Disclaimer: I do not own Spirited Away... so sad

Flashes of memory a story forgotten by never truly lost locked away in a secret vault that not even the keeper knows about. A sea green mane. A pink uniform. A man with eight arms. The things that should be nightmares. But aren't. For her they are comforting. Why she doesn't know, only that they are precious to her. She is the keeper of the forgotten story that sometimes threatens to rise and overwhelm her. Her life goes before her, but she is stuck with the same dream. It is too real to be fake and too fake to be real. It scares her. Her physical comfort is in the shape of pale sea green pendant shaped like a teardrop and a purple hair tie that never breaks.

She is seventy years and still waiting. For what she can't remember but she knows she is waiting. She knows she will wait until her time is done, for that is what fate laid out for her. And strangely, there is nothing that she would rather do than wait, waiting has been her life, it would be odd to change that now. So now she waits, for reality to hit, but whose reality, that is the real question. Her dreams, her life, or something else entirely. She hangs on by a thread. Most simply think she is too stubborn to give up, she doesn't argue. She doesn't know if they are right. And as in the rest of her life, she finds she doesn't care in the slightest. Oh she did before. She has memories of looking in the mirror searching for the perfect outfit. But those memories are just a hazy vision. More of a feeling than anything else. It was before she moved. Funny how a simple event can change someone. But it changed her completely.

She sighs, wishing to go outside and watch the sunset. She needs something to happen. She wants answers before the inevitable happens, as it must. She can feel her times slipping away. It is becoming harder and harder to open her eyes every morning. Finally a day comes when they don't open at all. Her breath has not stopped. The nurses around her aren't worried. She is nearly a hundred. She needs all the sleep she can get. They will talk to her tomorrow. Silently they file out.

Her stories are well known in the nursing home. Nearly everyone has had the enjoyment of hearing them once. Many have heard them several times, yet every time there is something new in the story, whether it be an emotion from the narrator, a new character, different comments that change the whole story and make it new. For this story there is no real version. It goes on much as time does. It grows and evolves.

Fall is coming. She knows her time is nearly up. She tells the story one last time. It nearly night. Several gather around her, staff, other patients and their relatives, and some might say that the birds gathered on the branch outside the window stopped to listen. But that couldn't be right. About an hour later the story is finished. She leaves the common room and returns to her room and retires, knowing she will never awake again, and somehow she is okay with that. She falls asleep with a peaceful smile on her face, knowing that her waiting is finally at an end. Something changed that night. Its effects were the most noticeable on the Alzheimer's patients. Though they soon forgot everything, they remembered the story and the woman who told it. It was forever ingrained in their brains. Weeks later they could still recall details of the story. It could not be explained. And so this story has been passed on through several generations because no one has ever forgotten it once it has been told. But that is for the future.

It is said that on the next day the woman was found with a peaceful smile and no breath left in her body. The staff wept for the woman who had been with them for over thirty years and entertained them with her stories. There were very few dry eyes in the home that day. A small funeral was held and she was buried near the nursing home. She often said that it was her home and that she wanted it to remain her home. The grave was marked by a stone with a simple engraving on it that read

Chihiro Ogino

Beloved Storyteller

While She May Be Gone, Her Stories Will Live On Forever

That was what she was, a storyteller. And what more could a storyteller want, than for her stories to live on. And live on they did. Even now they are whispered in the breeze and told by the river's babble. The story of a girl named Sen and how she thawed the heartless dragon without a name.