Lily: this popped into my head one day.

Alive

Chihiro sighed. She was tired. Her eyes felt heavy with sleep and tears and her muscles could barely hold her up anymore. But this wasn't any normal fatigue.

Chihiro was dying.

Cold was creeping into her body, not the usual warm oblivion of sleep. Her normally pink cheeks were chalky because all her blood was being pumped out of two messy slits on her wrists. She was feeling lightheaded, dreamy and dizzy.

Chihiro was dying.

She had wanted this. She had done this, chose this path. She had so wanted to die, realizing it was the only way back to him. She was dying to see him.

Chihiro was dying.

She had tried to go back to where she had first met him. But the bridge was lonely and the wind whistled past her ears. She had stayed there all night. But no one ever came. He never came. She lay down on the bridge and wished to die. And now she was.

Chihiro was dying.

She was sixteen now. Sweet, sad, solitary sixteen. It had taken her all those years to figure it out. If she died, her ghost would go to the spirit world, where he lived. To die for love. The ultimate test.

Chihiro was dying.

Her eyelids fluttered, her breath caught in her throat, her fingers twitched and her heart pulsed for the last time.

Chihiro had died.

The misty shape of a girl stood on the bridge to the spirit world. Her death-glazed eyes watched the bright lights of the bath houses and restaurants, searching for something, for someone.

a hesitant voice whispered.

Chihiro swirled around, mist trailing from her limbs. A young man stood before her. He had black hair that hung to the middle of his neck, he wore traditional japanese clothing and his eyes seemed oddly translucent.





It was the first time that she had said his name in five years. It felt good, tasting the words again. Haku put a hand out and let it rest on her vaporous shoulder, the mist supported his weight. Chihiro smiled and leaned forward, curling her arms around his waist. Haku wrapped his arms around Chihiro, twisting his fingers in her foggy hair.

Chihiro was dead, but she felt more alive than ever before.