Heya my lovely little readers and reviewers! Sorry this took a little while to upload...okay write. I was gonna write it yesterday but got phenomenally drunk and therefore had the mother of all hangovers today...not clever! Also got distracted by Sherlock fanfiction...
I'm so sorry! *wails uncontrollably*
...yeah, moving on. please read and review my luverlies! :)
enjoy!
Earth, sap, leaves - all earthy, natural scents. Mowed grass, petrol fumes, plastic - less natural scents. Man made scents. Arrietty could smell her surroundings, definitely a forest. She could feel the soil and twigs beneath her hands. The sound of giggling children was drifting over the breeze, masking slightly the noises of cars in the distance. Arrietty tried to open her eyes but found she couldn't. Her hands flew to her face to find her eyes, but they were open. She didn't understand why she couldn't see.
Suddenly it all came back her - the Lendwitch, the gift, the borrowed sight, Shō.
It scared her a little to not be able to see - it was only blackness - but she could still imagine what things could look like. The huge tree that towered next to her would still be tall, her dress would still be a bright shade of red, the cat sat next to her would still be purring.
Arrietty sat up sharply. There was a cat sitting next to her. She fought the urge to run and hide - she wasn't a few inches tall anymore, she could feel it. She reached around trying to find the cat, who nudged its head against her hand, purring loudly. Arrietty tickled the cat behind (as she had remembered seeing someone do, one rainy day), and, reaching her fingers down to its collar, traced the name on the tag.
Ni-Ya.
The katakana (Japanese symbols used for nicknames people, look them up ) on the cat's collar seemed familiar.
All of a sudden it came back to her - a brown and beige cat with vibrant yellow eyes, once an enemy and, in the end, an ally.
"Niya!" Arrietty exclaimed, "So you're who the Lendwitch sent to help me. No offence but I think it's going to be a struggle to find Shō with you being, well, being a cat and me being blind…."
Niya didn't say anything but he rubbed his head reassuringly against her wrist, in a way cats often wordlessly comfort, as if to say "Don't worry, we'll find him. I'm a cat (as if that's not enough of an explanation)".
Arrietty sat and pondered for a moment before springing to her feet, and then stumbling slightly as she realised that she not only didn't know where they were going, she couldn't see where they were going. She also realised that she had no idea where Niya was….or how she was expected to follow a cat. However she soon found Niya who had taken to looping himself around her ankles and making little mewing sounds.
He detached himself from her legs and was gone for a few minutes before she heard mewing a short distance away. Slowly, and a little hesitantly, Arrietty shuffled forward in the darkness. This was going to take some time.
Niya led Arrietty to the edge of the forest, and then out onto a quiet road with a tall stone wall which she traced her hand along to keep her bearings. It had a rough-yet-smooth surface that seemed so out of place in the middle of Tokyo with the sharp-edged skyscrapers and shiny buildings she had seen from the roof of Shōs house. It felt like it should belong on the small, twisted roads out in the middle of nowhere - away from all the noise and bustle that happened every day over her head.
After a short while the wall curved away, and there was a small thump as Niya jumped down from where he had been walking. He gave a short mew and veered off across the road. On the other side was a small slope of grass that seemed to be so steep that Arrietty almost had to slide down it. She silently cursed the cat for leading her along such ridiculously strange path. They continued on, winding down small side streets, with Niya pausing every few moments to mew his position to Arrietty.
Finally, the tarmac beneath her feet had changed to paving slabs (edged by sandy soil, judging by the texture underfoot). Arrietty could feel the sunlight and shadows mottling her skin with combinations of warmth and cold that could only come from large trees shading the path. She carried on, the paving slabs still at her feet; until she felt a familiar smell hit her nose. Flowers. She could smell so many flowers, their scents drifting along the breeze. It reminded her of times past - times spent exploring a large paradise of towering plants and globular dew drops. She was home….well not her current home. She was where she had grown up, where she'd had adventures, where she met Shō.
"Caw, caw! Caw, caw!"
Arrietty froze in her tracks. She knew she was taller and couldn't technically be carried off by a crow, but all rational thought left her brain. Niya let out a yelp and tried to take a swipe at the dive-bombing crow. Arrietty's mind had gone back to her old size and she did what was etched into her brain. Run. She had no idea where she was going, but she kept going.
Out of nowhere, a voice cut through the chaos.
"Niya, is that you? What are you up to out the-?"
Arrietty halted as she ran smack bang into a something - somebody, cutting them off mid-sentence.
"I'm so sorry!" she cried as she tried to run on, to escape the threatening crow, but a hand grabbed her wrist and pulled her backwards.
"Is that - is that really you?" the deep voice said.
The voice sounded so familiar to Arrietty, except with a slightly deeper timbre to it. She just couldn't place it…..
"Arrietty….it's me, Shō."
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