chapter: one.
summary: Chihiro moves to America for college, only to find that the Spirit World is everywhere. She just has to look for the right entrance, and then, maybe, she could find the place that has lingered in her memories all of this time.
a r i v e r r u n s t h r o u g h
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Everything takes on a strange glow in dreams, and it wouldn't be until a person woke up that they realized it was there.
Chihiro walked over the flexible grass in bare feet, leaving prints until a wind strong enough would make them straight again. She had the unquenchable desire to race back and make sure that she hadn't left a permanent mark. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, she knew that she wasn't supposed be here.
She walked to a rhythm, a strange, foreign hammering of drums and whistling pipes and wild instruments. It bubbled inside her and made her blood pulse on the beat – one, two, three, four, one, two, three, four…
A noise behind her. Chihiro whipped around, yet the source of the sound wasn't there. She turned, turned again. Each foot planted down securely, and still to that strange melody that continued to play. The sound dripped out of her fingertips and wafted on the breeze in all directions, beckoning all things to come. It whispered "come hither, come hither" in a seductively hypnotic voice.
One last sound that wasn't made by Chihiro or her heartbeat's music, and out of the corner of her eye was a flash of blue and silver barreling towards her. Upon impact her body was sent into the air, her voice unable to escape her lips from the shock. Her face contorted as gravity fiercely pulled her to the ground.
"You aren't supposed to be here," said a voice. Had it been her own? No, she thought vaguely, it was distinctly masculine and much clearer than her own thoughts, frustrated and angry. It was strange, though, how he had echoed her worry of earlier.
Her eyes opened and he was hovering above her with an unfamiliar detachment. He looked older, she thought. But the same, still. It must have been the strange way his kind aged that made her hesitate so, though it could have been her own head pounding.
She blinked slowly. So familiar, and yet… She couldn't place her finger on it. The clouds above him shifted in the sky as the wind echoed ghostly calls in her ears. And then she remembered.
His eyes, cold and unforgiving, bore into Chihiro as he pulled her up. He leaned in so close that she could feel his breath on her face. "I promised," he whispered, and she felt him disappear as her body became transparent. Fading away -
Chihiro's eyes opened, head pounding and breath shallow. She wildly looked about the dorm room, gaze sweeping over every object for sight of it, him, the dream. But no, it was gone already.
That, solely, made her chest hurt with sadness. Her mind, for years, grasped blindly for an ethereal half-memory that haunted her in her sleep. Albeit, unsuccessfully so. And the most depressing part of it? She could still feel his whisper on her face, his hand touching hers.
She glanced at the clock and pulled on a pair of jeans, preparing herself for the day to come.
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Yeah… so. This is gonna be a rather short story, since I don't have the attention span needed to write a long one. A few more chapters, maybe. Hopefully, though, it'll be to everyone's liking. The ending will be a happy one.
Anyways, this is more of a character study than anything else. I'm playing with description and stuff. And don't worry, there will definitely be more dialogue in what's to come.
Thank you, everyone, for your reviews. You have no idea how much they mean to me.