Chihiro waited for Haku.
She couldn't recall anything specific after leaving, but she remembered his promise. It bounced around in her mind relentlessly and a part of her just knew that it wasn't a remnant of a dream, but it was real. Someone was waiting for her out there.
And Chihiro was who she was; she was a young human child that had survived the harsh Spirit World, she'd faced witches of unimaginable power, she'd saved her parents from a feat that no others had, attracted the favor of a god, and she'd come out with her life. So, Chirio wasn't the type of girl to sit around and wait for this promise to magically work itself out. No, she would take matters into her own hands. Even if she didn't remember doing those things, she felt the impact of them, deep within her. Chihiro would be her own knight.
So, she did, or at least, she tried to.
In the years directly following the event, she would plead with her parents to take her back to the grassy knoll. Her parents had no recollection of the days spent there either (which, was for the best), however whenever they thought about the seemingly innocent green hills, they would have a taste like putrid decay fill their mouths and almost remember the feeling of being crowded in a barn, but the memory would whisk itself away just at the last moment. This was enough to firmly cement that they should never return there, much to Chihiro's ultimate dismay.
When Chihiro was a pre-teen, she had a knack for convincing friends to have their parents drive them out there again, to pack a picnic or some kites and let the girls run wild in the tall grass. She became very good at seeming so innocent and goading her friends back there time and time again.
By the time she was old enough to have a car of her own, she'd mostly forgotten why she continually returned to the fields. But, she very often would find herself drawn back here on the way home from her friends' houses or from work, and she'd park her car in front of the funny little statue, walk through the tunnel and just sit on the other end...waiting. Every time she returned, it was like her whole body crackled with magic and the pull toward the unknown was undeniable.
And, if she closed her eyes and just sat, it's like she could hear whispers of all things; but muted and muffled, as though she was hearing them from underwater or after just waking from a very vivid dream. Yet, the fields still answered no questions, and this felt like a stab in the heart, even if she didn't know why.
Finally, as she was turning 18 and she hadn't been back to the hills and the archway in over a year. She had wanted to go many times but had convinced herself it was silly and useless and she had better things to do with her time, so she had stayed away. But, she indulged herself in this little obsession, pulling her coat around her tightly as she passed under the archway for what she told herself might very well be the last time.
She put her iPod on, listened to some of her favorite music, and watched as the sky streaked with red.
There was a familiarity that danced over her, a feeling she knew she used to get back when she was a child, but at 18 she was more aware of it. She sat up, pulling her hair into a ponytail with a sparkling hairband- one, that if she didn't know better would say it was magical because it never broke and always turned back up if she misplaced it and stared into the growing darkness.
As the wind picked up, rustling the leaves at her feet, she heard it. It wasn't far away like the whispering voices once had been, but very present, as though someone was sitting right next to her.
Will we meet again sometime?
Sure we will.
Promise?
Promise.
Chihiro stumbled a couple of steps, recognizing her own voice from when she was a child. She felt her mouth go dry and she patted her cheeks, pulling her fingers back to see tears. She sniffled, shaking her head angrily.
"Well," She said out loud, "Fat promise that was." She was angry about something she didn't understand, about words she didn't know the meaning of, by a person, she couldn't remember.
She spun, snatching her bookbag from the dewy grass, stalking back to her car, cussing as she left.
All she knew was that eight years ago she'd walked into her place with her parents, and she'd walked out feeling different; surer of herself, more confident, braver...but a part of her had also always felt inexplicitly empty. She'd be damned if she let these phantom feelings grip her anymore.
She slid back into the driver's seat of her car, clutching the steering wheel tightly, her knuckles turning white. From her viewpoint, she saw the little statue, grinning eerily at her, mocking her. She had the irrational urge to kick it over if she didn't partially fear retaliation from whatever deity it represented. It wasn't that she believed in the old gods, necessarily, but she also wasn't going to tempt fate by irritating one. And, she always told herself, on some wild chance they did exist, she'd be all right about it.
Or something. Whenever she thought too much about the possibility of ghosts and spirits and nature gods existing, she felt something grip her heart and squeeze hard.
"Damn it all," She muttered, hitting her forehead softly against the leather of the wheel, "You're an adult now, Chihiro," She reminded herself, "Who doesn't get choked up about a summer's day that happened eons ago!"
She turned the car on and drove. She didn't get very far, however, not before she slammed hard on her breaks. She threw open her car door, getting out.
She had thought she'd seen something slithering in the sky, through the trees, like a…
Well, the thought she had was that it looked like a dragon. It wasn't, she knew because dragons didn't exist. It was probably just a…
Chihiro's mind came up blanks for a way to explain what she knew she had seen, but she waved it off. She wasn't a bird watcher or an ecologist, and one of those would probably laugh at her thoughts and tell her a perfectly reasonable rare something that looked like a glossy silver dragon.
"Water, you need water. You're going crazy." Chihiro told herself, fishing for her bottle, to find it empty. Ah, yes, she'd forgotten to fill it up on her way. She had come back here, spur of the moment, so to say Chihiro was unprepared for anything was an understatement.
The urge to drink sized her and she begrudgingly exited her car. She was sure she'd seen a stream or something in these woods as a child. The sky was just getting dark, but her parents didn't expect her home from the gym for at least another hour, and these woods weren't very large.
Her feet took her there, the familiarity of these woods seeping back into her mind. How many times, as a young girl, had her sneakers crunched over the pine needles, searching for whatever it was she thought she might find?
She found a small creek snaking through the forest. It wasn't anything large at all and it seemed to be moving at a slow pace. Chihiro saw that it came from underneath a set of half-demolished apartment buildings, the water dripping from a crack in the concrete.
She snorted; maybe it had been the spirits here in the forest to blame. She remembered that this forest had once been set for demolition, but she was glad to see something had halted the progress and that the apartment buildings that had been shiny and new eight years ago were starting to crumble already.
She saw the washed and smooth dirt pushed back into high banks and as Chihiro clambered down, muddying her shoes as she went, she wondered if once the water had roared up to those points. Had it once been a mighty river that cut through this forest with ease?
If so, the water that remained now seemed pitifully small. The river banks would have been high above Chihiro's head, the water that flowed now was hardly two feet deep.
"I wish I could heal you," Chihiro sighed, looking up at the twisted roots, gnarled and twined, that poked through the soil bed from where the river once was. Some of the trees looked a little dry without the water right at their feet.
At the foot of the apartment building, a fissure hardly bigger than Chihiro's palm let the water out, and it came out in a pressured stream. She impulsively dug her fingers in, trying to do away with some more of the concrete wall to let more water out. Faintly, there was a name in the back of her mind of what this river was. She recalled her parents talking about it, what seemed like years and years ago. About how they used to go to the water's edge with her when she was very small and how many people had been horrified that the city was built over it, and despite the overwhelming disapproval, they had anyway.
"Stupid politicians, stupid city," Chihiro muttered kicking the wall and little pebble-sized pieces of concrete came off in her hands. She found a large rock and hit the side of the wall, unsure if this was doing anything at all, but was beginning to feel better about things. About being an adult, about going away to college soon, about having these feelings she couldn't shake. Sometimes, she was sure she dreamed of whatever happened to her that day. It never remained. She never recalled.
There was a gurgling somewhere inside the building and before Chihiro could connect what was happening, a whole piece of the wall seemed to buckle in on itself, sending an icy cold flash of water barreling out from the widened hole in the wall. It was now about as large as Chihiro's head, she realized with a grin.
The water had sent her tumbling off the little ledge near the apartment building, into the remainder of the river below. It rushed around her legs, and she wiped her soaked bangs from her face, grinning.
There was movement from out of the corner of her eye, and she turned to see a man not much older than her, standing in the ankle-deep water. There was something ethereal about him, something glimmering, but Chihiro couldn't place it.
And, he was handsome. At that moment, she realized she must have seen her very ungraceful fall as she tried to give a big middle finger to greedy corporations bulldozing forests.
"A hand?" He asked, stepping through the flow to her.
"I, uh, sure," Chihiro said, using one hand to scrape away the mud from her cheeks and she raised the others to reach his. He looked sort of funny, out of place, in very traditional garb. Maybe there was some event, like a play or a service going on somewhere? Maybe he'd heard her swearing at a slab of concrete.
As soon as her fingers touched his, it was like someone had revived her from the dead. Her mind opened and memories poured in, memories that had been locked away somewhere far below, memories she couldn't quite believe were real.
She stood, staring at the man in front of her, "Haku?" She asked, frowning. His hand clenched tighter around hers.
"Hi, Chihiro." He whispered.
She stared, dumbfounded for a couple of seconds, before promptly shoving him hard.
"What the hell? Eight years! Eight fucking years of me waiting for you and you never came! And now, of all times, when I'm about to go to college?" She demanded. Haku's expression flinched, confused. Chihiro scooped up rocks from the riverbed- pebbles really and began half-heartedly flinging them at him.
"I. Looked. For. You. For. Years!" She said, trying to let out all her anger, all that anxiety that had led her to come back to the hills time and time again.
"Chihiro, stop throwing rocks," Haku sighed.
"No!" She said, crossing her arms, "I'm pissed at you."
She stared silently at him for a couple of moments, stewing and thinking of ways she could murder him before the distance between them came too much. She threw her arms around him, burying her face into his shoulder.
"I'm still mad at you," She murmured, but hugged him tighter, "So angry."
"I know." Haku acknowledged, pressing his nose to the top of her head, "Chihiro, it's not like it's been easy for me too. Didn't you feel me there? Every time you came back?" He asked. Chihiro stepped back, putting just an inch of space between them. She frowned, and now that she knew what to feel for, she could recall his shadowy presence...always just out of reach, on another plane of being, a little too far away.
"If all it took was a touch...why didn't you…" Chihiro struggled, shaking her head.
"I couldn't risk having you come back on the other side." Haku reached a hand up, stroking her cheek, "Too risky."
"I made it out once," Chihiro pointed out haughtily.
"I know you did," He grinned with pride, but then his face fell, "But do you think they would have let you over the second time? Don't you recall all the faces of humans stuck there, endlessly?"
"I had people on my side. I would have had you on my side." She said, sighing into his cheek, "Granny, No Face, Rin, Kamaji…" She continued.
"I couldn't risk it." Haku sighed, "I feared that if you came back, you'd never be able to leave again. And after all, you did to get back to your family, I didn't want you to not have the choice."
"Then, what about now?" Chihiro felt fear grip her, for just a moment.
"Not the same. Don't you recognize this?" He asked. Chihiro opened her mouth to say she'd never been to this part of the forest before, or, not in this river until she realized she had.
"Haku, this wouldn't happen to be your river, would it?"
His grin was impossible to ignore, "Once you stepped in it, you invited me here, not the other way around."
She looked back, "I remember that the reason you lost your name is because they built apartments over it," She frowned.
"True," He said, his fingers rubbing over her arms, "But you gave me back my name. I was trapped under the ground until you gave me that power back."
Chihiro smirked, "I hoped you flooded every inch of those apartments," she said earnestly.
"Burst the pipes, broke every floor; it's a mess in there." Haku laughed, "Made sure they won't be back in a long time."
"Good," Chihiro said firmly, "Because I can't imagine you...what if they…" She bit her lip hard, "What if I lose you again?" She asked. She didn't mean just in the sense that she'd walk away, but what if his river was lost again? Or completely dried up? Would he...die?
The thought was nearly too much for her to handle.
"Hey, it's okay," Haku assured, "Granny helped me divert this past the fields. So now, even if it disappears here, I'll still exist on the other side. I'm not going anywhere, Chihiro."
"Well, good," Chihiro's cheeks flushed. She bit her lip, looking back up the ridge to where her car was still waiting, "You wouldn't have, ah, persuaded me here? As a dragon?" She asked.
His foxy grin said it all, "A river is very patient, Chihiro, until it isn't. I've always been there, I know you're going on to bigger things. But, maybe, I wanted you to know that you have a choice."
"A choice?" Chihiro echoed.
"Yes. With me. Of me," Chihiro thought it impossible to see a god seem unsure or embarrassed, yet here he was, "Over there. But, I want it to be your decision, not an accident."
"Oh," Chihiro tugged on the hem of her shirt, "Oh." There wasn't much more she could say.
Haku didn't push her but bent down and scooped up an inch of water into a little locket, clasping it shut. He held it out to her, "If you ever need me, here I'll be. You can call me with this." He whispered. Chihiro took it gently, as though it was the most precious thing on earth. At this moment, to her, it was.
"You should be going," Haku gave her a sad smile, "I've taken up a lot of your time."
"Yeah," Chihiro wondered how many missed calls she will have from her parents once she gets in range of data again. At least twenty, since she knows she's now been gone far longer than she was supposed to.
She paused, and turned back to Haku. Throwing herself around him a last time, she tried to remember every inch of him. And then, she pulled his head down and kissed him. Haku's fingers dug into her damp shirt and she let him pull her tighter. She was covered in mud and twigs, soaking wet, and had a thousand rocks in her shoes...and Chihiro had never felt more like this is where she was meant to be, with him.
"Ever hear of the god that fell in love with the human?" Haku whispered when they pulled apart, kissing her forehead.
"Those never end well," Chihiro sighed.
"Ours will." He said only two words that held so much.
Chihiro raised her head, giving a half-smile.
"Promise?"
"Promise."
