Ryumiko was spending her third day cooped up indoors. Lying spread-eagled on the floor of her room, she groaned into the ground, willing for something to happen. The most exciting part of her day was when Rin came home with food, going to bed and waking up to find a new dress, with yesterday's clothes magically disappear. Today, a lovely emerald green kimono-like dress had appeared, made of the same liquid-like fabric as the first dress she'd had. It was similar in design, floor-length with a small train of fabric behind her, close-fitting around the torso, only this time it was sleeveless.

Ryumiko noted that she really needed to find whoever kept delivering these dresses for two reasons. The first being the obvious, she needed to know how this person knew her, so intimately as to know her exact measurements and where she was currently staying. The second, was that she wanted to ask if she could take some of the beautiful clothing items back home with her if it was alright. But compared to the rest of her days, these moments were pretty much the highlight out of her waking hours.

Haku had only come once the past three days to see how she was doing... needless to say he considered her boredom to be an invalid excuse for her to get out of the house. Ryumiko could feel her frustration with the dragon spirit, not understanding what Chihiro saw in him. Maybe her cousin was vain enough to fall for his looks. After all, he was pretty extraordinary in terms of handsome-ness, but otherwise, he irritated the crap out of her. She flipped over onto her back to give a long hard stare at the ceiling.

She wished there was a mirror on the roof. Just to see something different. She imagined if there were a mirror, she'd be reflected with her black hair encircling her head like a dark halo, and her dress splayed about the floor like a green pool.

She wondered what Rin did when she went outside. She obviously couldn't go near Yubaba, clearly. Did she have a new job elsewhere? Maybe she helped Haku with whatever he dd when they weren't around... Maybe they had formed some sort of rebellion with other spirits, ready to take over the bath house like some kind of mafia.

Her imagination growing thin, she slowly stood up off the ground and stared out her bedroom window. The sky was blue and the sun was warmly shining as per usual. Ryumiko glared at the vast blue sky. She reckoned that if Chihiro made a story about the sky looking down at people, the cloudless blue would be laughing and taunting her with its sunlit glory at that very moment. Maybe she was just growing insane. She took a harder look at the window, an idea forming in her mind.

Ryumiko frowned, surely Haku wouldn't mind her sitting on the windowsill. She wouldn't technically be going out of the house that way. Agreeing with herself that it should be safe, she climbed onto the windowsill and sat on the edge, the hem of her emerald dress lightly dancing over the grass. Ryumiko took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air and light breeze. The problem was that the sunlight was just out of reach, not quite reaching past the eaves of the roof.

Eager to feel the warmth of the sun, she leaned forward and reached out her hand slowly, her fingertips gradually being bathed in light. She only had a moment to savour the experience before she felt something sharp suddenly ram into her stomach, pushing her backwards into the house. There was a flurry of green fabric, black feathers and long claws as Ryumiko tried to get a raven-looking thing to stop attacking her.

Screaming in panic, she managed to get onto her feet and she ran towards the kitchen away from the creature. Grabbing the nearest objects, she hurled kitchen utensils at the strange creature attacking her. Through her frantic mind, she recognised the creature to look exactly like a raven, only with a serrated beak, longer talons and four gleaming red eyes. Running out of things to throw, she picked up a frying pan and held it out in front of her as a means of defense.

'Human! Human! Let me devour you!' the creature hissed repeatedly, as if its voice were on replay. The voice was feral, and hardly sounded like distinguishable words. Ryumiko probably would not have understood the creature, if she could not hear the bloodthirsty intent in its voice.

"Go away!" Ryumiko shouted at the monster, feeling her feet step backwards.

The creature ignored her and snarled, spreading its ebony wings, ready to charge at the girl at any moment. It gave a final blood-curdling shriek as it shot forward. Ryumiko screamed and closed her eyes, preparing herself for death.

A thunderous crash silenced both the human and the predatory spirit as the wall exploded. Ryumiko kept her eyes tightly shut, thinking something worse had appeared than the 'raven-monster'. After a loud squawking followed by a solid minute of silence, she pried open her eyelids, keeping the pan in front of her face. She peeked over the rim of the metal cooking pan, eyes widening at the scene that beheld her. Rin was going to slaughter her...

The entire left side of the kitchen wall had been reduced to rubble, and a heavily bleeding mass of flesh and feathers was lying in the middle of the room. The raven creature had been killed, much to Ryumiko's relief. She looked around for her saviour and found herself looking at a guy around Haku's age, if not younger, leaning over the dead monster.

She stared wordlessly at the newcomer. His hair was braided and reached the floor; the colour of a brilliant red, almost the same colour as the entrance to the Spirit World. A messily cut fringe partially covered his eyes as he stared at the black mass of feathers. He was pale-skinned like Haku and dressed in white robes that looked similar to hers, only the edges of the fabric were tattered and instead of moving softly and gracefully like hers did, it seemed to be alive in a wild dance. One of his hands was dyed in what looked like the monster's blood, which strangely did not strike fear into her.

Suddenly he looked straight at her, her blue eyes suddenly meeting his own golden irises. They looked like someone had mixed liquid gold with sunshine, and their intensity sent shivers down Ryumiko's spine.

He surprised her by bowing deeply before racing out of the hole in the wall. Ryumiko's eyes widened further, as the stranger seemed to stretch out before he changed into a long red dragon with a white mane and flew out into the sky, faster than she could imagine.

She sat amongst the debris in the kitchen flabbergasted, not knowing what to do or say. She was in the process of reconsidering the consequences of sitting on a windowsill when both Rin and Haku walked through the door.

Both their eyes widened at the destruction before them. They fixed their questioning gaze at Ryumiko who was still sitting on the floor with the pan beside her.

She grinned nervously and waved a little at them, "H-Hi guys!"

HA! I can only imagine what Haku's going to do next XD And no I don't know myself, my writing works in mysterious ways :P

Many thank-yous to:

spirited away forever

Crystal-Wolf-Guardain-967

Laugh. While. Crying (Sorry! Fanfiction's mean and won't let me type your penname properly!)

Spastic Treehugger

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