Spirited away

Some days, you feel like you just waked from a dream. A strange, marvellous dream. You feel different, as if you just came back from an initiatory rite that transformed your soul deep within. Then, you question what you just experienced, you want to turn back and see. To know if it's still here, if it's real, if the trace left on your memory isn't just a flickering illusion.

That day, reaching the end of my journey, I didn't turn back. I didn't need to. I had newly built up self-confidence, and a burning faith in my memories. I had grown, in three days. The small girl, overprotected by her parents, got a grip on her fears and used this acquired assertiveness to save her family.

My name is Ogino Chihiro, I am human, young member of the Japanese society. I fairly enjoy my daily life, in a simple and ordinary fashion. However, sometimes, I still find myself dreaming about there, about then ; thinking about this peculiar elsewhere that I came across, but that gets blurrier each time I recall it at the back of my eyelids.

I still believe in the baths, in the gods and spirits, but the images keep vanishing, one after another... I do remember, I do, but it's getting away, slowly, quietly, and maybe someday, I just won't remember anymore...

I think that, sometimes, I would like to go back, to return brightness to the faded colours of those old sketches. I t is but a short-lived wish, that I never take seriously. There is an frontier between here and there. I could search for an entry eternally and never find it, or maybe find it, but it would stay closed. Also, I have my life here, among humans, amongst 'my people'.

You can't live in two different worlds, and my choice has been made a long time ago.

' Now go, and don't look back'

The balance of the Realms is thus made. This boarder is a string wrapped over the ages that shows no weakness, cannot suffer any strain.

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