Rin felt she could take no more and said nothing, simply holding Sree. “Then I am even more sorry. I lost what time I could have had with you.” Suddenly she had a horrible thought. “It’s not because you were alone that you decided to …”
“No,” Sree promised, taking Rin’s hand in her own. “No, sister. You must never think that. It would have been nice to see you, but that’s all there was to it. I simply have grown tired. It was a long time coming.”
“But you’ve always been so full of life. I can see it in you, even now. Aside from this absurd desire of yours, you don’t seem to have changed a bit. How can you be so alive, yet wish to die?”
“I do not wish to die,” Sree corrected. “I would wish to die, if I could. All I can hope for is the next best thing.”
“Was all your bubbliness an act, then?” Rin demanded with more than a touch of petulance.
Sree shook her head. “The two have nothing to do with one another. There is the local and the global. On any given day, I can enjoy food, a warm bath, a lover. I can laugh and cry and be part of this world, at least as much as I ever was. But that ‘me’ only exists day to day. The real me is long gone, if such a thing ever existed. I am not sad or depressed. There simply is no real me anymore.”
Rin stared at her intensely. “You are very real to me, sister. Does that mean nothing?”
Sree took her sister’s hands and gazed into Rin’s eyes. “Of course it matters. But I am not real to me. One cannot go on without being real to oneself.”
This was beginning to sound less than sane, and Rin wondered whether the millennia had cost Sree her reason. If so, there was hope. Time could undo what it had done. That was the virtue of being eternal.
“Then why not endure?” she pleaded. “You may feel differently tomorrow or the day after.”
“That has not happened for a million tomorrows. You hope is a kind but vain one, sister.”
Rin was about to protest that a million is nothing in the sea of eternity, but sensed this only would serve to exacerbate her sister’s melancholy. Instead, she tried a different tack.
“Okay, then why not take the advice of Marcus Aurelius. When contemplating such an end, one should ask what it is about the current moment which cannot be endured. It is a valuable defense against suicide, I expect.”
Sree shot Rin a reproving look. “Why do you imagine I should heed the words of another, however well those words may have served him? He had the solace of death, eventual if not self-incurred. Besides, I already told you I do not seek oblivion from pain or suffering. I enjoy my existence. This is no mere affectation. I truly am happy to see you, sister. I do not want my days to end because they are unendurable.”
“Then why?” Rin entreated.
“You misunderstand,” Sree explained, a certain sadness inhabiting her features. “I only seek oblivion for my body. The rest of me found it long ago.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” Rin barked, suddenly angry, though she could not quite explain why. “You’re right here. Let’s dispense with the maudlin bullshit.” She looked at her sister and grimaced cruelly.
“‘Ooh ooh, poor little old me, brooding over the gift of immortality. Isn’t my adolescent nihilism poetic? How will I go on?’ Can I offer you a silk handkerchief to drop, sister?”
This outburst briefly took Sree aback, but she soon broke into a smile. “That was a bit much even for you, sister. I’m glad to see you haven’t lost your touch, though. Aren’t you being a little harsh? After all, I’m not asking for sympathy.”
“No, you’re just asking me to murder my own sister,” Rin snapped back.
Sree looked down. “Yes, I am. I am sorry for the hurt I have caused you, sister. You are the last person I would wish to hurt, but the only one I can ask.”
“You are not asking, you are telling,” Rin grumbled.
“Would you have done differently?”
Rin rounded on her, armed with a particularly vicious reply, but stifled it when she saw the pain on Sree’s face.
Instead, Rin’s shoulders slumped. “You still haven’t told me why,” she insisted through her dejection.
Sree seemed confused, and Rin clarified, waving dismissively. “Not all this nonsense about your body and your being. Fine, you died long ago. Call it what you will. Why did you die? Something must have caused it.”
“Time took its toll,” Sree began.
“Bullshit,” Rin snapped before stopping herself. Her eyes became gentle. “Was it that asshole?”
Sree gave her a look of disapproval, as if she knowingly had broached a distasteful subject.
Rin would have none of it. “I don’t care whether you want to talk about it. Boo-hoo-hoo, you lost a boyfriend. Get over it.”
Sree looked away. “We both know it wasn’t that simple.”
Suddenly Rin’s face lit up. “What if I kill him? Better him than you. Will you move on then?”
“That would not do,” Sree quietly admonished. “If my life required the death of another, it would not be worth living.”
“That makes no sense. By that token no human should continue to live. Heck, the whole damned world operates that way. It’s nature. Future corpses eating present ones.”
“We are not natural, sister,” Sree observed. “Besides, what would destroying him accomplish? If anything, it would remove all possibility of love.”
She sighed and looked at Rin. “It would not matter, anyway. I have lived in a world without love for a very long time. It can make no difference whether I live in one without my love. But it never would have worked, even long ago.”
Rin felt her temper rising, or was it desperation? “Without love? You heartless bitch! What do you call me?”
Seeing the tears in Sree’s eyes, she relented. “I’m sorry, it just hurt when you said that, sister.”
“No, I’m sorry,” Sree replied. “I didn’t intend it that way. Your love means a great deal to me. When I say I live in a world without love, I do not mean there is no love for me in it. I mean that there is no me to receive it.” She thought for a moment. “Your love may be the only thing which is real.”
Well, this had gotten melodramatic really fast. Rin rolled her eyes. She would have laughed at how much this felt like arguing with a self-indulgent child, but the stakes were too high. There was no room for laughter anywhere in this affair.
“What if I encumber you, and that schmuck suddenly decides he loves you. It’s almost certain to happen; that’s the way the world works. Normally I would remark how pathetic it is for you to depend on another’s choice like that, but unfortunately I seem to be affected by it in no small measure as well.”
Sree shook her head. “You misjudge me, sister. There is no dependence, and it would make no difference. Perhaps once it would, but I don’t even remember that ‘me.’ As I said, there is no ‘me’ left to accept his love. I am hollow.”
“I’ll kill him, you know.” Rin had a hard expression. “If you force me to do this, he will follow. And he’ll have as unpleasant a damnation as I can muster. That will be your doing, sister. How would that make you feel?”
Sree frowned. “That is unqueenly, sister.”
The rebuke stung, and Rin felt ashamed.
“Besides,” Sree pointed out. “You will have to anyway. He is part of your mission.”
Rin couldn’t argue with that and said nothing. Seeing this, Sree offered a wan smile. “And so am I, lest you forget.”
“There is no rush,” Rin insisted. “I told you I would do it when you wanted. That can be at the end of time.”
“Or it can be now.”
Rin studied her, grasping for some thread, any thread. Finally she found one. It wasn’t ideal, but perhaps it would win a short reprieve. She could work with that, use the chance to come up with something more compelling. Rin kicked herself for having squandered the last century instead of preparing for this conversation and all its possible avenues.
“You said you wanted to spend time with me,” she began. “That’s not the wish of a suicide. Let us spend that time together now. You always can ask it of me later, and I will fulfill my promise then.” Rin’s voice was higher than usual, almost hysterical.
Sree shook her head. “It is too late. Any such time would be empty and only detract from our memories of one another. You merely would be trying to recreate what once was but with a shadow puppet. My time has come, and I must do this now. I hope such a weariness never falls on you, my sister. I doubt it will, though. You are of a different substance.”
“Then rest a while,” Rin pleaded. “Don’t quit.” She grabbed Sree’s arms. “For there to be no suffering, there can be no knowing. Do you understand this? You will cease to be, even as your body carries on.”
“I understand,” Sree promised. “That is what I want.”
“No, you do not understand,” Rin replied sharply. “There is no turning back. Once done, this cannot be undone.”
Then she had a desperate idea. “I know. I can craft you another sphere, a better one. One to bring relief, not death. I can add protections. You’ll never be bored or sad or tired.”
Sree averted her eyes. “You swore never to do that again.”
Rin began to object, but Sree interrupted. “And suppose you did so. If I still desired death, would you then be able to bind me?”
“It would be harder,” Rin admitted. “Not impossible, just harder.”
Sree seemed skeptical, but smiled. “I know you wish to believe that, but you deceive yourself, sister. I would be trapped, beyond all reprieve or, worse, you would be unable to find a merciful binding. There would be no choice but to destroy me in some horrible way.”
Suddenly she looked mortified. “I’m sorry, sister. That was callous of me. I didn’t think what it means to be you. I’m so sorry.”
Before Rin could react, Sree put her hand under her sister’s chin and kissed her on the mouth. Rin raised her eyes, and Sree brushed away the tears which silently had covered her face.
She smiled as reassuringly as she could. “I tell you what, sister. Prepare the sphere.”
Rin’s face lit up, and Sree realized her mistake. “Prepare the binding sphere. I know you will find a way to make it painless.”
Finding herself unable to say anything, Rin replied with a desultory nod. Sree continued, as if speaking to a child. “When next we meet, we will speak of this again. We will do nothing until we are sure.”
Rin mustered as genuine a smile as she could. At least nothing had been finalized. Then she realized what she must do, and the smile vanished.
This chapter was actually quite moving. Figures Rin would be a Stoic. :p