Elena Virgil inherited the family cosmetics company. At 86 years old, she still controls everything! She has four children, three daughters and a son, five grandchildren, and six great-grandchildren. She treats everyone in her family with the same detached attitude.
This woman cares for herself and money! She's disciplined, focused, and always on top of her game. She looks like she could live forever, until the heart attack!
She is rushed to the hospital as she lays dying. Surrounding her, an army of doctors tries to bring her back to life. While in the waiting room, her family is praying for her death.
Elena would have fought to live, but the slide into moving on is like taking a giant spill down a light tunnel with nothing to hold on to!
A voice—that was not hers—suddenly started speaking, but the voice shifted. Suddenly, the voice was speaking to her in a language she had never heard before and then it stopped. The voice vanished again, but it came back with a different speech pattern. Elena began to feel squeezed and trapped, but there was also something tickling her nose; it smelled like the scent of a church during a funeral. She could almost make out the sound of people praying around her but there was a part of her that hated this hypocrisy of the religious ritual because it made her stomach turn over.
Suddenly she is immersed in a cascade of sensations. She feels her body again and hears the voices chanting. Weird, foreign words they are, yet she knows them! How could she know them?
It's a dream. It has to be. She's not dead; she feels as alive as she ever did. But the chanting is killing her!
What are they saying? Emerge! Emerge! Ancient one!
Now they're really testing her patience! How dare they call her "Ancient One"! She'll make sure they're fired, and their lives will be a wreck!
Enough! she screams, using her entire lung capacity. Then shock! Her entire body quakes from head to toe. But instead of the old, wrinkled shell of a body, she's used to occupying, she finds herself in a new and unfamiliar one—a younger, firmer version that feels like home.
That girl is slender. Who is that girl? I don't know who she could be. And who are those people with whom she is surrounded?
They look frightened, wearing long dresses and tunics. Their eyes are wide. What about the paleness of their skin? She realizes she has the same pale glow. They step back as she gets off the crystal bed, and stands.
Amidst the crowd of strangers, she catches sight of a man who stands out. His long white hair is twisted into an elaborate knot and wrapped with a silk band. All the others in the group have hair just like him, but none so immaculately groomed.
A servant woman inches toward the smaller woman, extending a robe. Without thinking, she turns to let her slip it on. The servant gently wraps the belt around her waist and ties it in a graceful knot. When she turns back, the man is standing in front of her. He puts his hand on her forehead. Without hesitation, she quickly removes it and pushes him away.
The Ka is in place. He says as he walks away.
As she watches him go, Elena finds her eyes drawn to the room around her. The walls are lined with wooden panels that look like weathered tree trunks swathed in silvery paint. When she glances up, she sees a ceiling covered in hundreds of small, shiny silver pieces that are suspended from thin threads and bounce slightly with the movement of air, a gentle jingling accompanying them.
Then she feels a sharp pain in her leg and falls to the ground, blacking out.
End of Act One.
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