exsilium | énska [experimental video]

[The woman who has pressed record on this tablet looks as though perhaps she has made a mistake because she does not speak for a long time, and seems to make no effort to find any words. It has taken her some time to come to terms with where she is, how she has come to be here, but it does not mean she has to like it and there is no doubt in her mind that she does not like it here with its ruined land and cities.

And ruined people.

She has yet to venture into the room that has been set aside for her in the Initiative hold, wanting nothing from these people who have taken everything from her, and instead she is sitting by a fire she's set for herself in the shell of a building where someone- her son, her adult son- has set up a camp, curiously studying this tablet which is somehow able to allow people to communicate. Ratonhnhaké:ton- and it is still strange and hard for her to associate a full grown man with the four year old she left behind- had shown her how it worked, and she puts this newfound knowledge to the test as she looks at the device.

For a while that is all she does, wondering what it is that people say on such a thing... why they would want to even. Nothing about this world makes sense.

The fire crackles some, she seems to poke at it with a stick causing sparks to fly, and then the sound of the almost omnipresent rain is accompanied by the low grumble thunder. While she glances out at the gloom she shakes her head and speaks, the corner of her lips quirking up just a fraction as she does, though her voice low and calm.]

With weather like this I can see why the British would have wanted to take other lands for their own. Does it do nothing but rain in this place?

[It is hardly the most scintillating way to introduce oneself to the neighbours, but Kaniehtí:io does not have much experience with small talk.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I'm English. It's been eight years since I left home, though. Much longer by the current calendar.

[She arches an eyebrow slightly.]

No doubt you left to find better weather.

No, not quite. I left to find freedom for myself, or something like it.

I can't say I missed all the damp, though.

[Except sometimes, on lonely nights where she questioned whether she'd done the right thing at all.]

What was it that kept you captive here? Were you a slave?

[She does not look as though she'd be the type kept in slavery... ]

No. I was a wife. [She smiles ruefully.] And because of that, I couldn't be myself.

Ah, so it was slavery, of a kind.

[Oh, she likes you, Ziio.]

Very much so.

[Granted her exposure to marriage outside of her own people's practices is somewhat based on hearsay and conjecture and accounts from others, but from what she does know of it, and the other woman's smile, she can guess that it's not the kind of thing she would take over a Kanien'kéha marriage.]

Then you were right to escape. A woman should not be a slave in her own home. It would not be allowed amongst my people.

My husband wasn't a bad man. He wasn't particularly good, either. I don't think he saw it as limiting me—he truly didn't understand what else I would want out of life. That was enough to make me leave, in the end.

[Ziio is quiet for a moment because that is something she understands. Perhaps not in the same way, but it is familiar nonetheless.]

It is sometimes the way that things must be.

I suppose it is.

[Maria looks thoughtful and a little sad herself for a few moments.]

You're new, aren't you? Not that I've been here a long while myself.

I have been here only two weeks. It is very different to where I belong.

It hasn't been that much longer for me. Where did you come from?

I come from Kanatahséton. It is in the Mohawk Valley.

I'm sorry. I'm afraid I have no idea where that is.

The land is called America by people from your country. I have not come across many who care to learn the Kanien’kéha names.

That name is just as much a mystery to me. [She smiles ruefully.]

[She frowns, not expecting that response, and tries again, remembering another one of the names she had heard.]

The 'New World'?

I'm afraid not.

[She frowns, though; there's something familiar about the term, in concept at least.]

Where exactly is this New World? I've only known the one.

Britain lies across the sea to the east of my land's shores. It takes some months to travel the distance to 'the colonies' as they call them.

[Maria stares for some few moments, quite speechless.]

Across the ocean, on another side of a globe that is the world...

[She lets out a breath.] So those lands do exist.

They have always existed. They've existed since men walked the earth and even before then.

[Obviously. Why wouldn't they?]

[She shakes her head, not at Ziio's words but at the beliefs of men, long ago and far away.]

Where and when I'm from, we don't know of such lands. A friend of mine spoke of them, but even he couldn't say for sure that they existed—he only believed it.

I do not understand, I thought all people from your country knew of them?

[This is perplexing indeed. Unless...]

...what year did you come from?

No. None of us.

[She hesitates a moment before answering.] 1191.

video;

onen - 2013-06-04 07:38 (UTC) - Expand

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