Paths of the Heart
Many thanks to those that reveiwed. Here is the next chapter.
Chapter 3-Night mares
Disclaimer- Just in case someonw is a serious nitpicker- ME NO OWNY!
Pulling her under, filling her lungs...she couldn't breathe... couldn't breathe! Something shimmering...she could just see it through blurry eyes. Almost the color of the water, but not. Then warmth, and this odd feeling of comfort and safety. And then waking up in the arms of her weeping mother as they rushed her to the hospital...
Chihiro gasped as she jerked upright in bed, wrenching in the memory of not being able to breathe, of the painful sensation of coughing up the water she had swallowed, the feel of her mothers tears upon her face. She had had these dreams before, but never this clear, and not for a long time. Not since just before they had moved . Why on earth were they coming back now, of all times? Didn't she have enough problems as it were? Rubbing her eyes, she was angered to discover that she was crying, and sternly told herself to quit being a baby. Yanking the covers back up, she pulled them around her shoulders and glanced at the clock. Almost four in the morning. Well, she still had a good two hours worth of sleep left before she had to be up and at school. Might as well make the best of it.
Then she was running through some strange village, calling desperately for her parents, sure that the pigs she had seen in the last place that she had known her mother and father to be could not possibly be them. Surely they had just moved on...and if she ran long and hard enough she was sure to find them...
Eventually...
Falling down a seemingly endless staircase, running point blank into a rather unforgiving wall... then a man with six arms (some small part of her mind was still conscious as this whole thing was going on, and demanded loudly to know where on earth she could have dreamed up something so ugly!) And then a strange woman, rather gruff on the outside, but for some reason Chihiro was sure not quite the way she acted on the inside. And then a witch, screaming and charging at her, and taking her name away from her (How on earth was that possible?) and telling her that she would now work for her (That old HAG?!) and that she was to be called Sen, from then on...
And then there was that boy again, taking her somewhere and putting her back in that woman's care, LIN! That had been her name (Wait a minute, when had she started giving them names, for goodness sake?) And then walking down to some barn and seeing a pair of pigs that the boy insisted were her parents (and knowing that she trusted him, for some reason. She must have been crazy at the time, because he obviously was. Wait, she could not have possibly been there, so how...?)
Then the small part that was Chihiro began to panic, not knowing what to do. For the more it fought the dream, the deeper she sank, and the farther she fell, and she could not escape it. And then the dream took over, sweeping her off in a barrage of images and impossible memories.
A spirit, and a dragon, and a baby, the biggest one that she had ever seen. And some big black monster that was running around devouring everything, and then a train ride, and the scary witch again, only this time she was nice. And the dragon again, some sort of test, and a tunnel, a long tunnel, beside her parents as they walked away, looking back, as though she had lost something, something important. Then darkness. A deep, overwhelming darkness.
Both of her parents came running, her father throwing open the door as Chihiro sat up in bed, still screaming at the top of her lungs. In an instant her mother was there at her side, cradling her close as she mummered soothingly. "There, there dear, it was only a dream, only a dream...Now come on and tell mommy what it was all about, there's a good girl."
Ashamed at having been caught crying, and then at having her mother treating her as though she was six or seven years old again stung Chihiro, and she pulled away, wiping her face hastily.
"It's nothing, nothing at all. Just a bad dream, like you said. I'll be fine in a couple of minutes."
Over their daughters bowed head her parents exchanged looks, but then her father just shrugged his shoulders in surrender. Although her mother had to fight back the instinct to pull her daughter back into her arms and try to coax all of the bad things out, she knew that her husband was right. Chihiro was not a child anymore, and they had learned to trust her judgment. If she said that she would be fine, then they would believe her.
"All right dear. But we'll be down the hall if you need us."
Chihiro jerked the blankets around her shoulders, laying down and rolling over so that her back faced then. Realizing that she had just said the wrong thing, but not knowing what to do about it, her mother sighed and shut the light off behind her.
Knowing that they were watching her in the darkness, Chihiro calmed her breathing and did her best to look like she was asleep until she heard them pad off down the hall to their own room. They did not need to know that she would not be able to sleep for the rest of the short night.
Authors note- Chihiro is under a lot of stress right now between half-forgotten memories and nightmares. And I warned you at the beginning of this fic that I have seen the movie exactly one and a half times, so I have to guess or get second hand information on some of it. It is a problem that I am trying to remedy, but my parents aren't exactly crazy about the whole anime thing, which means that most of my anime related activities (i.e. movie watching, book reading, fanfic writing) must be done under the table. Sorry.