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Mireia sprang to a sitting position in the bed, clutching her covers to her chest with her eyes wide, then immediately grew baffled as she saw who was sitting on the edge of her bed.
“My Lady?”
I tipped my head and smiled. “Yes?”
“What are you doing here?”
With a giggle, I noted, “It’s my bedroom, you know.”
Her mouth twisted and she shook her head in irritation. “I mean… I know that, but… I’m sure I just saw you go over the railing to fly downstairs?”
“Ah, so you were actually awake.”
She nodded, with her brow still wrinkled. “I woke when you came into the room, My Lady. I pretended to be asleep because I didn’t feel like getting up yet. But I saw you go to the balcony, and…”
She stopped, lowered her eyes meaningfully, then noted, “And you were dressed very differently than now. What exactly are those strange clothes?”
I followed her gaze down and smiled. It was a favorite outfit of mine for weekends and after work… from my life on Earth, resized to fit my current body. A vintage gray Dallas Cowboys hoodie and blue jeans were indeed quite a foreign look in this world.
“I wanted to make sure that you didn’t confuse me with the Tiana who is currently wishing the Hero’s Party good hunting downstairs,” I explained. “I’ll try not to look so out of place, next time you see me. Although I’ll be one of my other incarnations when that happens, more than likely.”
Mir’s blank look was downright magnificent, a real work of art. I couldn’t help but let out another light laugh.
Her eyes narrowing, she demanded, “Who are you?”
I smile again. “It’s really me. I’m Tiana, but it would be most accurate to think of me as Tiana when she doesn’t have memory loss.”
My words left her befuddled again, and my smile grew bitter. “Yeah, this situation is a little confusing. I should let you get the details from Rhea. I’m sure she can give you a clearer explanation. But I’ve come to you because you’re the most likely to understand otherworld concepts like parallel universes. Your old world also had that concept in its fiction, right?”
Her brow wrinkled once again, and she noted, “But Rhea has already assured me that the Tiana I know, the one with memory loss, is still the same person. She’s the Tiana I know, not the original Tiana returning to her body. So who are you, really?”
I nodded. “That’s correct. She’s me. We’re one and the same soul. Her part of us has simply lost her memories, starting from the moment she came to this world until she woke up the other day.”
Still uncertain, she asked, “And you are… you, as well?”
With a second nod, I explained, “We’re sort of parallel copies right now. Although it’s more accurate to think of me as the copy and her as the source. I’ll become part of her once more, later, but right now, it could be fatal for us if we merge.”
From her eyes, I could tell it hadn’t explained much, but I decided to leave it to Rhea. “Putting that aside for now, there’s a reason I’ve come here. I need an ally here.”
Again she turned wary. “What do you mean?”
“Rhea will confirm later that everything is on the up and up, but I felt I should be the one to ask you.”
After twisting her mouth, she admitted, “She just did. Exactly what do you mean by an ally?”
“Well, before I get to that, I also have a favor to ask you.”
She blinked. “A favor?”
“That girl is entirely too guileless,” I declared, letting my worry show on my face. “I suspect your world was more like mine than like this one. A less trusting world.”
She didn’t show any reaction. I continued, “I don’t know what might happen in the future, but she’s missing the cynical eye that I brought into her life.”
“So you want her to be… less trusting?” she asked, sounding a bit puzzled.
The dam broke and I began complaining about the thing that had been bugging more than any other. “I mean, that girl just up and got married, the same day she woke up, for Heaven’s sake! And just because you guys told her that her parents decided it! She hardly even hesitated!”
“… ahaha…” Mir responded quietly, a slight smile finally dimpling her cheeks. She ducked her head in apology as she saw my troubled expression.
“She’s surrounded by all these people who can take advantage of her trusting nature. Think about all those aristocrats, all the older bureaucrats, all the older fairies …Someone’s gonna sell her a bridge or something!”
Mir’s expression turned perplexed. “They’re going to sell her … what?”
“Oh, whatever stereotypical item that con men sell in your world,” I clarified. “Try to watch the people around her with a more jaded eye than she sees with, okay? Look out for her, please?”
Her brow wrinkled again. “You sound like this is going to last for a while.”
With a nod, I replied, “This is going to last for a while. Not forever. We have a plan. But we have to do it carefully, and she has to trust us.”
“You were just saying…” she started pointing out.
I cut her off. “I meant other people, obviously. She needs to trust us. Rhea could ask you to tell her to trust my incarnations when they start showing up, but… well, like I said, I wanted to ask you directly. And it really is what Tiana needs.”
Mir pooched her lips and thought a bit. She didn’t respond.
“And before that, she has to even believe we are real,” I explained. “We can’t just start talking to her. She’s already having memory issues. She’ll be convinced she’s hallucinating as well.”
I paused to let that sink in, and Mireia nodded. “That’s why you don’t just start talking to her with that ‘spiritual voice’ you use.”
“That’s right,” I confirmed. “Well, we are actually avoiding it for more reasons than that, but eventually one of us will have to speak to her directly, either in spiritual voice or by manifesting a visible image like I’m doing with you.”
“And you want me to assure her that it’s real.”
“That, and she has to know that I and the rest have no ulterior motives. We can gain nothing from tricking her. We can only help her and her babies, because we literally have no other interest or motive here on Huade in the end. Because she is us and her babies are our babies, so her well-being is our only priority. But she doesn’t implicitly understand that fact, the way I did, because she doesn’t remember us. And we don’t dare make her remember us, because it could trigger a reaction that may kill her, and therefore us.”
I hesitate going on, because Mir looked like she wasn’t completely following.
“I guess I need to leave that to Rhea to explain as well. The thing is, I borrowed her blood core in order to appear here. She didn’t sense it, because she doesn’t know or understand about it, but eventually she’ll notice. She needs to understand that she is our only gateway to the outside world. She could potentially interfere with us, otherwise.”
After a frown and a moment of hesitation, Mir asked, “Why do you need to… come outside?”
“To protect her,” I stated simply. Then added, “And to protect the babies, and to protect the mission that those people are embarking upon. I doubt anyone other than the fairies understands just how much danger they’re in.”
Again, she didn’t respond. I had the sense that Rhea was also speaking to her this time, though.
Finally her brow wrinkled and she complained, “Neither of you understand how hard it is to believe something like this! You’re the same person, but the you who is in front of me has your memories and the you who is downstairs doesn’t? Even though you both exist at the same time?”
Feeling very lame, I nodded with a weak smile.
She sighed and facepalmed. Then, after a few seconds, she asked, “But you’ll become one person later?”
“That’s right.”
She frowned again, looking down, as if she was trying to solve a puzzle.
Finally, she looked up and asked, “But when that happens, will you be you, or her?”
I opened my mouth, then grew uncertain and closed it.
At that moment, it had occurred to me that what I felt about this situation might be what Kanon felt about returning to Senhion. It had been perfectly obvious to me that she was a different individual at this point, but Kanon had always planned to “return to base”, bringing her memories and spiritual energy back to ‘herself’, meaning her main body, Senhion.
If that should happen, I had seen it as her ending, but she had seen it as returning to her normal life, hadn’t she?
It had felt completely unfair that she would give up her own life and return to me. One plus one does not equal one, right? But that was wrong. Rather than one plus one equals two, the correct equation was ‘one half plus one half equals one whole’. She never saw it as an ending.
Nor did I, in my current situation. I knew, implicitly, that when I merged with Tiana in this world, this ‘me’ would not disappear the way it appeared when viewed from outside. I would simply continue, while catching up on all the interesting things that happened to my other half, as her, after I rejoined her.
That certainly put a different spin on the matter. Even though Immortal Mother had agreed that Kanon was a separate individual at this point, I still needed to reflect longer on the issue.
But I needed to answer Mir, too.
“The question ‘will you be you or her?’ makes no sense,” I explained. “When an immortal divides her consciousness, she doesn’t become two people. She just exists on two paths. Both sides will continue to exist after we reunite. I will simply have two sets of memories from the time we were apart.”
After staring at me for a few more seconds, Mir pressed her lips together, then nodded.
Noticing motion outside, I noted, “The air boat is departing. Which means those two will be coming back up soon. I should note, I’ll also need you to help me with Rod, because I plan to switch to another incarnation and stay for a while.”
Her brows bunched up and she demanded, “Are you serious? How’m I supposed to convince him?”
“He’s already met the incarnation I’m going to use. Just let him know Captain Sirth is here and she needs him as a guarantor so she can move around the castle.”
“S… Sirth?” she pronounced the unfamiliar name cautiously.
“She was my incarnation several lifetimes ago, and she…”
Then I stopped, smiled and decided, “And she ought to introduce herself.”
I dissolved the [Blood Effigy] back into an invisible phantom to prepare the way for her entry.
