Book 2- Sequel to Courage of the Spirit. A Spirited Away Fanfiction.
A few more days in Chihiro's new life. Will her fledgeling relationship with Haku blossom? Or fall foul of the differences between immortal and mortal? An Epilogue to Courage of th...
Oops! This image does not follow our content guidelines. To continue publishing, please remove it or upload a different image.
Somewhere in her flight from the lake, fear had turned to anger. She threw open the door to Haku's home and slammed it shut behind her, making it boom. The sound reverberated through the entire house; it would have woken the dead let alone a sleeping dragon. Chihiro picked up her bag and paced across the polished stone floor until Haku appeared at the top of the stairs.
"What's going on?" he croaked, rubbing at his eyes. To Chihiro's annoyance, she was distracted by the quite adorable picture he made with mussed hair, sleepy eyes and creased clothes. His shirt was open revealing the lean muscles on his chest and abdomen. Chihiro tore her eyes away and scolded herself. Her runaway thoughts only served to heat her anger.
"Take me back to the bathhouse immediately!" she snapped; he looked confused and descended the stairs.
"Why? What's happened?" He stood before her and looked her over appraisingly. "You're soaking!" he exclaimed.
"Well that happens when you get attacked by water!" she growled. His eyes narrowed, and he clenched his teeth.
"Who attacked you?" he hissed.
"You did!" she yelled, past caring about how she must appear to him.
"I don't understand," he said trying to catch hold of her as she passed him. But she shrugged him off. Her voice became very low and icily calm.
"Your river tried to drown me, Haku. As your river is a part of you, that means you attacked me. Now take me back, I'm not spending another minute in this place." She could see the hurt in his eyes, but he recovered quickly. She could almost hear his mind shift up a few gears. He was doing some fast thinking.
After a moment he said, "If I had thought for one moment that my river was so affected by your presence do you think I would have brought you here?" She just glared at him, wanting him to be less reasonable so she could yell at him and forget how afraid she had been.
He must have sensed how she felt because he moved away from her and sat on a sofa at the end of the room. A towel appeared in his hands, and he held it out to her. She shook her head; she wanted no favours from him at that moment. He sighed and put the towel on the floor. "Will you please tell me what happened?" he asked calmly.
"Don't you know?" she taunted, "As an all-powerful dragon I would hope you knew what your river was up to!"
"It's not quite like that; I know it's upset and angry about something, but until I'm actually in it I won't be able to talk to it directly." Chihiro rolled her eyes and scoffed and then obliged him and hastily babbled the details. The Nygel's involvement made him raise an eyebrow but apart from that his face was impassive, and his green eyes were unreadable. Chihiro was winding down, her speech less rapid, her anger fading.
"... I put my hand in the water, and it was like a whole other consciousness. It was so happy to have me there I almost cried. Then it started telling me how it wanted to take me down into its depths and make me part of it. That was when I got the warning from the Tac'tal and saw a wave about to crash down on top of me." Chihiro hugged her rucksack to her. "It tried to kill me, Haku," she said quietly. All her anger was now gone, it had melted into confusion and a need to comprehend. "And I can't understand why it would want to do that." Haku was staring at the ground, his hair falling around his face. There was a pregnant silence as Chihiro waited for his explanation.
