Disclaimer: If you think I own this, you're giving me way too much credit ;)
--
Chihiro found herself standing on a flight of stone steps that lead down to water; a lake, perhaps, or maybe even a sea - it seemed to go out a long way. She peered at the scintillating place on the far side, its fairy lights bleeding fuzzily into the darkness, like ink on paper.
The girl rubbed her eyes and frowned. She was so certain she'd been here before. She'd looked out on this view; she remembered it from somewhere. But when...?
Something overhead, just out of her field of vision caught her eye, and she looked up: a small, slender ribbon of silver was writhing its way across the sky. For a moment, Chihiro thought it might be a streamer, or a kite with tails loose in the wind, but then she realised that there was no wind blowing, and that the thing actually looked closer to a living worm or snake than it did a streamer. And then it came to her: a dragon! The thing was a dragon!
Turning away from the water, she ran in the direction that the dragon was flying, racing between houses and buildings of the town that had been behind her, the smell of food filling her nose. Colourful lights flashed past as she bounded up a flight of steps, struggling to keep up with the speed of the thing above her. She briefly noted as she went that the town was strangely empty; something in her mind said that at night time, this place should be busy. But it wasn't. Strange, she thought as she dodged round a corner. But then this whole thing was strange...
Finally she came the largest run of steps yet, and she tackled them two at a time, staring up at the tall, glowing lantern infront of her. A few metres beyond that, there was a wooden bridge, long and wide with red railings. But beyond that, rather than a large building with a smoking chimney and white sail that Chihiro seemed to think should have been there, a vast city rose up. It was alive with lights and the streets were stretching, straight and orderly. The structures were impressive and perfectly built, with sweeping tiled roofs that swooped down from long spines like wings. There were towers with many floors and multiple roofs, and tall gates guarded by hulking stone statues of strange creatures. There were brightly coloured paper lanterns glowing on strings that hung across streets, and filling the air, almost everywhere she looked, were kites: large kites, small kites, complicated kites, simple kites, decorated, plain, in any form she could imagine. They wheeled and fluttered above the rooftops, their tails snapping and writhing. Writhing!
Chihiro's eyes frantically searched for the dragon, and for one awful moment, she thought she had lost it. Then her heart gave a resounding thump and seemed to stop: she caught sight of it looping away over to her right. Breaking into a run again, she thundered across the bridge and skidded through the streets of the city, always keeping the dragon's silver form ahead of her.
At first, she was so intent on trying to keep her lungs from seizing up that she didn't notice the palace at all. But gradually, as it swelled in its enclosed walls, and the halos of the paper lanterns slid onto her face, Chihiro looked up and stopped in her tracks. She felt her feet leave the ground, and she flew up and over the wall, climbing higher with every moment that passed. She opened her mouth to scream but found that no sound would come out; she was pulled in the wake of the dragon's path like a leaf in the wind.
Below her, the grounds were sprawlingly large. Something vaguely bean-shaped that glittered pitch black in the lanternlight she took to be a pond, and the dim white haze surrounding it to be a blossom orchard. There were also dark grey blobs - the tops of statues - and the little paved paths looked like snail trails. As she got higher still however, her stomach gave a funny flip and all the blood drained from her head; with a hard swallow, she ceased to look down anymore and stared determinedly at a tower ahead of her instead.
She noticed that the dragon was making for the topmost balcony of the tower, and as she watched, it gave one final loop and then disappeared into the shadows. Chihiro came slowly to a halt and was left hanging in mid air, suspended opposite the tower. Startled by the fact that she was no longer moving, she panicked and began to windmill her arms and legs wildly in an attempt to keep from falling. But as she did so, something distracted her; she stopped, and directed a dazed stare at the balcony. A face was forming there, so large that it filled Chihiro's vision, and taken aback, the young girl gave up her attempts to stay aloft and simply hung there.
It was the face of a girl a little older than herself - perhaps sixteen, seventeen or so - and very beautiful; alabaster; porcelain; so pale. The hair that framed it was china white, and the eyes were a hazy wisteria grey. It had a delicate pink mouth and its features were lovely and even, but they looked somehow sad; and there was no colour in the cheeks. The face was not merely white, Chihiro realised, but a dead white, like the face of a geisha. She shivered involuntarily. And then she noticed little cracks; fine lines, barely visible, criss-crossing the skin; and there was a glassy sheen to it as though someone had given it a coat of laquer. Craning her neck forward to peer closer, Chihiro was suddenly hit with a thought, and she reeled back away from the face. This girl did not look as though she were made of porceline - she was made of porceline!
And before Chihiro had time to recover, the face changed, shifting before her eyes like mist: it stayed just as pale, but the eyes became shadowed, darker, more cruel, and the mouth became thin. The nose was sharp and the long hair turned from white to poker-straight, glossy black. The face of the girl became the face of a man, and the man's eyes burrowed deep within Chihiro's soul, somewhere that she felt no one had any right to be burrowing, and a strange fire burned there; the fire of one who knew terrible secrets and awsome magic.
"Shotatsu," The man began to mock in a deep, rich voice. Its laugh was not pleasant. "Shotatsu will not save you."
In her shock, Chihiro did not hear at first when the voice altered, but gradually it became clearer and louder, until the words were the only thing that echoed in her mind; it was the voice of the girl.
"Haku!" It called out, and it sounded as though it were being almost drowned out by a strong wind. "Haku, where are you?"
Far off in the distance, there was a faint beeping. Chihiro struggled frantically to stay in the air as a fist of wind buffeted her full in the back, and she found herself plummeting towards the ground, the palace gardens rushing up to meet her with alarming rapidity. The beeping grew louder and louder, and Chihiro opened her mouth to scream as the last few metres closed between her and the black water of the pond...
"Gah!"
Chihiro shot bolt upright in bed, her hair standing on end. It was morning; the sunshine streamed in through the chinks between her curtains, and the digital clock on her bedside table was beeping.
"Weird dream..." She pondered sleepily, reaching across to silence the alarm. It had seemed so familiar...the place where she had been. Or the place where she had started off, anyway - but why?
"Chihiro?" There was a knock on the door. "Chihiro. Time to get up, sweetheart."
"'K, mum!"
As her mother's footsteps faded away down the corridor, twelve-year-old, brown-haired, brown-eyed Chihiro flumped back on her bed and stared up at the ceiling. Something told her that it was going to be a very strange day.
--