Watery Grave
Kesshou
Uryou
She forevermore loved that river.
Disclaimer: Spirited Away belongs rightfully to the brilliant Mayazaki-san and Studio Ghibli.
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Chihiro didn't know why she had requested it. She really didn't know. People understood it as much as she did herself. Maybe everyone and herself thought she was just old and strange. Quixotic. Still, she held steadfast with this dying wish, and she hoped they would pull through with it.
They did.
She did not receive a burial.
She was not memorialized in ashes.
She had a watery grave.
For so many years, she had a strong love for the river. She remembered falling down into its depths at a very young age. And then something happened, that she could never quite explain. She would swear that the river itself had saved her, but she knew that was beyond the realm of possibility. Things like that just didn't happen.
Then the river was replaced by apartment buildings, and it was no more. Chihiro didn't grieve back then, but around the age of ten she found sympathy over the destruction. She forevermore loved that river. She didn't know why. She just did.
But before she had died, the apartment buildings were abandoned. They crumbled with time, and eventually a river occupied the space once more. She was never sure how that came to be, but she found out what she could about it. It held the same name, and she held it in her heart the same way she had with the first river. She had always wanted to go visit the new river, but she never managed to go. She continued to long to see it.
So it was her wish to be left in the river when her skin had paled and her heart had stopped altogether.
They lowered her body into the water as they respected her decision, but they never agreed with it. Chihiro hadn't cared. This was the way she wanted to go, and she had the right to decide her own fate.
The water offered no resistance to the dead body.
An imaginative onlooker would have perhaps thought the water actually welcomed her. She sank fast, leaving the mourners to drop their respective flowers in the water before trudging away.
He never did say she would be alive when they met again.
Well, I just watched the movie again. Once more I was blown away especially by the artwork for over two precious hours. I decided to write this with Chihiro obviously not remembering what happened because Miyazaki-san has said Chihiro wouldn't remember her adventure. But I couldn't possibly leave it like that so this was born. I may eventually write a multi-chaptered fic in the pretty far future based on something Zeniba said. Anyway, hope you enjoyed the little drabble that I wrote to Itsumo Nando Demo. You have to love that song.