I Called Him River

(This story will be told in Chihiro's point of view, in a sort of 'looking back' perspective. So... yes I am aware that much of her ruminations are not age-appropriate... but that's only because an older Chihiro is telling the story. Of course it goes without saying, but Spirited Away and all Characters within are not owned by me, but this story was an explosion of fan-ficcy madness that was my own design. Adult Language, some underage drinking, and some mild parental/child abuse...)

Summary: I've always been at odds with this world ever since that strange day that nobody remembers. Lucky for me I dreamed of a dragon who understands. His name is River, at least that's what I called him.

The "Bold Italic" text you'll find is usually just snarky asides I've injected into the story, no character is actually saying them, just a little added flavor to certain situations that I find some sort of morbid humor in.

I remember

My dramatic change of character occurred about five years ago. However, it was not as gradual a transition as you would think. It was very sudden, occurring without rhyme, reason or provocation. I remember feeling a vivid and inexplicable shift in awareness and perspective. But then, lots of inexplicable things happened that day that ignored the ever lawful rhyme and reason.

We were moving… far, far away; into a big blue house on a steep hill. And I remember absolutely hating the idea. Pleading and begging not to move didn't seem to work on my parents, so I decided I was going to be absolutely miserable and complain about absolutely everything if I could not get my way. Maybe if they saw how unhappy I was they would change their minds about the whole thing and wouldn't move, or at the very least they would let me stay with one of my friends for like… five or ten years.

I was really stupid back then…

I remember us driving through the new town and as we passed by the new school, mother pointed it out to me, and I stuck my tongue at it for all I was worth like the action could hurt its feelings.

Did I mention I was really stupid back then?

I remember how dad got us on the wrong road somehow and instead of being on the top of the hill, we were stuck somewhere looking up at our big blue house. And then daddy wanted to take a one of his brilliant, (sure to get us severely lost) short cuts. And that's when everything gets really confusing.

We found a tunnel to an abandoned amusement park and we hang out there for a while taking in the sights. You would think a nice unexpected outing like this would be easy for a kid to remember. But it turns out, this outing wasn't easy for anyone to remember. Not even for a kid or even my parents.

We really don't know what happened and to this day it's still a very touchy subject that brings a glare from my father and a worried look from my mother. But somehow we lost three days while we were exploring that abandoned theme park. Each of us swear we had only walked through the tunnel, looked around a little while and walked back out. According to mom and dad I had run off ahead of them to look beyond the trickling stream and they had lost me for a little while. I disagree because I distinctly remember them being ahead of me and I had to run to keep up with them and I really did not want to be in that creepy abandoned amusement park in any way. They were the ones who'd insisted! I even remember mother saying "Chihiro, hurry it up!" This I am sure of.

But what I am not sure of is that feeling. Incontrovertible, like the color of the sky, as undeniable as air through your lungs. I felt like something was missing… Something. I looked back at the tunnel, I remember feeling a pure sense of longing, but couldn't explain where it came from, what its source was. It's that nagging sort of feeling you would get if you were setting out on a big vacation, your bags are packed, your reservations are set up, you have the tickets in your hand, and all of your papers, but you can't shake the feeling that you're forgetting something… It might not be something terribly vital to the trip, but you know it's something you'd be missing if you left it behind… Only you just can't figure out what it is.

Despite my inexplicable reservation…We were all in agreement that we couldn't have possibly spent more than thirty minutes in the place… tops. Yet when we left out, there was more than a day's worth of fallen leaves on the car and it smelled funny when we got in, so dad thought to check the cooler, and holy hell it cleared us out of that car in a millisecond! The water in the cooler had long ago melted, our packed lunch spoiled and Gods does it make my stomach hurt even now to think about the smell! Not knowing what else to do, dad decided to just take the cooler out of the car and leave it stashed away in some bushes. I made a joke about how it was unfair to any animals passing by to run afoul of a stink bomb, and dad joked right back about using the cooler as a hunting trap. It was sort of funny… But I do not think he and I were laughing for the same reasons.

Odd as the cooler incident was, we didn't think much of it, dad absently suggested that maybe I had nabbed a sandwich and forgot to properly close the lid of the cooler and all the ice melted. I vehemently denied this and insisted that mother had taken out a sandwich for him earlier in the day, and in an unexpected spurt of intelligence I also pointed out that there was no way all the ice could melt and all the food could have gone bad in such a short period of time anyway. They both agreed and dad muttered something about 'cheap department store coolers' and generally decided stranger things have happened than this; so it was probably nothing to worry about. But then we got home, and we all realized just how strange things could actually get.

At first We were all immediately surprised that the movers were not there yet by the time we had pulled up to the house. Dad laughed and looked back over his shoulder at mom.

"See we even made it before the movers! I told you not to worry." I was behind her so I couldn't see, but just from the motion of her head and the sound she made I could tell she had just rolled her eyes. I ran over to the mailbox not exactly knowing why but something just compelled me. Impulsively I opened it and took out the wad of envelopes. There were lots of 'welcome to the neighborhood' letters with a bunch of coupons we'd never have the time to use before their expiration dates.

It is strange, but for some reason I can remember things from this time very clearly down to the smallest minute detail. Looking back on it I think it's because I was so disturbed at not being able to fully remember our trip through the tunnel that I was overcompensating by being extra perceptive of things. For example, I will always remember that mom wore her pink (she calls it coral) three quarter sleeve V-neck shirt and pale khaki Capri pants. I remember giggling to myself as the exact shape of dad's wallet roughly outlined his back pocket as he bent over to grab up the newspaper and briefly scanned through the headlines (obviously not catching the date) before he opened the door.

And while it was kind of mean of me, I remember snidely whispering to myself "Maybe he should lose a little weight, or maybe he should carry less credit cards and cash." It was such an out of the blue thing for me to even think, let alone say…But I laughed out loud like it was the funniest thing in the world and while I had no reason to believe it was at that moment, I just giggled my happy little ass off. Mom gave me the (do you need me to check your temperature with the rectal thermometer?) look and I piped down right away.

It's possible she thought I was laughing at her for being wrong about the movers. My mother really couldn't stand being wrong about things… like…I mean, anything at all. It's sort of a weird pet peeve to have isn't it? No one can be right about everything, every time. How would they ever learn anything? But that's just how she was I guess, nobody is perfect. It wouldn't be too long before I learned just how far from perfect my parents really were.

I distinctly recall the exact pitch dad's voice reached as he released an uncontrolled, undignified squawk of total amazement upon opening the door and seeing that every piece of furniture we owned was already neatly unpacked inside. I think that was when my parents started to get really unsettled with this string of unusual events. Because there was no possible way in all the seven levels of hell those movers could have unpacked the entire contents of the truck already and left so fast. Especially not without getting a tip at least. Father was the first one to try to make light of this obvious irregularity

"I take it back Miyuki I guess we missed the movers by a long shot." He said with a forced laugh.

"Honey that's not funny at all. They must have worked very hard to get all of our things in here so fast. And we weren't around to help!"

So she said but I could tell by the tiniest upwards curl at the corner of her lips that she was feeling rather smug at being right. Everything seemed different now somehow. I always knew my mother liked being right about things especially when it came to arguments with daddy. But I never noticed the obvious childish glee she got from it before now. It was… a very disturbing new light to see the women you wanted to grow up to be like in. And now when I think on it I can't determine a single defining reason as to why I would want to grow up and be like her. Okay she was fairly nice, a decent cook, she dressed well and was very pretty.

But were those not all qualities I could already possess In myself, if not learn elsewhere from another even more qualified source? Aside from the pretty thing I guess… Yeah… mother was pretty, I thought she was the prettiest mother that lived on the block at our old house… I could be biased though, but maybe that was it. Did I want to grow up and be pretty like she was? Sure… I guess I did. It would be nice. But pretty wasn't everything.

Wow… where was all of this coming from and why was I thinking in such a way? I think I was starting to even freak myself out at that point.

I felt like I suddenly had a top-down view on life rather always looking up or between the legs of the taller ones. Okay… Physically I still was looking from that same perspective, but mentally I suddenly felt taller than giants; completely at ease and far more in tune with things that went unnoticed before… Mentally I felt taller than daddy, taller than the hill we lived on or the highest building of the Tokyo skyline… But the real pronounced difference hit me when mom and dad finally noticed the time lapse we had all unknowingly experienced.

They both had a back and forth tirade about the mover's remarkable skill at getting the whole house unpacked so expediently, meanwhile I slowly carried all the boxes marked 'Chihiro' up to my newly assigned room. Heh… wow kinda makes it sound like a prison doesn't it? But to a kid, what's the difference? We're all handcuffed to our parents for at least sixteen or eighteen years right? We can only hope we'll get lucky and get good ones in this life. I think I got lucky…

"Miyuki! I only just thought of it but what if those movers took some of our stuff with them, knowing we wouldn't notice until they were long gone!"

Sort of…

For a full hour there were several outbursts about not being able to find this .. or that. It was always the tiniest and most valuable of trinkets and every single time any one of them would begin to raise a furor, or threaten to call the company CEO on the movers, I would just find a random box that had the exact item they were ready to rage about. Once the swell of paranoia died down and all family heirlooms and designer watches were accounted for, I very accidentally happened to look over at the pile of envelopes sitting on top of the newspaper in the kitchen. I had already looked over the contents so they really were of no interest, but for some reason the postmark date caught my eye.

"Hmmm?" Silly little post office, that couldn't be right, somebody must've used the wrong stamp, or maybe the computer had a malfunction. I know it was the post office and that it was very unlikely they would make such a mistake but stranger things have happened right? Out of sheer necessity I looked at the date on the newspaper. And that was very interesting. I found dad in the new study.

"Dad… will you be watching the game tomorrow night?"

"Of course Chihiro, We won't have time to go shopping for your new T.V. yet so you won't be able to watch your…"

"I know daddy… and its okay… I don't mind." I really didn't though. But I know only a very short while ago I would have pouted about that indefinitely. Dad looked rather confounded by this but he just nodded and went back to unpacking the things to make his desk look very functional yet elegant.

"The Antlers were playing against Trinita… right?" I asked with an air of nonchalance.

"That's right honey, since when did you get into sports huh?" He sounded suddenly pleased, as if he had found the long lost son he'd always wanted hidden far back, on the top shelf of the closet.

"There you are! I forgot I even had you up here! Now let's go place baseball!"

"Well, it's okay… it seems like a lot of fun to watch other guys playing in an athletic event."

Whoa… What? I didn't talk like that… like ever… I didn't know it at the time but I am now aware that this was my first successful approach at facetiousness. And it went right over his head.

"That's my girl! But why do you ask Chihiro?"

"Because I think Trinita's going to win that game."

"What!?" I realized daddy was extremely expressive. His eyes had several degrees of widening that it was hard for anyone to match. It must have been difficult for someone as animated as he was to climb the corporate ladder. His face suddenly relaxed into an all too familiar expression.

How would I describe it? I guess I would call it the 'Oh I almost forgot this is Chihiro I'm talking to' face.

"There there now hysterical little girl, there are no monsters under your bed and Santa Clause really IS real. Here have a cookie and go lay down…"

"Chihiro… honey, there's no way Trinita would win against my Antlers, they're the best team in the league okay love?" See what I mean? Can't you just taste the fresh batch of condescending?

"That's not what it says in the paper." I said not looking up at him.

"Dear, those are just silly sports columnists trying to fill up space with projections and misguided predictions. That's all honey… everyone's got an opinion but that doesn't always make them ri-"

" 'Antler's suffers surprising upset. Trinita celebrates season's first victory.' Even with Honda's unfortunate ankle injury early in the game, no one could have foreseen Trinita bringing the mighty Antler's winning streak to a-' "

Dad snatched the paper from me and was scanning the article the very next second. His eyes couldn't seem to decide if they wanted to widen or narrow. I decided to leave daddy alone for a while and sit at the big bay window of my new room. I don't know why, or how but somehow I've come out of that tunnel a different person. I am suddenly finding this hilltop home to be the loveliest place I've ever lived in. I only had about ten minutes to reflect on my new found peace with things before my house erupted into a parade of confusion once more…

"MIYUKI!!! What is today's Date!?"

I remember sighing a lot that day…