open, but he stopped coming in. He stopped asking her questions.
Her mother and father stopped coming, too. She could not even hear them in the house. All had gone silent.
She took the spoon from her platter and used it to trace the walls. Her fingers were bleeding too heavily.
::-::
No-Face appeared out of the shadows. Chihiro was delighted to see him. She spoke to him about many things, the loneliness clenched in her heart finally seeping away.
The Doctor looked more worried than ever as he supplied her with platters. The Doctor could not see No-Face because he was blind.
The poor Doctor, Chihiro said to No-Face. Poor, poor Doctor.
No-Face tilted his head. His figure did not make a shadow on the wall.
::-::
Chihiro eventually asked a question that she dreaded but No-Face begged her to ask. She sat by the door, waiting until the Doctor inched it open to present her meal.
When he did, she spoke.
Doctor, she said absently, where have my parents gone?
A moment of silence. And then the reply:
They left. Forever. And they don't pay me enough for this...
He grumbled indiscernible words under his breath as he slammed the door and stomped away. Chihiro glanced at No-Face and shrugged. He shrugged back.
::-::
No-Face began to fade. Chihiro begged for him not to go. She clawed at the walls and screamed as he vanished.
Come with me, he seemed to be saying. Come.
Chihiro did not understand.
::-::
And then she did.
There was no No-Face. There was no Haku. They were in the spirit world, and this place was not the spirit world.
She had to go to the spirit world.
The Doctor cracked open the door and slid her platter through. How are you feeling, Chihiro, he said in a very flat and dull voice.
Chihiro smiled. The spirit world is calling, she whispered.
He sighed and shut the door. Chihiro smiled wider.
::-::
Chihiro waited in the dark. She waited until the Doctor came with her meal. She waited by the crack of the door, crouching in the shadows like a panther.
The door opened and Chihiro lunged and the Doctor fell. His head slammed against the ground and shattered. Like stained glass, Chihiro pondered. Glittering and reflective, light streaming through scarlet droplets.
Chihiro ran, free. The house was empty except for the Doctor. She ran without shoes to feel the road poking into her feet and the grass between her toes. It reflected the only time she had ever felt anything.
She ran not according to maps or the angle of the sun. She ran because she knew. She could have closed her eyes while running. The world was embedded in her heart, unforgettable, pressing at the back of her eyelids in every dream. She ran and she did not hesitate.
She drew up short along the bank of the River. The River gushed with life and breath and everything she lacked. There was light, magic, dreams, all contained in the fragile waves that lapped teasingly close to her toes.
Hello, Haku, she said.
She smiled and extended her arms and fell into the river. A little splash eclipsed her body until it settled into tiny, undisturbed ripples that shattered against the rocks on the shore. She did not surface.
FIN
s.d.g.