(disclaimer in the end )
Satine
Satine opened her eyes and wondered where she was. It couldn't be Paris. She saw a thick and wonderful forest, where leaves covered all colors from yellowish green to turquese, and flowers competed of exuberance. Being a creature of the night and a child of Paris filthy streets, Satine couldn't even imagine where she was.
" How do you feel, lady?"
A caring, feminine voice. "Lady"? It hardly fitted a courtesan.
Satine turned her head to the voice. She was lying on a soft ground - grass, maybe? -, and sitting by her side was a woman her age, slightly shining as if her pale skin was a satine veil covering gold. She had ethereal white hair, finely pointed ears, eyes of gold. She barely looked real.
" Who are you?"
The apparition smiled gently, yet a firm will showed through her eyes.
" That is a long story. And you don't have to know it. Do you feel better?"
The pain. The pain on her breast had vanished, her throat didn't ache since she had recovered consciousness. Bewildered she replied.
" Yes... I do... I feel fine."
" Great. Let me help you."
She stood up and helped Satine doing the same.
" Now do you want to go back where you come from?"
A weird question, a weird woman and a weird place. Satine grew even more cautious.
" What do you mean? I don't know where I am."
" You're in my world. I can send you back to yours. I think there is someone there that you want to see again."
A veil of darkness appeared in the air near the woman, and Satine saw a familiar vision through it : Christian's little room in the poor Hotel Blanche. Christian was sitting as usual at his tiny table, working on his old typewriter. But he had changed. His hair and beard had grown and he looked like he had neither slept nor eaten in a long time.
Satine's heart wrenched at this sight.
" What happened to him?"
" You died."
Satine watched her hostess in disbelief.
" For him it's been a few months already. He's only beginning to cope with it."
" I died?"
" Don't you remember?"
" I... do. But I feel fine. Alive. And I can't be in heaven, I'm a courtesan."
The woman smiled without denying nor assenting to the association.
" You're not in heaven. You're between death and life. Do you want to rejoin him?"
Satine asked wearily.
" What would be the price?"
The woman bowed her head with a sigh.
" Confronting your love with the world. See... You haven't lived together long enough to really pass through idealized love. If you go back to him, you will both have to face reality, and you will have to make your relationship last, or to renounce to it. That is the real challenge. Are you sure you want to take that risk?"
Satine's wilful eyes already gave the answer.
" Is that all? If I go back there, will I be... cured?"
" Oh yes. But that would be the last time I intervene in your lives. The rest of it will be what you make of what the world throws at you. Joys and pains, altogether."
" It's better than dying now! Please do, if you can. But why... Why would you do that?"
Her hostess showed more of her pearly teeth in a cat's smile.
" Maybe because, fiery red-head, you could be me. And maybe because I don't like tragic endings. Let's go now."
She raised her hand, and a quicksilver wave flowed up from the ground to touch it, forming a waving mirror in front of Satine.
" What will I tell Christian?", she asked.
" Don't tell him anything. I'll do."
The woman's halo darkened, her cloak of light changed into black robes, her hair and eyes turned to black. There was a shuffled sound around her, like invisible feathers rustling in the air.
" What do I look like?", asked the hostess as if she was simply trying a new dress with a friend. But her voice was lower now.
" An angel of death", was Satine's reply.
The still pearly-white and soft smile failed to reassure her.
" Fine. That's exactly what he should think. Come with me now."
She took Satine's hand and passed the floating mirror.
"It's a story about beauty, freedom and love..."
Christian had just finished to type the last words of his story - Satine's story.
He sat back in his uncomfortable chair, putting the last page on the others beside him. That was over now. By writing their story, he had made it immortal, and he would never forget it. But it also meant that he was going to leave it. Leave the only way he had found to stay with Satine a little longer.
The sound of ruffled feathers made him turn back.
He jumped on his feet at the vision of that raven-haired woman standing regal in the middle of his untidy room. She was familiar to him, but he knew he had never met her.
His mouth spoke before he could hold the words back.
" Who are you? How did you come in?"
" I can go anywhere, but am seldom welcome... However, Christian, I think you will not regret my advent today."
Even a less talented writer than Christian would have read the double meanings in that introduction.
" What do you want?"
" Nothing. I'm only... delivering, for now."
She stepped aside, and Christian's heart nearly stopped. Satine was there, not in the white Indian courtesan outfit in which she had died, and had been buried, but in the stunning red dress in which he'd first met her.
More timidly than he had even seen her, she bowed to him in a silent greeting, like if she did not dare to walk closer.
He couldn't turn his eyes from her, didn't want to, in fear that she would disappear. All that he could do was to ask:
" How? Why?"
The raven-haired woman put a gentle hand on Satine's shoulder to push her towards Christian.
" How, is my privilege. Why, because sometimes I feel the whim to defer tragic endings."
Christian haltingly touched Satine, then when he was sure that she was real and not a trick of his troubled mind, he hugged her strong enough to suffocate her. She hugged him back, then broke his tight embrace to breathe through tears and laughs.
" I cried for you, Satine, I nearly died without you! Why now? Why have you waited so long if you could bring her back?" was his following question to the dark messenger, as far an accusation as he dared.
She didn't seem to mind. Her ever-lasting smile became just a bit more playful as she vanished.
" Because tragic endings make better stories. And I wanted this one to be written that way..."
Ending, then.
Disclaimer : Yes, yes, I know. I just needed that off my chest. Sorry.