Chapter 2 - Boy at the window

Revised 12/07

Disclaimer: I do not own Spirited Away.

The boy at the window

Dusk was falling. And as the sun fell from the sky, drifting down in a celebration of colour the barrier between two worlds, human and spirit, sapped to a thin veil. It wouldnt vanish completely until darkness claimed the landscape fully, like the smothering of a velvet blanket with distant lights for stars. Only then would the abandoned fairground earn the title haunted. Humans had created this eerie label. But very few who had experienced the reasons for it, and many wondered how it came about. That is another story for another time.

The focus of this tale was currently embedded deep in the once troubled town and immersed still deeper in the sea of her own thoughts. With head resting on bony arms, the girl gazed with glazed eyes at the glowing sunset so near, yet so far away. Mousy hair bobbed in time with the tapping of a scuffed trainer toe against the wooden bridge where she stood leaning against the railing. The breeze bore with it whispers of the night to come. It tugged at her hair, its anxious voice murmuring a half heard plea. Come or go. Choose now or not at all. Dusk held its breath.

Chihiro jerked out of her fantasy as though shed been slapped. She spun wild-eyed staring at the darkening sky, the bridge that supported her, the looming darkness of the bathhouse that hovered above, filled, as it was, with memories. Hollow echoes of trainers on wood broke the silence. And if possible Chihiros eyes widened still further and her jaw swung loose as a trail of pale grey smoke began to drift upwards through the night sky from one of the many chimneys of the decrepit building that squatted at the end of the bridge where she stood. The trail choked the air, faint now, but growing stronger by the second as the shroud of night dropped its thickening veil.

Chihiro turned to flee. She knew the consequences of lingering here and yet she did it all the same. But something made her paused. After all why should she run? She wanted to see her friends again, Just one last time. And if she stayed there she could. At least she thought she could.

But then what of her parents? Next time she visited that other place she might not be so lucky as to escape its clutches again. But then again, to be trapped might not be so bad if she was with people that cared for her. What did she truly want? Friends or family? Humans or spirits? In all honesty Chihiro didnt seem to belong in either world. But did she dare stay here, in this place, on this bridge, until darkness claimed the sky and the barrier between two worlds was annulled? She hovered, hugging herself with bony arms that did nothing to stave off the chill wind, and looked back towards the place she had, for a short while, called home. Had she been better off there? At least no one had laughed at her.

Well by the end they hadnt. After shed proved to them that to be human was no bad thing. Would she be better in a place where she was accepted? Or should she stay in the homeland of her own kind. Spirits had grown to endure her, maybe people would in time too. And then maybe she could forget her sorrows and regrets and move on.

No.

She might be able to move on but she would never forget. A shudder rode up Chihiros back. She clutched her arms to herself still tighter trapped on the edge of indecision.

Little did Chihiro know that as she hesitated, eyes bore into her from above matching her duel of head and heart. He, the one who watched, for one, wanted her to stay, oh how he longed for it! But it surely couldnt be, wasnt meant to be. They were too different. If nothing else, he would long outlive her with a life, though not immortal, many times hers in length. But would centuries of depression be worth the brief decades of joy? He could easily convince himself they would be though in his heart he knew it wasnt true.

The bitterness of those long years would overtake his heart once she left him for that other place where he would be unable to follow, and thereafter he would become as pitiless as Yu-Baba had been to so many poor souls. The witch had even held his own soul captive for a time and it had been Chihiro he had to thank for his freedom. After that magnanimous gift he could not as good as take her life, even if she consented to it. As she grew old, he would remain young. He would still care for her of course, with unwavering devotion, but she would end unhappy. The human and spirit realms were not meant to collide no wishing could change that, no matter how much the dragon child ached inside.

He had heard her call to him in the twilight hours before dusk. And though it had been faint, and the barrier between their worlds still at its peek, the air had gifted him her words. He had not been sleeping like the others in the household. Instead he had sat at the great oak desk that had once been Yu-Babas, reliving waking dreams of the past. Her call had pulled him to his feet and to the window to see her standing there. From that moment hed watched with unblinking eyes. The sight had not surprised him. She held the thread of his heart. And he answered her call, with silent, avid devotion, even if she would never know it. And he stood watching her still, through all her contemplation and now on through her indecision. And as the sky darkened, clouds ganging overhead, he watched her still. The starlights high in the emptiness of space winked out one by one.

There was a distant rumble and droplets of rain began to spit on to the windows glass. Still he didnt move, immobile and alone in the office, his silhouette cast against the wall and mutated by furnishings, the fire framing him in its orange glow. The rain plummeted harder and the light faded in earnest. Figures, that to Chihiro would appear as faint twists of smoke, but growing clearer, were beginning to make there way towards the bathhouse that was itself starting to extend its glowing arms.

Rain rattled the studys tall window pane. Chihiros image became a hazy outline, hidden by the river of water on the glass, and still more by wavering, unspilled tears. The dragon smiled his last goodbye.

Go now Chihiro, Haku murmured to the silent room, his emerald eyes never straying from his china doll, It is not your place to be here. This is not your world.

Far below Chihiro turned and jumped in surprise as though expecting to see something that wasnt there. Then, coming to an unspoken decision and without further pause, the blur turned and ran into the night, wet pony tail streaming behind her. Her shape was soon lost to the all-obscuring rain. She might never have been there at all, standing half way into a world where she didnt belong.

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