Arms of the Kohakugawa

Chapter 9: Placating A Simmering Volcano and River

By LadyRainStarDragon

I do not own Spirited Away, Haku, Chihiro, or her parents. They are the intellectual property of Hayao Miyazaki. I was just inspired by his characters and so this and other works have been birthed.

BlowingWind was now throughly exasperated. She had spent the past few hours trying to convince Chihiro that the river considered her his. The conversation had gone something like this, looped back on itself several times with frantic gestures made by BlowingWind.

"Chihiro, you belong to him. You are his."

"Yes. I am his Nisou. I even agreed to be his years ago. So what does that have to do with the minor flood?"

"No. I mean his. Like his his."

"What?"

"Like, if he were to nibble on your ear, you are supposed to whine and push backwards into him and let him take control."

"What? Why would he nibble on my ear?"

Needless to say, several other attempts had brought both of them to deep magenta blushes. BlowingWind wasn't about to just out and say for her to lay down and feed her dragon. She had hangups of her own about that. At least Ryu had found out what the temper tantrum had been about though. Unfortunately, now he was in a pissy mood and she had to feed her own dragon.

"Because it's tasty apparently. Do I look like a dragon? Do I know how a dragon thinks? No! I have troubles understanding my own mat- master . . . yeah . . . that's it. Master. Look. Just go do a dance for the dragon who is currently green-eyed because of jealousy. He likes it when you rub his chin . . . maybe you should do that too. Cuddle with the statue. Whine a bit like a puppy does to a parent. Bat your big eyes and coo for him a bit and watch him melt."

". . . . . Why?"

"Haku, no matter how human he appears to us when he isn't all hairy and scaly, is a dragon. They are different, sort of like wolves in some ways, like cats in others, and sometimes they are like big slobbery dogs. I've found this out first hand . . . and I'm still learning new stuff every day."

By now, it was past noon and neither had noticed as Time picked up the hem of his oversized robe and sprinted away with his scythe like the demons of Hades were after him. BlowingWind was alerted to her tardiness by a huge wave of many deep and dark emotions that she didn't even know the names of. She was going to be in so much trouble.

"Oh holy pumice. I'm ash! I'm late!"

With those deep and intellectual words, BlowingWind ran from the room with visions of her bras and underwear becoming ashes in her metal garbage can. He never had liked the thought of her wearing underwear. Dragon women didn't use them, so he saw no reason for his mate to do so either. Chihiro knew nothing of what was running through her friend's head, blinking in surprise at the sudden and panicked departure.

"Is she afraid he's going to do something stupid?"

Chihiro was left holding her aching head and ignoring the little voice that was telling her that BlowingWind was right. Walking with her mind lost somewhere in the dreaded land of confusion, Chihiro did not notice that as she walked down the hall, Kumiro and Koji had not had the time to hide themselves from where they had been eavesdropping. Allowing her feet to assist her, the priestess followed a very impatient tug.

BlowingWind's feet made a drum out of the wooden floor of the hallways as she dashed down them. Her heart rode in her throat and her blood flashed through its courses, the sounds of her body's drumming no doubt carrying before her to the very displeased dragon sulking in their den.

Skidding to a stop before their door with a long unused yet highly practiced ease, her uniform whirled around her slender frame. As the robes and her short hair settled, she looked every inch like a blowing wind, yet it did little to appease the waves pouring out of the darkened room. The door gaped open, simulating for her a familiar cavern, and not even a speck of light came through their window to add its light to the room. Full of trepidation and yet resolving not to show it, the young shaman entered the room she shared with her 'scaled coyote.'

With a resounding boom that shook the very timbers of the house, the door was slammed shut behind her. She was stranded in the middle of the stewing dark, listening to her kami pacing restlessly around her like a ravenous wolf. His measured footsteps firm and calculated, she could barely hear his feet naturally padding softly. It was his carefully controlled breath that she heard the loudest, barely held back pants like a dog about to attack. The rustle of his clothes quieted bit by bit, and finally nothing more was heard of those.

A few times he paced near enough to raise the hairs on her body, his rich earthy smell slowly permeating the room. It occurred to her that she was smelling him far better than she usually did, and she wondered if he could spray his scent around like a cat. Once she felt the stir of his breath, causing her to gasp in surprise.

She was tired of standing still and being the mouse for her oversized cat and had begun to move to face where the breath had been when a deep growl froze her in her tracks. In shock, she remained still, the sound of a delicate sniffing revealing that he had moved to another location already.

Her mother's words from years ago echoed dully in her head, with all of the pain and heartbreak that had laced the woman's voice that day by the lake as a child. "Never trust a dragon."

"I heard that. You are late My Treasure."

His voice was hard and ungiving, brooking no excuse. She had forgotten that he could hear her strong thoughts and memories if she did not cloak them. He had heard hers ever since the day he had first stolen a kiss from her, binding her to him in a tentative courtship dance with his rampant desire and frustration for her mental health in that forest around the base of Mt. Fuji.

"I'm sorry. I did not notice the time and was having difficulty helping her understand."

"It is no excuse."

"I know. I can only apologize Mate-to-be."

Carefully lowering her head in what she had learned was the correct position for chastisement, BlowingWind still prickled at the unsettling sensation of being trapped in the dark with such a mysterious and powerful creature. His presence withdrew to their futon with a slightly satisfied sound, the mattress rustling a little as he seated himself upon it waiting for the expected performance.

"Proceed then."

The light was still off, and she had never danced in the dark before. It wasn't that she couldn't dance, it was just that she was afraid to fall. The floor was hard, and all the other times she had danced for his pleasure the light had been on.

"I can not see, my Lord."

"I can see perfectly well. You never need to see when you dance for the sun goddess, with your eyes closed the way you so often do. Why is it any different for the one you have promised yourself to?"

This wasn't the Ryu she knew, she was sure of it now from the whole set up. Ryu was teasing her in an odd way, testing her. His occasional audible sniff as he tasted the air of this lair reminded her of the way he would first smell at her the first several months of nights. The Ryu she knew would have been sitting with the lights on and furiously torching her undergarments as he waited for her. Here was a part that she had not experienced yet, and if her intuition was correct she knew why she had stopped hearing the rustling of fabric. In a way, it frightened her. Would this Ryu remember her human frailties, or the fact that she still knew very little about his customs and the position of women in his society?

"In the light, I have the option of opening my eyes to keep from falling. In the dark, even with them open I can easily trip. You know that I enjoy dancing for you."

"Yet you still refuse to perform the dance I have been trying to convince you to do for slightly over five years now."

Hurt warred with anger and frustration in the dark as it wrapped around the woman, and she could feel how deeply it pained him that his mate still spurned their physical marriage. As long as she was still virgin, the Mating was not complete, and though she called him Mate to ease his ego he wanted more. For his protection though, it was all she had to give right now. In her weakness, she had succumbed to the cries of her heart and uttered the fateful words that promised her to him. Now, she was his, and the consummation of the promise would permanently seal his fate unbeknownst to him.

"There are things that you don't know about me, Ryu, dangerous things that frighten me. I lost him, I am afraid to lose you."

Serpentine hisses issued from his throat as he sprang to his feet, landing mere inches away from her. Currently she thought he was somewhere in between transformations, the dry clinks of his small scales heard as he trembled to keep his control. In the dark, she knew that he was boring through her eyes, searching the answers from the very depths of her soul where she kept them shrouded in eternal mist below a raging waterfall where the winds always blew high through poplar and pine trees. It was a place she seldom ventured, guarded over as it was by her darker side, that being of repressed emotion and memory.

"Him. Always it is Him. I love you too much Ryu. I can't let it happen to you Ryu. I am afraid. Every time it can always be traced back to whomever it was you loved before me. I am here BlowingWind, you gave yourself to me when you accepted my scale, and I will always be here. I am not this 'Him' that you still mourn for, who you still shed tears for in your dreams. I am here, alive, and waiting for you to fulfill a promise."

"Do you doubt my loyalty Ryu? Taste of me then if you need to."

His eyes had begun to glow with the strength of his emotions, an earthly red from the center of the planet itself. She could see them plainly, and the room began to be visible from his internal light. There was no other warning what he was going to take from her, and in an instant he was devouring her lips like a starved animal. The tumult of his feelings for her raged through her delicate and tiny body, flowing through her as it sought to break down whatever barrier the last of her secrets cowered behind.

Her mind's eye was filled with a boiling river of magma rising and growing, roiling with his emotions. His heated body burned where he touched her, even through her robes as he verified for himself where her loyalties lay. He was unable to gain access to her deepest secrets, but at least he managed to find the confirmation that she was still his possession.

After an eternity, he gave her mouth back. Sometime during the episode, he had drawn blood with his fierceness. The copper only made him want more. In the confusion, the pair had begun a dance for two, their feet gliding over the pine in a waltz. It had been long since they had done this, but she followed where he led her, spiraling and twirling as he wished for her to. Her own clothing began to slip out of place, but she had become so caught up that she no longer noticed.

A moment longer, and BlowingWind was spinning on her own, eyes shut as the dance took her over and transformed to something else. Words bubbled softly from her lips, giving birth to a new song for the mighty volcano dragon. Predictably, the performance was cut short when she tripped over his discarded haori, landing squarely in his arms and startled out of her offering.

He had her on the bed in less than a heartbeat, this time working at her neck and ear. No matter how much he wanted her most precious gift, she had to be consenting at the time of her unsealing. He wanted everything she had, and if he were to rip it away, he would only taste her completeness once. Death was possible for her as well as for him, but what terrified him the most was that her soul would slip away from him, to reincarnate and love another while he would remember his crime for the rest of his incarnation and possibly recurrent ones.

"R-ryu!"

A turquoise flame burst up from her heart as something inside of herself clicked into place. Her body was unable to fight the onslaught any longer and her mind had just checked out from his instinctual ministrations. When one's marked mate is fertile is not the best time to have a fight. As her teeth sank into his neck to hold back a moan, it was at this point that one formerly checked out Nigimitama emerged from a piece of granite that he was using as a gateway for travel to his own territory.

The other part of himself had come back at a breakneck pace, leaving paperwork to scatter all over his office under Mount Fuji when the new activity of his elemental self came to his attention. He had thought that he would be safe to leave his Aramitama alone for a day to complete some much needed work that he had been notified of by a runner. Obviously, he had been wrong.

Take pulled Ryu away from the tiny human that they had found themselves bonded to with a simple kiss that had been meant to shock the woman back to her senses that day so long ago. The blood that BlowingWind had ingested during her own instinctual response had apparently had a sedative effect, and she slipped into sleep before the magma spirit's eyes.

"Ryu, just what did you just do?"

Sense apparently was finally filtering back into the head of the wayward Aramitama gazing down on BlowingWind with his own helping of shock. He had been angry that he had not been danced for in the past several weeks, that he could remember clearly. Then she had been late. He had decided that he would punish her in a slightly different way than usual for tardiness. It was shortly after she had walked in and he had slammed the door that things had gotten very fuzzy.

"I'm not sure Take."

"You weren't egging her into egging were you?"

"Um . . ."

"Honestly! I leave you behind to keep an eye on her for six hours, and have to come running because you don't want to accept a human's need for space. She isn't like our kind where once we find the entity with an appealing scent signature we throw ourselves into a commitment."

"But over five years?"

"I agree that's a little long too, but what can we do? You don't want to take her when she's not ready."

"Not even just a little taste from a different fountain?"

"NO. Besides, how are you going to get permission if she's still in enough confusion for our blood to put her to sleep? Why don't you go and do the paperwork, and I will watch her."

"But."

"Go."

A still confused and highly disappointed Aramitama conjured his proper robes before going over to the shelf to touch his portal to his home. Ryu did not like leaving his BlowingWind behind, even if it was only with another aspect of himself. The influentially weaker of the two for once stayed with the woman while his more active half went to work out his frustrations on paper work and then inspecting his lands for the rest of the day. Take's lips quirked upward in a smile before pressing a chaste kiss to the woman's forehead.

"Whatever I did, I'm sure I'm going to hear all about it when you wake back up. What will it be this time Love? The frying pan or a rolled up newspaper you chastise me with for overstepping your boundaries?"

A blue glow formed around the lamp on the bedside table just a moment before it lifted and crashed over Take's head. The errant portion of the Shaman's spirit hovered angrily in front of its kami before entering back into its host. Deciding that it would be better to bring his lovely some light, he went to open the curtains. The light caused his red and yellow robes to blaze, and it illumed the woman enough to see a very dissatisfied look upon her face.

"It seems that I can never do right by you, does it dear. I hold back to much while Ryu pushes you too far for your comfort. You need to move on soon though Ai. I can't hold him back forever, and he is always holding me inside my own mind except for work."

Chihiro had ventured timidly into the Holy of Holies after casting yet another confused eye over her guardian spirit's physical body. The waters had not risen any higher, yet they were very slow in retreating to their normal level. Once inside the darkened chamber, the presence gathered in the numinous surrounding was oppressively heavy. It was as if water had become lead and then vaporized to hang in the air, wishing only to hold the person down and hold it there forever.

"Haku, I am not going to pretend that I understand just what is going on. You are far older than I and so probably have very different notions on how I should act, dress, and think. I can't help that, I can only be who I am. If you have a problem, then you need to tell me. Perhaps I will change my ways and perhaps not. BlowingWind says that you are jealous and wish for me to dance for you like I dance for the sun in the morning. Is this so?"

Silence hung in the air like mist on a rainy morning, drifting uneasily about the room. If the room had been a little brighter, perhaps her mind would have tricked her by causing her to believe that the statue had puffed out and was slowly shrinking back to a normal size. However, her eyes had still not adjusted to the deep gloom and she was not gifted with the ability to see in the dark. Yet, there was some impression that the remarks had struck near where they needed to.

Chihiro was unused to dancing without music, and yet there was a beat that she felt in her very bones. A sad and lonely feeling bathed her, accompanied by an impression of great exasperation as if her friend had too much on his plate to worry about. As a river spirit, not only was he the river but he was responsible for its duties and adhering to protocol set out by the Great River for all other river spirits. In turn, he was also responsible to the Sea King, and who knew what else.

"Allow me to entertain you for a moment, Nigihayami Kohakunushi."

As the River Maiden allowed herself to fall into another trance, her body began to move on its own, following and expressing her soul's feelings. Prayer came in many forms, and this one was familiar to her even if she was not used to dancing for those she knew personally. This humble offering was accepted by the kami who was so near and yet so far away, and he was reminded once more of human frailty as his mind followed the dance of her body and soul.

I pulled this off of Aristotle's hard drive. No longer a computer of its own, may it live long as a portable storage device. Chapter 37 of Rivers Keep Flowing should be ready either tomorrow or the next couple of days.