Prologue
A little girl of sixteen sat under the cool shade of a large tree, her eyes pressed shut, trying to visualize once again this repressed world that enchanted her nights. Oddly enough, she had been dreaming of these things after that day, which happened six years past. She remembered emerging out of a long, concrete tunnel of nondescript red, its paint peeling out to reveal flecks of gray underneath. She remembered their car full of dust, with twigs and leaves covering its shiny gray surface as if it had been terribly neglected for months when in fact, it only took a few moments. What had she done? She remembered a mountain, her father commenting that it might have been a theme park, and a river that was supposed to be there. Other than that – nothing.
Yet, it seemed as if that place had a miracle on its own. Fragments of the dreams she remembered had shown her traversing through a dilapidated theme park, with restaurants aplenty. There were two pigs, and she remembered that rushing feeling of fright every time those pigs haunt her dreams. There was a long bridge with simple red handrails, and a rather luxurious bathhouse ahead. At times, she also dreamed of a man with six arms that could practically extend at such a length, little soot balls scurrying about, a gargantuan baby thrice her size, and a gaudy old hag in blue with luxurious jewelry on her body (especially those gold earrings that resembled a large coin), and probably an inch-thick of makeup sprawled on her pruny face.
Most of all, there was this young lad and a dragon. Whenever she sees this boy with deep green hair and enchanting emerald eyes, she could feel the warmth rush in, as if he was reaching out directly to her emotions. Whenever her eyes look at that man's eyes, all her worries melt down and willingly succumb to the man's mercy. Same with the dragon, but there was something more. She could feel the cold air in her cheeks, sometimes a scaly skin beneath her soft hands, yet she felt the same fleeting emotion that she feels whenever she sees the boy. As if they were directly reaching out to her emotions – to her.
They all seemed so vivid, so real, and she felt as if she was living another life within that realm of dreams. There was a feeling of relief, as if it was paradise, as if it was home.
These past two years, Chihiro Ogino had spent her time trying to replicate these dreams into interesting pieces of art – mostly sketches of the boy and the dragon, as if they were on an adventure. A really fun one. Sometimes, she even drew herself together with them. At not-so-rarer times, she caught herself dreaming – daydreaming – that she was the boy's muse. Even if she had no talent create such wonderful words of art, nor create such heartwarming stories with her flowery words, she tried her very best. Since then, she gained a profound mastery of drawing these creatures from her dreams, and make stories just for them.
As if the dreams themselves guided her to replicate their wonder here on Earth, and be manifested into reality by her small hands.
She finally opened her soft brown eyes and stared at the blank piece of paper in front of her, a small pencil at hand. Just right an inch above the paper, her hand moved by its own, drawing imaginary lines and curves on the air as she imagined the scene she wanted to portray: a Chinese dragon of purest alabaster, with elegant green fur running through its back, gloriously rising out of the water with a young girl on its back.
The lead on Chihiro's pencil almost scraped on the fine surface of the paper, only if the ground beneath her did not shake lightly. The brown-haired girl suddenly looked up in surprise, the sirens in her mind signaling her to run. A relieved sigh escaped her rosy lips as it stopped after a second or two.
No, no, nothing too scary... Chihiro thought as she looked around, the world revolving in its natural pace, as if nothing happened at all. She went back to her own musings and finally placed the pencil's point on that first spot on the bottom of the paper. It would have started with a nice ripple moving out of the spot where the dragon emerged, but it somehow ended up as a heavy, horrible line as the pencil's tip moved in unison with the shaking earth. Her hand lost all the control and the next thing she knew, screams were all around the place, drowning all the voices in her thoughts, and seemingly shoving the dragon's emergence back into the confines of her treasure box of imagination and creativity.
She promptly snatched the sketchbook and her materials and ran back to their humble abode. Chihiro staggered on the way as she avoided the houses which threatened to crumble right on top of her, and those electric poles which were on the brink of toppling down on the stampede below. People were rushing back to their homes, back to their families just as Chihiro was, ignoring all the pain of running at their fastest. All they wanted was to reach home in time.
Heavens, their blue house was on the end of the whole road, and Chihiro was very far from her destination. Some of their neighbors were quite calm now, having walked to the open and free from the peril that the houses could fall down on them. But then again, they were facing an even greater peril – they were on the edge of a hill, and this whole compound could easily crumble down in a landslide. Things quickly changed though, when cracks appeared on the concrete road and started branching out to different directions. Everyone was suddenly filled with terror, and Chihiro ran for her life. The muscles on her legs screamed in pain, yet she continued on.
The early afternoon sun blazed above her head, and it surely did not help. A mixture of sweat and tears dripped from her face as she dashed, and such was her relief when she found her family outside – her parents, Yuko and Akio Ogino, as well as her five-year old sister, Misa Ogino.
"Chihiro, we were so worried!" Yuko chastised her with a sour frown as she came nearer, yet pulled Chihiro into a tight embrace. "I'm so happy you're safe." Her mother was close to tears and nearly broke in hysterics. Good thing Chihiro went back just in time.
"Chi! Chi!" Misa reached for her sister's right hand and fondly rubbed her cheeks against it.
"I'm sorry. I was nearby, but it was hard to run with all these people on the road!" Chihiro complained in a whiny manner and stamped her feet, yet she sniffed with happiness. It was true, though. She could have died.
They huddled together on the safer side of the street when the earthquake finally stopped.
~ ~ x ~ ~
"Mother, isn't that the town where we came from?" Chihiro pointed on the television as it showed the areas where the devastation was more than theirs. The apartment whittled down to nothing but rubble, and a stream of water clearly flowed underneath. There was nothing but a horrible sight of destruction on the evening news, yet Chihiro had her eyes plastered on it.
"Well, yes..." Akio nodded as he slowly chewed his food. He blinked twice, with utter disbelief on the misfortune that befell the whole town. "Good thing we moved here then."
"Isn't that the Kohaku River?" Yuko commented as her eyes warily stared at the screen.
Chihiro blinked and looked at the screen well. "Right... that was covered when they needed a place to build all those apartments... I almost died there once..."
Despite the words that came out form her mouth, Chihiro was hit with a sudden pang of longing. She stared at it fondly, lovingly, as if she wanted to go back and drown herself again. As if she wanted to let another pink shoe afloat and intentionally allow the wind to carry it to a far distance, leaving nothing but ripples across the calm azure surface of the river.
"Yes, the first time you had us worried to death," Yuko groaned at the memory and shook her head.
"But at least I got out alive!" Chihiro muttered, her eyes examining the river from the corner of her eye. It certainly lost its previous grandeur, conjuring up that image from her own memory, yet the river was still hauntingly beautiful.
Misa looked completely bemused with the conversation on the dinner table, but she merely shrugged it off and continued eating her rice voraciously, and asked to have more of the teppanyaki in front of them.
~ ~ x ~ ~
No school tomorrow, yay! Chihiro thought gleefully, stretching her arms high up in the air. She already finished all her assignments, as well as the house chores assigned to her.
Suddenly, her eyes bore into the sketchbook on her table, opened to the page where she was supposed to draw the dragon earlier that day. Her index finger traced the large zigzag she manage to create, with a disappointed frown across her lips. Not only did she mess up the page, but she also messed the next few ones by creating a hole on the page. Great.
9-21
A magnitude 7.2 earthquake came by.
So instead of drawing ripples of water,
I have this ugly line instead.
She scrawled on the page with her horrible handwriting, the most horrible (yet readable) handwriting she could ever manage to read, with an angry arrow pointing to the only line. A sigh escaped her lips she she put down her pen, and held the sketchbook up at eye-level. In her mind, she could still see her dragon perfectly placed on the page, with translucent black lines forming the figure of her dragon.
Well, I'll remove these destroyed pages and draw you tomorrow, Chihiro mentally communicated with her dragon, with a sincere smile on her face. The brown-haired girl gently closed the sketchbook and placed it on the drawer where it belonged, at home with all her other art materials.
Chihiro yawned and promptly covered her mouth with the back of her hand. It was quite late, and she could barely make out the silhouettes outside their house. The night was starless, as if the heavens above decided not to taunt the earth with such beauty after the disaster, and only flecks of the moon's light peeked through the thick, puffy clouds. The cool evening breeze wafted through the open windows and sent the peach curtains billowing slightly.
The teenager stood up and walked to the window for a final glance. Her eyes scanned the devastation in their compound, and she could only shake her head in concern. Chihiro's hands reached for the window's smooth glass, on the brink of closing it when something caught her attention. Her brown eyes widened in surprise, and she was immediately rendered speechless. A hand froze in midair, while the other quickly went up to her chest.
The small lamps in their front gate flickered as the slight breeze caused it to rock back and forth from its place. No, that sight was not particularly spectacular. It was what the lights illuminated. Right in front of their front gate, was a masked creature. It seemed like a wraith cloaked with the darkest black, and the hem of its cloak, as well as its feet, were nowhere to be seen; it was as if the lower portion of its body vanished into thin air. There were purple vertical markings on top and on the bottom of its alabaster mask, yet its 'mask' seemed to move accordingly with his eyes and his mouth. It just stood there, as if it was waiting for someone to open the gate so he could enter. It blinked twice and looked up. The next thing she knew, her brown eyes were locked in a gaze with the demure spirit's deep ebony gaze, its eyes no more than two black holes on its mask.
What in the world is that?
Disclaimer: I don't own Spirited Away. I'd be the happiest person if I were!
Note: I'll be using the names used in the English Dub version, except for dear Kaonashi because it sounds better than No-Face.
Comments, critiques, reactions, violent reactions, love letters, whatever are all welcomed. XD
Thank you for reading!
I hope you enjoyed it as much as I enjoyed writing it!