Untitled 2
a Spirited Away story
by Garnet
With light footfalls, Chihiro descended the curve of the bridge and onto the dirt path leading into the town below. Pausing on the tips of her toes, she threw a glance back over her shoulder at the bath house. Everyone would still be asleep, she promised herself. The first veils of sunlight were just beginning to peak over the horizon, and even the most ardent of the bath house staff wouldn't be up for a good while yet.
*Take me to my parents again*, she'd begged of Haku earnestly, before abashedly explaining that she hadn't gotten a good look at them before. Not enough to remember them by, anyway, and that dream the other night had only served to amplify that worry.
After a moment's hesitation, eyeing her thoughtfully, Haku had agreed to meet her at the crack of dawn.
And so here she was, gently unlocking and toeing open the garden gate as she raised her voice to a loud whisper. "Haku?"
Nothing but the wind and the waves answered her, and the complaining creak of the little white gate as she closed it behind her once more. As before, Chihiro drew a quick, quiet breath at the sight of the neatly kept garden that lay sprawled before her. In a myriad of colors, the neatly kept hedges and flowerbeds fairly pulsed with life and vibrance all their own. Sweet, airily floral scents permeated the air, a pleasant change from the sharp odor of herbs and salts that were everpresent at the bath house, and Chihiro paused a moment as though to simply absorb it all.
"Haku?" She whispered again, this time rewarded with the sound of wind and waves and droning bees, as well. What if she'd missed him? What if he'd already come and gone, impatient with waiting? That would be all she needed! But just as she was moving to turn back, wary of his warning to never come to this place on her own, a gleaming thread of light caught her eye from above. Twisting and twirling like a long, festival banner, the shape descended towards the gardens with a graceful, looping glide. Chihiro's heart fairly lept from her chest with undisguised joy. He really *was* a dragon!
With renewed vigor, she leapt forward and ran in between the hedgerows where Haku's lengthy form had disappeared. He wasn't difficult to locate, being surely more than twenty feet in length, and stark white against the patchwork gypsy quilt of flowers.
"Haku!" Chihiro breathed, restraining herself from racing forward to fling her arms about his neck, and instead merely stepping forward to get a slightly better look at her friend, close up. From head to tail he was covered in a fine layer of pearlescent scales and fur, a wonderfully thick mane of jade ran the full length of his spine. Unlike Western dragons, his facial features were more wolfish than reptilian, sweeping back into a pair of sharp horns that bobbed as he bowed his head in greetings.
"You're beautiful," she commented, reaching out a hand to touch his finely furred muzzle. By the time her fingertips reached him, however, they met only warm flesh, the dragon having disappeared only to be replaced by the more familiar human form. The dark-haired boy smiled as he reached up to gently remove her fingertips from his small nose.
"Thank you," he chuckled. "Would you like to see your parents now?"
"*Yes*."
And so smiling again, Haku placed a hand at her back and led her towards the low, open barns that contained so countless many pigpens, with so countless many occupants. Chihiro wondered if all them, like her parents, had once been humans, seduced by the food of the Spirit World. She pushed this thought to the back of her mind for now, and bent over the railing of a pen Haku had indicated, squinting at its two denizens once more. They were slightly more active this time around, even wandering over to sniff and nibble curiously at her fingertips. She squinted hard at them while her friend lingered outside, peering into the small, wet eyes and memorizing the patterns of pink and grey splotches that played over their hides. When at last she felt confident in her familiarization, Chihiro stepped back out into the garden to find Haku wandering among the flowers, occasionally tugging out a stray weed. Apparently, Chihiro mused, there was no spell to protect the gardens against those.
"Thank you, again," she murmured, twisting her hand in the red shirt she'd been issued, as she moved after him. Dozens of questions were brewing in her chest: Where had he come from? Had he always been a dragon? When and how did he think she might be able to get back home again? What were these rumors of his being Yubaba's thieving, wicked little henchman? But she bit her lip, and merely watched him work.
"It's alright," he soothed simply, taking a step back towards her. "How have you been holding up?"
"I'm okay," she mumbled, looking down at her feet, and then to a patch of tall purple flowers alongside her. "These are pretty..." They looked a little like lupins, but not quite, covered with many tiny blossoms in dusty lavender.
Haku blinked across at the flowers in question, curiously. "I don't remember those, before. The gardener must have planted more of his enchanted seeds..."
"Enchanted?" Chihiro wondered as she bent to inhale their fragrance. "Oh, they smell good..."
"He's a rather impatient man," Haku admitted, drawing closer and testing the scent of the blooms for himself. Almost immediately, he withdrew again, drawing a single, sharp breath and turning from her. He hesitated like that for a moment, the back of a hand slowly curling to his nose, before abruptly jerking in place with a clenching sneeze.
"H'ihppft!"
Chihiro stared at him, wide-eyed. "Um... are you okay?"
Haku shook his head quickly, although not a strand of that perfectly jet black, layered hair ever seemed to fall out of place. "Hh-ish! Heh..." She half-reached for him, but halted her hand mid-stretch as he waved her away, apparently unfinished. "H'ishu!" On an afterthought, perhaps, he tucked his features tightly against one sleeve, smothering a final few fitful, catlike sneezes. "Mmph! ...H'mmph! Heh-mmsh!"
"You got a noseful of pollen," Chihiro pointed out with a small smile.
"Mm," he mumured, squinting his eyes shut and scrubbing intently at his nose. "I must be allergic. H'ish!" He punctuated the statement with another quick, delicate little sneeze, beginning to stray away from the offending flowers, sniffling. "Aeshu!"
Chihiro felt a swelling of a maternal instinct she hadn't possessed since she was six years old and playing with her dolls, as she trailed after Haku and placed a hand on his shoulder reassuringly. He spared a sidelong glimpse at her, before squeezing his eyes shut again with a quivering inhale that seemed to tremble his very frame where he stood.
"ISHuu!"
Chihiro recoiled with a small shriek of surprise to find that the fabric-swathed shoulder she'd been resting her hand upon had suddenly been replaced with a much scalier version. The dragon that now stood alongside her cast an apologetic eye upon his companion.
"Wow," she murmured, bravely reaching up to rest a hand behind one of his triangular ears. "Let's get you out of here!"
Haku seemed to be in agreement, bowing his head obediently as he allowed himself to be led from the garden. At this slightly slower, yet still brisk pace, Chihiro now noted just how many of those tiered purple flowers had been planted about the gardens. Haku seemed to notice them, too, wrinkling up his snout and pressing it against her shoulder with a soft growl.
"I'm sorry, we're almost there." A pause, and then she added with borderline playfulness. "Haku, don't sneeze on me."
With a whisper and a shuffle, he deshifted once more, falling to simply squinting and rubbing and sniffling and apology, "I won't. I'm sorry. It itches." Chihiro made another soft, soothing sound, feeling strangely mature as she relaid her hand across her friend's back. Haku sneezed only a few more times, in passing a small gathering of those purple flowers at the entryway to the little maze, of sorts.
"Aeish! Heh'ish!" His teeth clenched at the release of the third, explosive, "Ksst!"
Chihiro settled delicately down next to him as he slouched back against the hedgerows outside the garden, where the bath house on its cliff and the sea beyond could be clearly seen.
"Ish!" Haku sneezed again, suddenly, against an upraised sleeve. They were beginning to sound a little weak as they abated, and the dark eyes that he upturned to her were red-rimmed and teary as he sniffled hard. "Excuse me," he sighed, finally.
The younger girl only grinned to herself as she hugged her knees to herself and watched him sidelong. "It's okay. I'm sorry I don't have any onigiri to give you." The allusion to their earlier meeting seemed to draw a slight chuckle from Haku. Chihiro paused a moment, and then added, "Are you alright now? You're not going to change again, are you?"
"I'm fine," Haku sighed, around rubbing earnestly at his nose. "Just itchy. My nose hasn't tickled this much since the last run-in I had with Yubaba's bird and its stupid feathers." Sniff! His smooth features transformed, then, to an expression of reserved expectancy. There was no half-open mouth or even any flared nostrils, but merely a slight tightening of the corners of his mouth and a hand half- raised.
"Heh'kssh! Kssht! H'ish! Aeh...h'ksshu!" Again, the rest were smothering into his sleeve. Small, spastic little sneezes that escaped as mere murmurs of sound from the fabric of his tunic, and brought allergic tears welling to the corners of his eyes. Heartbroken, Chihiro scooched herself closer and gently rubbed her companion's back as his sneezing abated and, ducking away, Haku managed to breathily recover herself. Obediently, Chihiro's hands stole back to her lap.
"Better?"
"Much," Haku breathed, composing himself in full this time with deep, rhythmic breaths and a small smile offered across to her. "Thank you." He hesitated for a moment, eyes straying aside to where the sun had risen considerably in its ascent to the heavens. "It's getting late; you should go back."
"Okay," she agreed somewhat reluctantly, getting to her feet and gazing down at him a bit uncertainly, now. "Haku..."
"I know," he interrupted as he stood, as if reading her very thoughts. "You're being very patient Chihiro," he commended her, placing one of his cool hands to her cheek. He paused to sniffle softly before continuing. "I'll figure out a way to get you and your parents home soon."
She nodded slowly, already beginning to back towards the garden gate. "I'll see you again soon, right?"
But the human was already a dragon once more, who merely nosed her forehead gently before coiling back and simply twisting up and away, into the rosy sky of dawn.
The End
Much to my disappointment, I don't own Spirited Away, or any of the characters in this story. Damn you, Miyazaki! And I'm certainly not making any profit from this. Only pleasure. A/N: Technically, the movie ran in a continuous storyline with no spaces of time left open for fic-writing, so...for our sakes we're pretending there's an extra day in here somewhere. Set vaguely after the garden scene, and before Haku goes nuts after stealing the monogram seal, bleeding all over the place and such. There's no actual plot to this, so don't worry about it ^^;