It's a clear morning, Reina is in a hospital room: she still has her papery skin and her familiar hair; as well as her eyes of the time. She looks through the window at the children playing in the park on the other side.
Although ill, her mine shines more than usual. She seems to have no harm, and wears her smile which is so warm, and her beauty of a thousand delights.
The door opens, she doesn't turn around. She must know who it is.
"Yo!" the person sits down. Reina turns around and greets her identical projection. Next to her sits the Reina seen by Salim and the others. Brilliant white hair, eyes of jade fire. A healthy skin, a beauty of ten thousand delights. Her gaze is more gang than Reina's.
"It's you...sister!" Reina smiled at her.
The other takes an orange out of a plastic bag and peels it by hand before passing her a quarter which she takes.
" Thanks!"
She is playing with the chair.
" How are you feeling?"
"As you left me"
"I see…" she rocks with the chair. "Daddy says hello. He misses you a lot"
Reina smiles and doesn't answer right away
" When is he coming?"
"As soon as he comes back, don't worry."
"Okay…" her smile faded.
"What do you want us to do today?"
Reina doesn't really seem so happy anymore. The other doesn't really react. She still plays.
" Today?" Reina wherpers. "How long have you been keeping me here?"
" What are you talking about?" she looks distant, as if to pretend not to understand what she is saying
"Sister, the truth, tell me the truth"
"Me the truth." she gets up and still plays the innocent and walks around the room
"Tell me if I'm dead" saddens Reina
"Dead people don't talk"
"So tell me, where am I… and above all, who are you" Reina expects real answers from her. "Would you be a guardian angel?"
She stops walking but does not suggest anything in her eyes.
"A guardian angel?" she wherpers to herself, seeming to imagine herself as such. "It's an option, but no."
"Tell me what's…"
"Reina." Reina stops talking, her look so sad. "What do you want to do today?"
Reina mimes thinking about it but she comes back at a gallop. "I want you and I to discuss our respective natures. Tell me what are you, who are you?"
She neither says nor does anything.
"I want to know what I am becoming in order to act accordingly. If you are my sister, then tell me the truth."
She thought "The truth..." she puts her hands in her jogging and turns to Reina. "What's bothering you?"
Reina thinks back to what has happened to her since she woke up in this room, she remembers nothing and has fuzzy memories, nothing specific about her past comes to her. She only remembers the death of her mother, her father, her illness, and... that's all.
The first day she woke up there, she found no one but her twin sister who explained to her, her hospitalization and the absence of her father because he would be by the words of her sister, on a trip.
But what bothers Reina most of all is that she has a weird feeling: for her, time is very abstract. As if the notion of time escaped her, as if she was steeped in two times, two different sensations. And that twin sister who comes every day constantly, who takes care of her, who broods over her, that twin sister with special powers.
"Tell me who I am." Reina is determined
"Your name is Reina"
"That's not what I'm asking"
"Reina Salim"
"No more that"
"So ask what you want to know you're tiring me!"
" All "
"I am your sister; I am not omniscient"
Reina almost sighs, she can't take the girl anymore.
She looks at Reina, and maybe she decides to give her what she wants. They look at each other, and when the false Reina sees in the patient's eyes a mixture of sadness and determination, a mixture that she did not believe possible, she seems to resign herself.
She sighs and sits down. Reina looks at her curious, or impatient.
"Tell me who you are, and what I'm becoming."
When she sits down on the chair, and rests her chin on the back of the chair, in an instant, the hospital room turns into heavy darkness, Reina is still lying on her bed, she does not seem not totally surprised. She stares at her sister. The shared gaze persists.
"Are you really sure you want to know the truth, know what I'm protecting you from?" She looks sorry, knowing she'll only get yes for an answer.
Reina does not answer, but her gaze cries: "Yes!"
Then her sister snaps her fingers, and nothing seems to happen for the first three seconds, then Reina mimics a grimace, she seems seized with a feeling of unease, her face wrinkles more and more and suddenly transcribes a monstrous pain, she twists, grabs her stomach, her head, her hips, she lets go, twists, falls to the "ground", strikes from all sides, her eyes almost roll back, and the cries of pain border on the extinction of voices.
Her sister looks at her in a mixture of sadness and letting go. She looks up and hears Reina hoot in pain. She stops the turmoil, Reina has lost all her beauty, her face is decomposed, she looks terrified, she breathes in a chaotic way and takes a good moment before finding a less distraught look, she is still struggling to paint her normal look, she doesn't look at her sister who takes her back to the hospital room, and who sits again, chin on the back of the chair, she lets Reina come to her senses.
" It hurts?" she allows herself to pronounce her rhetoric well. "It's not like I didn't warn you. I told you, that I was protecting you, that you had to do what I say." She still lets Reina take her breath, Reina coughs, she is still traumatized.
"I myself did not expect such a reaction; so it hurts so much…yet i only made you feel about 70% of the actual pain your body is going through. What you felt was the last torments of your body melting under the disease. It is the pain of your illness. And be happy that your heart is still safe and sound, otherwise I wouldn't want to imagine."
It is unclear whether Reina is listening or not, she calms down, but is still in shock, clutching her throat and still breathing chaotically.
"I am a Muzhara." she said looking away. Reina's pupils dilate. "A muzhara ac…" She looks at Reina, who is decidedly elsewhere and that almost annoys her: "Listen to me when I talk to you" scolds the young girl before making Reina'd pain go away. The pain dissipates, and her face takes a moment to regain its splendor, and she takes a deep breath. Her eyes shine - still in her usual chic - with terror or curiosity. She says nothing.
" So! And so…" She sighs, then scratches the back of her head. "It was you who insisted, I didn't want to" she is sorry.
" What was that?" Reina mutters
She wears an almost surprised look "what was it? You know what it was "
Reina finds it hard to believe that it is her illness that makes her feel that way, or at least that she has been able to forget such visceral pain, a pain that is certainly less terrible than what she has just experienced, but a pain all the same excruciating, which would make a fracture pass for a sprain. She suddenly remembers everything. Everything comes back to her: her childhood, her friends, she remembers Frida, Lisa, her birthday, her boyfriend Antoine and her marriage proposal, she remembers her sharp yes and her fainting. She remembers everything.
But as her memories clear, not everything becomes clearer; she understands even less what is going on; what is the girl who looks too much like her, with these faculties moreover, and what she is doing here. She has questions, but doesn't know where to start. They look at each other.
"I told you I was a Muzhara" as if she had guessed Reina's questions. She guesses that her explanation is not enough, she sighs again. "You asked if I was your guardian angel, you can see it like that but it's more complicated than that, normally I should have been your weapon, but without really knowing why, - she frets nail- I ended up becoming independent of your authority. You don't seem to have a hold on me." She approaches Reina and offers her the palm of her hand and we see on her ring finger a gray ring. She holds it out and says nothing. "Put your hand on mine" Reina doesn't react, she looks a little lost, she looks at her hand and sees a ring she never owned before. "Are you going to do it?" Reina raises her hand and their palms meet. As soon as her palms are together, a jolt runs through Reina and she feels an energy, a part of her, something in her body that passes from her to the other, a heavy flow, a connection being created and they feel their bodies merging; rather, as if the girl's body were an extension of her own.
Reina seems bewitched, in a trance by the contact; she lets herself be filled by the jolt which has become lightness, appeasement, she feels so light that she thinks she is a breeze of air, an immense peace fills her, but also, a grandiloquent power is presaged, and in the power, she detects an evil which tarnishes its lightness, it immediately wants to part with it.
The girl cuts the tie. And Reina, who has her irises turned into lights, sees her body light up with a white aura. "Let's not synchronize anymore. The girl holds her wrist with the hand where the ring is. She watches Reina return to her original state. "As I suspected, you have a huge seed, but your authority does not work on me, try to give me a command?"
Reina comes to, but is still in a trance. "Go ahead! Give me a command, I am the Muzhara of the spirit, give me an order, anything, anything you want me to conjure up, or even a place you want to go"
Reina has a wide, almost unhealthy smile, her pupils are dilated and she breathes a lot. Then the more time passes, the more her face changes from a smile to… fear? She looks frightened, and she moans. The girl looks at her, curious… or rather observes. When she sees Reina's euphoria growing she tells her to take her ring off but Reina doesn't seem to hear or listen to her anymore. "Take off your ring!" The girl grows impatient, but Reina doesn't listen. So she walks over, takes Reina's hand, and takes the ring off. Reina is automatically restored. And it is surprised that she looks at the young girl again.
"Don't let yourself go, we synchronized way too much, the dose was too big for you."
" What did you do to me?"
"I attempted an activation, I am a Muzhara, and you are my host. I am at your command."
"An activation? Muzhara? Host?"
"You're tiring me…" she wherpers. She approaches, puts her hand on Reina's head, and immediately Reina seems absent, staring blankly, it lasts a second or two.
She breathed into Reina all the information about her and her nature. Reina sees in her brain, new knowledge intruding. Everything is initially blurred, as if the informations was trying to find its place in an environment, a moment, a memory… then Reina receives from her brain the false memory of the young girl there, at the moment explaining to her:
"The Muzharas are a second consciousness possessed by the hosts: the descendants of the Hidu. These consciousnesses are divided into two categories, the active and the passive, the active ones are the subconsciousnesses which replace the consciousness of the host during an absence of the latter; in a coma for example. These consciousnesses take possession of the body of the host and are then able to interact with the world of the latter only if the host authorizes it. Thus the consciousness will simply not be able to act as it pleases if the host falls asleep or is in a coma. Passive consciousnesses cannot interact with the real world, they are only powers for the host. These consciousnesses draw their essence from the muzhara, the power they use and which naturalizes them according to the will of the host."
Reina also understands that these awarenesses only arise when:
"We only appear to the host at the wish to live or to cause to live. At least in a situation where a life, or her own (that of the possessor) is at stake, not on a mere whim." And she goes on to explain that "Thus the power with which we are born, is that necessary for the realization of the wish of the host."
Reina takes the time to assimilate all the information, she swallows and turns to her with a still questioning look
"Did I give birth to you?"
" Nope "
" How then?"
"I don't know, usually the wish to make alive doesn't create an active, only a passive one. Look at your ring"
Reina executes and admires a sparkling ring, of an immaculate white, she does not know of any material on Earth that would give such white.
"Your ring has no inscription. Normally when the host activates her muzhara, the vow of the pact is inscribed on the ring in the language in which the said pact was pronounced. But although I exist, it is not so and that is certainly why your commandments do not work on me."
"Our rings, they…"
" Yes. Not the same color. Normally we muzharas are born with the omniscience of our nature, we know what we are, who we serve, how to serve him, and therefore for me, not knowing the nature of my own coming, is a mystery, which more is, I don't know why our rings are different."
"If as you say, you are born to fulfill a person's purpose, should your power be tied to that?"
"I've already thought about it!"
"Did you find anything concrete?"
"A lead, but nothing concrete. Ah, damn it pisses me off your story!" She groans scratching her head and Reina smiles.
"Did you protect me?"
" What?"
"You said earlier that you protected me, that's why you kept me from hurting."
She mimics a curious expression as if she doesn't see where Reina is coming from.
" And?"
"You seem upset," Reina smiled. "I just wanted to say that it might be that…"
"It doesn't mean anything, I didn't do it for you, not for the reasons you think."
" Oh, yeah?"
" Yes. As long as the pact is not signed, I have no obligation to you."
"If I die you die" Reina said still with a smile.
She is surprised that Reina says it, that she understands it. It's true that it's obvious, but she didn't expect her to say it. So she thinks she should warn her how little time she has to live
"You won't live long anyway" she doesn't look Reina in the eyes
"I hope long enough for you to find the reason for your existence"
" What?"
*
"You need to know what you are here for! Courage!" Reina is enthusiastic
the other has a bewildered head
"Wouldn't you be a bit silly?"
"The stupidest thing would be if you died without knowing something as stupid as your reason for existing." Reina has a beautiful smile and her silly look contrasts with the young girl's bewildered face.
"Is that what worries you?"
"Something else should?"
"But, you are going to die I'm telling you!"
" You also!"
The other is enraged
"Damn, are you kidding me? Your family worried about you outside and that's what worries you? That I know my damn reason to exist?" Anger rises in her voice
Reina doesn't answer her out of her voice, she doesn't smile anymore, but her face is still calm and soothing.
"Where do you go when you die?"
"What… what?"
"Do you have an afterlife?"
"What… what, why do you want to know that?"
"You want to know if I don't have anything else to do but what exactly can you or I do?"
She suddenly looks more calm.
That's right, what exactly can Reina or her do? Neither is capable of the miracle of healing Reina.
She still thinks that it does not justify such disinterest in her imminent death. Her mine soon becomes more tender.
"What does it have to do with our afterlife?" She realizes that it is the second time she's spoken to her with a twinge in her heart.
"I didn't get the point for you to help us achieve our dreams if it's just to disappear after cost."
"Is it different for you? I said I knew everything but I don't know more than you what death means"
"How do you want to live?"
" Sorry?"
"Until I die, how do you want to live?" She thinks of those words and the sight of Reina's face, she sees a warm presence, she is touched by that remarkably tender gaze.
The muzharas must know everything about their host, but as much as she does not know how to define her own birth, she also does not know if her host is just too nice or simply stupid. As a Muzhara, but especially as the muzhara of the spirit, she knows everything about Reina, from her earliest childhood until today, she knows what neither she nor anyone else knows. She knows who Reina is, she knows how she perceives the world: Reina is devastated, but her monstrous sense of duty forces her to constantly involve her creed of "urgency-priority" but currently her recovery is impossible. An emergency, or a priority? Probably, nothing more than a fatality.
It only remains then to take care of what seems the most entertaining. She may know it, but her muzhara nature cannot help wishing her to live. She imperatively wants to make her host live but even with all her powers, it is beyond her reach; she would like to do as Reina pleases, but that would certainly be reversing the tables, she doesn't want to lose her dignity as Muzhara, but if it is her host's order? So yes, it is probably the best thing to do; then:
" OK. As you wish. How do I want to live?"
" Please!"
She thinks. A little moment.
" Tell me?" she asked Reina
" Yes?"
"Would you like to do something?"
Now she's convinced herself to let the wind carry her, she looks calm, and her resemblance to Reina is more than apparent, she's a splendid beauty. She sits against the wall and blows the wind in the room; Reina's hair is worn by the latter, and the environment turns into an endless field of flowers from where she and Reina are. A fiery sun shines when far away we see an fantastic animal, a creature that Reina drew at her youngest ages, the creature, is ridden by a penciled man, Reina would recognize him if she were not fascinated by the golden rain of the cloud sad crying, and in the sky a troop of women in silk dresses who dance to the liking of the child musician.
Reina's childhood is being built before her eyes, at this time it is her sister who is in a trance: her eyes closed, looking peaceful, carried away by her power, she is lifted by a wind, a benevolent whirlwind, and Reina is now on a throne which elevates her and transports her to the world of her childhood images.
A little angel brings Reina a notebook which she opens and the pages' scroll by themselves and fly away in animated awakenings; Reina, when you finally look at her face, she is a child, Reina is very small, her eyes shine and her teeth are widely visible, big eyes, those of a child who meets the surreal.
The score is irreproachably memorable, with palpable affection. The ball ends with a wide shot of all the memories: Reina, a little child, is resting, on a huge beast that has everything to rest, with a big pile of wool as a coat.
The conductor finishes her performance and comes back down to earth. She opens her eyes and contemplates, she sees Reina and feels a melancholy, the presumption of farewell not so far away: she will offer everything to this young girl.
Even if she knows everything, does not know, at least not yet: the importance of the collusion of their existences.
She approaches her and strokes her hair, Reina is peacefully asleep on the beast when we suspect a strange grimace on her sister and pearls of sand pouring from her arm.