Misstep
Shadows and dolls don't need love. They offer none themselves, sitting dark and lifeless, even as whispers from a sorrowful heart reach them. They can't hear any anguish; they can't hear at all. Shadows and dolls are mockeries of human life.
But they are all Maya has.
Of course, there's the old woman, but she isn't around enough to even count as another person—she's a husk of a caretaker and a withering seamstress, and Maya believes the old woman is just as much a shadow or doll as the companions she murmurs to in her isolation.
Her shadow on the screen likes to mime stories while Maya speaks of them, forming its hands into funny animals and letting its hair hang low like a curtain when the scenes change. The effigy of a woman, ball-jointed with the paint pealing off, is the audience to their performances, a grand listener and not one to interrupt, even when things get silly.
Just as her shows and her conversations with nothing grow stale, the old woman leaves a diary. Its cover is purple, a royal color that excites Maya. It's a lovely thing, old as it was, and she can't wait to pick up the brush and write. She doesn't quite know what to write about at first, only scribing her plays, but eventually those words begin to run dry, and she begins to record her thoughts.
One day when Maya isn't paying attention, the diary replies.
No, that's wrong. Maya bites her lip as she watches the pen in her hand write a response to her earlier question: "How are you today?" But maybe it's not wrong! Because as she watches her hand put her brush through the works, she feels strangely disjointed. Clearly her hand is moving, but her hand is surely moving of another's will.
The next thing Maya writes is another question. "What is your name?"
The diary replies, "Maya."
Maya is pleased to know that the girl on the other side of the diary shares a name with her, and smiles.
Almost daily, the other Maya recants tales of her side of the diary, where there are no women confining her in a lonely house, and Maya yearns to see it. The ritual of writing messages to one another grows until Maya no longer thinks of the other as 'other Maya', but as 'my sister'.
On the day the villagers hold her down and the old woman shuffles towards her bearing needle and thread, Maya realizes she doesn't want to leave the room with the doll and her shadow and the diary to her sister Maya, and the feeling in her chest when the realization hits is perhaps more painful than the needle piercing through her skin is.
Spirit Camera is an okay game. I don't understand why they had to change the name to Spirit Camera, though.