D/N: I hope everyone liked the crappy prologue. So, let's continue on now with Chihiro's tale. watches Spirited away again
Disclaimer: Gee, I forgot to do one of these last chapter; I hate 'em so.
Anyway. Spirited Away is property of Miyazaki-sama, Disney, and Studio Ghibli. bows
The next morning, Chihiro hurried to finish her chores as fast as possible. She had made up her mind; she was going to go back for a visit. Surely Yubaba would allow her to leave, as long as she didn't stay past when they lit the lamps. When her mother asked why she was in such a hurry, Chihiro only smiled at her, and told her, "I wanted to go take a ride in the woods before the weather gets too hot, and we go on vacation."
Her mother smiled, "If you had said that earlier, I would have let you go. There's no need for all of this to be done today, you know. Go on now. You can finish what you're doing later, or tomorrow."
Chihiro put down the laundry basket she was holding, and gave her mother a brief hug, before running into the kitchen to gather lunch and drinks for the ride, and gave her mother another hug, cheerily calling, "I'll see you later, mom! I don't know when I'm going to be home, though."
Her mother called, "Try and be back before nightfall."
"I will!"
Chihiro pulled her black and blue bicycle from out of the garage, and wheeled it into their side yard, where the suburbs met the forest. She hopped onto the bike, and rode down through the woods and to a small path. It directly led down to the gate to the spirit realm. She had often only stopped before the gate, to stare into the dark depths, and wonder where her friends had gone, what had happened to them. Before, she still had been frightened of the prospect of being stuck there again. What if she was never to return? She shook her head; it wasn't good to think of that stuff.
While she rode, she thought about the dream. It was odd, that she should dream it so much now. Yet there was something wrong. The spirits spoke of different things when she had first dreamt of them; they had tried to keep her, to make her stay. "You've already done enough damage." She murmured, the words coming back to her as though through a fog. A squirrel streaked out of the path laid out before her, flying up a tree and sitting up there, glaring down at her and chattering angrily, as though she had wronged it. Chihiro momentarily looked up at it, but then looked back toward the path, not wanting to be flipped over by an exposed root or something like that.
It wasn't long before she came before the entrance to the spirit world, the place where her father had entered so long ago, herself following him and her mother almost reluctantly as the wind pulled at her clothes and hair, as though urging her to go through. The small statue was still there in the middle of the path, a curious little thing, worn down to smooth stone by the elements in only five years. She couldn't remember what it had looked like before, when she had first saw it, and absently picked a withered vine off of the top; the rest had fallen off already, lying discarded on the ground nearby.
Her brown eyes regarded the death of the plant as nothing, and leaned her bike up against the statue; she was sure that no one would try and steal it. Never had she seen anyone here before, not since that day with her parents. She hitched the backpack up, momentarily, and then entered. The wind didn't tug at her clothes or hair. The animals of the forest, once she has passed over the threshold, faded to nothing. All she could hear was the soft impact of her shoes upon the stone, the soft breeze of her own breathe, and the steady thump of her heart which grew faster as she entered the train station.
Chihiro froze as soon as she saw the train station. The stained glass windows that normally changed the floor into a collage of different colors were broken, the fragments lying in a semi-circle around the windows themselves. Some of the stone pillars were cracked, others toppled over into small stone fragments. What benches she could recognize were blackened, as though the wood had been burned, the stone floor smeared with black marks. Something was wrong.
Sunlight streamed through the doorway at the other door, and Chihiro forced herself forward into the meadow, the back pack with her lunch bumping against her as she hurried out. Outside, the meadow was dead and brown, the flowers dried out husks, mere dust once her foot landed on it. She remembered how it used to be a large meadow full of green grass and blooming flowers.
Chihiro continued on, worry gnawing at her heart; there was something terribly wrong in the spirit world, as if some large being had crushed the life out of the entire place. The air was musty and thick, and the dust in the air coated her tongue with an unpleasant tasting paste as she breathed in through her mouth. She grimaced, and drank some of the water she had packed earlier, grateful for the fact that she had packed it, and pulled the front of her shirt up to cover her nose and mouth as she walked.
Brown clouds of dead grass and flowers puffed up with her every step. The rocks forming the river from before were coated with the dust also; the water had stopped flowing. What exactly had happened in the five years that she had been gone? What had become of the spirit world?
She walked up the stairs, cracked and treacherous, and stopped for the third time since she came here, shocked beyond belief. The town, the spirit town, was a wreck. Buildings lay toppled everywhere, some of them having a wall or two still standing, but, for the most part, were destroyed by something large and that had fire on their side. Chihiro hesitantly walked forward; she could see the bath house in the distance, still standing, for the most part.
Carefully, she stepped over broken pieces of buildings and materials of all kinds, careful not to trip and get hurt by the sharpened pieces of rubble. She slipped, and nearly impaled herself on a wooden stake. Had it not been rotten and riddled with termite-holes, she probably would have died right then. Using a shelf of rock to heave herself up, Chihiro groaned. The bath house seemed to move further and further away with her every attempt at getting closer. Frustrated, she sat upon the rock she used to stand, glaring at the bath house irritably. Her good mood could only stretch so far, and now was being pushed to beyond its limits.
Chihiro, hungry, pulled a rice ball from her backpack and slowly ate it, wondering what she should do. She wanted to help; she wanted to find Haku, Granny, Kumaji, even Yubaba. There was something bad going on here, and it wasn't being solved. Could that be the reason for her dreams? If so, then someone must be here, waiting for her. The air here was stifling and heavy upon her body, and it was starting to get hot as the sun creeped out from behind the thick, grimy clouds.
She looked up, slowly, and saw birds wheeling over the bath house, thick black smoke rising form the tower that led from the boiler. Chihiro nearly fell off the rock in her scramble to stand up to get a better look, hoping that her eyes weren't playing a trick on her. There was definitely smoke rising from the chimney far ahead; Kumaji could still be in the bath house!
Chihiro, now ignoring the potential danger that she was in, she ran through the rubble, snaking through the larger pieces, her mind telling her she had to get to the bath house. There was no question about it, and she only had a few hours to do so, before nightfall, the traditional time when the lanterns were lit. She didn't want to stay past that time; she didn't want to be stuck here for another span of time like before.
Suddenly, it felt like she was moving through molasses, her limbs burdened with something heavy. Chihiro gritted her teeth and pressed on; she had come too far to be disappointed now by something as simple as heavy air. The further she went, the heavier the air came. It went as far as to begin to press against her lungs, making it even harder to breathe than before. Soon, it came to be that she couldn't breathe at all as she struggled on, by each and every pained inch. Her head swam from the lack of oxygen; if she didn't get any fresh air soon, she'd probably faint.
Just as suddenly as she had entered the area, she was thrown out again. Chihiro, already used to using much more force than normal to walk, was thrown forward and into the ground, her head banging painfully into a rock; she blacked out right then, lying on the rubble on which she had landed.
D/N: Euh, I think I'm making this story move too fast, but now I don't really care .. . Fweee! does the twirly dance