Courting the River Maid Collection

Ditching

Spirited Away, Chihiro and Haku belong to Hayao Miyazaki. Lily/Rumi (depending on the script and your ears) technically belongs to him as well, although in my universe created here she has been cast as a fish spirit. However Ten, Maiden Snake, BlowingWind, and the insidious Queso belong to me.

And now . . . without further ado . . . IT LIVES!

Ten had broken away from his work yet again, glad that he had finally gotten the terrifying tower of paperwork finished and even filed away for once. His desk was blessedly empty, and he was going to run away while it still was. Perhaps he would find Haku where he was up to his eyes in work of some kind, and torture him. Oops, he meant cheer him.

And so it was, that a bronze dragon made himself invisible to most human eyes and started paddling happily out of his spring and down his best friend's river on a personal dragon hunt. On his way, he saw a very familiar green squiggle gazing morosely into the water from a rock. Ten presumed that she was probably chafing at the fact that she hadn't built up enough power to grow from a snake into a dragon yet. It was always the same, since she wanted to be as wise as her elder adopted brother.

Ten thought it was hilarious that anyone could think that Kohakunushi, of all dragons, was wise. How wise was it to choose to live with sexual frustration as a normal part of everyday life? At least Maiden Snake made a regular diet of male blood with her guardianship of one particular miko who often found herself accosted by amorous men. And so, in an effort to cheer up the little snake spirit, he had invited her along.

They couldn't find him anywhere nearby, so he was probably down at the mouth of his river chasing off unwelcome squatters yet again. Since much of his attention was focused very possessively around the area his miko was living, the lower extremities sometimes found themselves encroached on. Instead of swimming down twenty or so winding miles that were fairly close to the original course, the two serpentine swimmers decided to go and spy on the shrine for a while.

There wasn't much to do anyway, since today was Maiden Snake's day off. Of course, since she was so possessive herself of the little girl that she had watched grow into a young woman, the spirit often complained how lax the volunteer spirits were in their guard. After a while, a particular young woman of the white and blue cloth had made her way down to the riverside. A lonely figure the maiden cut in the air, singing the soft strains of an ancient love between a river and human. Across her shoulders was a wooden pole, and hanging from this like so many pendant charms were six empty wooden buckets. The air was still around her, and the river's sounds grew quiet as the master felt the approach wherever he was. Judging by how soft were the sounds now, he missed the woman as much as the woman obviously missed him.

The song didn't last long, fading away into contemplative quiet as she pondered whatever was on her mind today. It was probably either how much she missed the physical presence of the kami, or another environmental project that she was involved in. Despite the fact that the river was restored, and how busy her schedule was with other matters of varying importance, she always made time to help somehow with other river projects. She had even been asked for advice on a river in Europe despite the fact that her expertise was in Japanese rivers and terrain. So, what should have been a quick task of filling the buckets with water for the garden took a long time.

They watched as she finished, putting the buckets on her pole once more when she was done getting the water. With a sharp exhale, the maiden stood up, the pole distributing the weight as equally as possible on her shoulders. Turning, she began to head back to the Shrine, when another woman came running down, also in Shrine garb.

"Don't go back up to the Shrine with the water for the blessings yet. He's up there."

"Again?"

"Yup."

Exasperated, the woman put her burden back down, but held on to her pole. It might prove useful. The human cast a thoughtful look over her shoulder, then back up the direction that she and the other had come from. Satisfied, she started heading far up river quickly, towards a particular spot that had a lot of brush where she knew she could hide. The other woman followed, and they muttered back and forth while the dragon and snake began stroking after them.

"Maybe if I held my breath long enough and hid at the bottom of the river he wouldn't find me."

"Are you kidding? Queso has Chihiro radar. You could move to America to get away, and he'd probably still find you and bug you for a date, or a kiss, or worse."

"But why me? Why not you?"

"Asian fetish?"

"I really don't feel like dealing with this today."

"Maybe if you ask, Haku will sweep you off your feet and spirit you away from all this."

"Funny. Maybe you will actually marry Ryu and have sixteen squirming kids."

"Only when I'm darn good and ready will I. You know you want him, you can't hide it. Ryu told me what he thinks the two of you did. Just tell me what it was like."

"Shut up. Let's just hide."

A very red Chihiro plunged into the thick brush, followed by a BlowingWind who had her hand firmly clamped over her mouth to keep from laughing. Attracted by the sounds of womanly jesting, a very strange looking being came down the embankment, and looked around a bit.

"Huh, I could have sworn I heard her down here."

Four beings held their breaths. Satisfied that the object of his search was not there, one strange Spaniard toddled off. Minutes passed, then two laughing women tumbled out of the brush.

"What an idiot!"

"But I'm behind in my chores again now!"

"Well, if you would stop dreaming about Haku, maybe you wouldn't be so tired during the day."

"Shut up!"

"You do find Haku attractive, don't you? With how loud you cry his name at night, how can you deny it?"

Both were now red, one in embarrassment, the other with stifled laughter. Chihiro looked at her feet and mumbled her answer, but then got really pale when she realized she was still by the river when she said it. Actually, she was just barely within the river, and she really hoped that he hadn't heard her. Chihiro would have to be asexual if she didn't find him attractive, and she had just said so, and if he heard that she found him attractive . . . ! She had to get out of here, this was just too embarrassing. Was she really that loud when she was dreaming?

"What's that?"

Pointing in a random direction, Chihiro split as soon as her friend followed the gesture. As fate would have it that was exactly where the lord of the river was hiding as he jealously guarded his treasure. He had been on his way upstream to complain to Ten about how he had only just received a waterflow report that was six months late. However, he had also felt her approach to the river and had lost track of what he was doing when he heard her voice carrying through the waters to him. Lily had met up with him a little bit earlier on his trek back upstream as she had been searching him out to make a report on the progress of Chihiro's rooms in the river mansion.

Chihiro's intuition was saying that something was out there, but she saw nothing, the spirit of the river blending with the water, and the large fish merely looking like a resting fish. As Ten and Maiden Snake were still hiding upstream, she did not see them either.

BlowingWind stayed behind, laughing at her friend's embarrassment. Poor Chihiro really needed to loosen up. It wasn't like she was a nun in a cloister. The more she fought against those thoughts, the worse they were going to be. She knew, she had plenty of experience.

"At least I'm making progress with her. At this rate though, she'll be ninety before she goes any further!"

The other human took off after the future lady of the river, laughing while shouting after her friend.

"Chihiro! You chicken, you didn't say it so I could hear it. Admit it and I'll leave you alone! And it won't be fair if you hide in his room like the past several days when I ask!"

Left behind were a blinking dragon and fish, both wondering if it was safe for the human's sanity to leave her with BlowingWind. Roaring in laughter, another dragon was being hushed by a snake before one of the human tourists came down to find out what all the noise was.

Then it hit her.

She had just passed up a meal a little bit ago.

Rain's Replies

And I'll bet some of you thought I had forgotten this one . . .

AttackingHentaiChibiFluffperson - You know who you are, you creatively named person you! I am updating now.

NitenGale - Yes, the underwear drawer is a sacred place. Chihiro needs to just get a lock on her bedroom door though, don't you think. However, that would give her too easy of a place to hide.

KatsyKat - Ryu has to keep torturing them. After all, Ten can't be there every moment . . .

Rakasha - Still hanging in there? No blown brains from stress, right?

Jojo- a Queso cameo for you. You can wear him on your neck, just not under your blouse.

Monchi - Technically, Haku is way over a century old. Although if you want to go with the fact that Chihiro is now like a mother to the river what with physically digging much of it . . . not only is he way too young for her now . . . she's like his mom. Now my head hurts.

Jaded image - Sakananushi is a fun one to write.

RoisinDhu - Yes, poor Ryu. I went and hid under the covers, because everything I could think of BlowingWind doing to punish the guy terrified even me.