Those were her blue eyes gleaming back at her.
Her eyes had never been that shade of blue. Maybe they had been a dull grey-blue before but now... now they were glistening like tiny ripples over the surface of two oceans. In her panic, she managed to locate a long mirror in the small cottage and raced towards it, ignoring the commotion around her. At first, she hardly recognised the girl reflected back at her.
She had eyes the colour of the ocean, framed by short, fine lashes. Her face was softer and most obvious of all, her hair that was once waist-length, had in a matter of seconds grown to a glossy sea of black waves that trailed along the floor . Her panic was somewhat lessened when she saw her face was still quite recognisable as her own, but the shock of the fact that this was her 'real form' made her feel dizzy.
Suddenly the voices around her began to form into tangible words.
"What did you do Zeniba?"
"That was not wise. She doesn't know anything about what she is or what strength she holds!"
"She wanted to get to know herself."
"What if she wanted to go out to visit Yubaba at the bath house? Would you provide her with a giant sign that reads 'I am related to Chihiro, the girl who has the potential to bring you to ruin!' to stick on her back?"
At the mention of her cousin, she stiffened. Now that they were completely certain that she was not in fact human, she was not going to be able to go to the Living Realm if they needed Chihiro. All she could do here, is get stronger to protect her cousin... if she ever arrived that is. She took another glance at herself in the mirror again, and the girl who she saw didn't look unfamiliar all of a sudden. That was still her. If one looked long enough, she still looked quite the same. It was as if when she was in human form, there was a foggy screen covering her features. Now that screen had been lifted, everything about her had become more defined... in particular, her eyes.
"This was my decision," Ryumiko whispered before slapping a hand over her mouth. Her voice was foreign to her, ever so slightly similar but ultimately sounding unusual to her ears.
Everyone turned to the new voice in surprise. Ryumiko went to walk closer to her friends before she stepped on her own hair, tripping her forward. She cursed her clumsiness mid-air before two strong arms caught her around the middle and pulled her back up. Her breath caught in her throat as she stared into golden eyes, but quickly collected herself and thanked Retsu for catching her. Gathering and holding her hair up off the ground, she walked forward with what dignity she had manage to salvage.
Retsu watched the girl pass him with a light smile. At first, he had hardly recognised her in her new appearance, but sure enough, she was still her clumsy self inside. He resisted the urge to break out into a full grin when she made a bee-line straight towards the pot of soup, her insatiable hunger still in full function. She had managed to wrench the ladle out of Haku's grip and pick up a large bowl simultaneously before serving herself. She then sat down at the table, dropping her newly lengthened hair at her feet, and taking a big spoonful, ignoring the eyes staring at her.
When Yukaoi took an intake of breath, Ryumiko whipped around to face her with a glare, daring her to say a word about her behaviour. Yukaoi's mouth closed immediately and turned to Haku, "Could I also have a bowl?"
As the white haired dragoness was being served, Ryumiko spoke, " I can't go find Chihiro in the Living Realm anymore, so I need to strengthen myself, and all of you freaking out about my appearance isn't going to help anyone in the least. I need to move on, and I should start as soon as possible."
Yukaoi slowly sat down beside her, "We understand Ryumiko, but are you sure you're okay?"
"No. I'm not okay... But no use dwelling on it too long, I'll just slow everyone down, including myself, when we could be doing more productive things."
At this, Zeniba smiled. The girl was strong, maybe as strong as Chihiro, but she still had a long way to go. Once everyone had finished their meal, the sorceress showed them to rooms they could stay in. Haku and Retsu, though reluctantly, agreed to stay in one room while the girls took another. Before she bid Yubaba a good night, Ryumiko asked the older woman if she could return to her human form.
"Of course child," Zeniba said, handing her a thin silver chain. When it was clear on Ryumiko's expression that she had no idea what it was, Zeniba explained, "This is a bracelet that should help you control when you change from human to spirit form. It will last for as long as you need it."
Ryumiko hugged Zeniba goodnight and hurried into the room, putting the bracelet on as she walked. With a sigh, she felt the steel feeling lift off her skin and felt her hair, glad to know it was no longer dragging along the floor.
She lay down on a mattress beside the one Yukaoi was seated on and almost instantaneously felt sleep creeping onto her.
"Yukaoi?" she mumbled sleepily.
"Mmm?"
"What happens now?"
"As you said, you strengthen yourself. When you're ready, you will meet the Dragon Clan," she replied in her soothing bell-like tone.
Ryumiko nodded before blackness filled her vision. Yukaoi looked down at the sleeping girl with pursed lips. 'And then we see what happens from there little one.'
Ryumiko emerged from her bed early, seeing Yukaoi asleep next to her. She wasn't sure if the dragoness was really asleep as her breaths were too quick, but she tiptoed out of the room anyway, taking with her the dress that had been packed for her, a royal blue sleeveless, one-shouldered floor-length dress, in the usual floaty material. She wondered briefly if Yukaoi packed these because that was all she had, or if she just enjoyed playing dress-ups on her like a life-sized doll.
Once she had changed, she snuck out of the cottage and into a surrounding field, knowing that Haku would most likely skin her alive for going outside without his or someone else's supervision. She took a deep breath of fresh air and spun around, watching the blue ripple around her. Whilst spinning, she was reminded of her old dance lessons.
When she was younger, Chihiro had encouraged her to find a hobby to keep her sane when her cousin wasn't around. Dance had been that reprieve from her empty home. As time went by though, she stopped the lessons, fooling herself into thinking she was able to handle the loneliness on her own. Months after she'd quit, she realised that she had really enjoyed dancing, but never got around to enrolling herself in lessons again.
She probably would have danced then and there in the field if music was to be heard. Instead she took to fiddling with the fine chain around her wrist. Now that she knew for sure that she was no longer human, which was a realisation that came back to her almost every minute, she wondered if she really could feel at ease with herself again.
'No! Think positive things... po-si-tive...' she reminded herself, closing her eyes as if it were an effort to do so.
Then she remembered the real reason she came outside. She took a deep breath and changed into her spirit form. Her skin once again grew warm and steely, and she could feel her hair rolling down her back as it lengthened. The change she noted, didn't feel half as unusual as it had at first, and wondered if she was already getting used to it in such short time.
When she took another deep breath, she staggered back, coughing and spluttering with very little elegance. All sorts of new and powerful scents hit her nose and the strange taste of fresh air laced with morning dew coated her tongue. The new scents and tastes overwhelmed her and she blinked back tears while struggling for air that didn't assault her senses. It felt like putting your nose millimeters directly above the surface of a massive vat of strong perfume and inhaling as much as possible in one go. Unable to get used to it, she quickly changed back, taking a large sigh of relief as everything lost their smell and things went back to normal. Wondering why on earth this didn't happen last night she wiped away the wetness from her dulled blue eyes.
Retsu lounged on the roof of the cottage, watching the girl with a faint smile on his lips. Regardless of what went on around them, her reactions still perplexed and amused him. He was considering suprising her, just to see what would happen, when he heard people moving around and talking to each other, underneath him. A flash of blue alerted him to the old sorceress who appeared at the gates of the farm.
"Ryumiko!" she called, grabbing the girl's attention.
Ryumiko turned bleary eyed towards the sound and smiled, wiping the last of the tears away from her eyes.
"Good morning Zeniba!" she called back, running up to meet the older woman.
The smile left Retsu's face when he noticed something was off. Though he couldn't pinpoint exactly what it was, it caused the hair on the back of his neck to rise, and he bristled like an agitated cat.
The old sorceress fixed her brown gaze on the black haired girl heading towards her and smiled, "Good morning to you too. Now tell me, where is that troublesome cousin of yours."
Golden eyes widened as he heard Zeniba's voice underneath him, inside the cottage. If he could hear Zeniba below him, then who was speaking to...
Ryumiko raised a brow in confusion before the woman flicked her jewelled fingers at the girl. Ryumiko squeaked in shock as her arms and legs suddenly froze together as if bound my some invisible rope and becoming unbalanced, toppled over, landing on the harsh dirt path. She went to cry out for help but no sound came out of her mouth. She saw a blur of red and a flash of gold rushing towards her before all went black.
Chihiro took slow deep breaths as she treaded carefully through the darkness of the tunnel. She had often dreamed this before, always meeting a pair of green eyes at the end of the dark hole. But when she pinched her arm just to be sure for about the fourth time in two minutes, she was quite aware that this was no dream.
She reminded herself over and over that she was going to look for Ryumiko, nothing else. But a feeling creeping up on her neck, told her it wasn't going to be as easy as walking into the Spirit World, grabbing her cousin after giving her the scolding of a lifetime and walking back out following the white strings Ryumiko had tied to branches earlier to find their way home again.
She stepped out of the tunnel and squinted against the intense bright sun.
No. Nothing was ever so simple in such a place.
SHE'S IN THE SPIRIT WORLD! NYYAAAHHH! So please excuse spelling errors! On the computer I'm using,the keyboard is dying and not typing properly and I'm lazy so sorry if there are missing letters from smething or rather. Also I'm on holidays now bt I'm going on camp for four days tomorrow so yeah. And although I know you lovely readers like long chapters, I'm still on a creative down so I will be returning to short chapters to get my creativity and motivation rolling. When the long chapters rturn, I will clearly have goten m inspiration back! Hope you enjoyed this long awaited chapter!
Many thanks to you dear reviewers!
Animala Swan (Here's the longer chapter! :D Thank you!)
Mysticbreeze327 (Well she always had blue eyes :) Chihiro having a dog? *strokes phantom beard* t'would be interesting... haha thank you!)
spirited away forever (Haha! Thank you for reviewing!)
'Kattis' (I know, it's just when I make them long, they take too long to get out and by then, I'm losing ideas and I'm already in a bit of a creativity drought so until the drought passes, I think smaller chapters are best for me to work with. But thank you for your review and support! Really appreciated! :D)
Seabreeze27 (Thank you for your review!)
Moongirl12121 (I hath updated after so long! Very glad you enjoy my stories! Thank you! :D)
Shoujok (Thank you very much and many more thanks for reading and reviewing!)
InkWoven (She finally makes her appearance in the Spirit World now! Thank you for your review! :3)
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