énska [experimental video]

[onen]

 [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.]

Comments

[onen]

They did not, but they did bring my son. He has come from some time ahead of me, when he is a man.

[And it is the most bizarrely unsettling thing to see your baby towering above you and looking far older than he has any right to look at that age.]

[bloodyantivan]

Fascinating! [Zevran wonders, suddenly, what his mother would think of him. She probably didn't mean to have him, and he killed her just the same. And now what is he?] It is strange, the way this place plays with time. I never thought of the possibility of parents and children being united in such a way. Is it a relief to know he survived to adulthood?

[Some people's sons are monsters.]

[onen]

[Ziio considers herself fortunate that when the time to deliver her son came it was in the spring when the days were growing warmer, and that he had spent the dangerous winter months safely in her belly and not exposed to the bitter cold. It was not uncommon for the weak or infirm to freeze to death on cold winter nights. But her baby had been born strong (like his father, she admitted), had thrived and grown healthily, and for all the difficulties and troubles his arrival in the world might have wrought, she had never feared that he would not make his passage to adulthood.

It was gratifying to be proved right.]

I never doubted that he would. He has always been a healthy healthy child.

[bloodyantivan]

I can hear the pride in your voice. It is a warm thing. [There's - something there in his voice, not just the pull of his smile. It's something like regret, a fondness for something he cannot know.] Would that all meetings here were that pleasant.

[onen]

[The shift in his tone gives her pause, and her brow furrows slightly. Why wouldn't a mother speak of her son warmly?]

You have not been so lucky?

[bloodyantivan]

I have seen some friends arrive from the gates, and others have left through them. However, if all of the people and all of the world can be brought by the Initiative - sooner or later one of those people will not be a friend.

For someone like me, it is really only a matter of time.

[onen]

You do not seem to be the kind of man to attract enemies.

[From what she knows, but then again she has been wrong in the past and bet on the wrong man in spectacular fashion.]

Is there no-one here you would call a friend who would help you if it came to that?

[bloodyantivan]

There are perhaps one or two, and... a woman of some importance to me. [He smiles a little, almost shyly, thinking of his lady-love.] Which is more friends than I have counted for myself in the past.

[Zevran has only showed this woman his kindness, and indeed it's all he ever intends to show. On the other hand, it wrong not to show his nature. He has never been shy about it save when his identity was best kept secret.]

I was long an assassin for a guild known as the Crows. Such an arrangement does not lend itself well to lasting, friendly relationships.

[onen]

[She's stiff for a moment there, her eyes are distant as she looks off to the side. Ah, the life of an assassin. It's never one she had thought she would need o worry about affecting her personally, or those she loved.

And it seems that in the span of the sixteen years that she does not know about, her son has become one.]

I have known assassins in my time. It does not seem an easy life to live.

[She looks back again.]

Do you still follow your guild's teachings?

[bloodyantivan]

In some ways, yes. It has been convenient to continue fighting in the manner they taught me. I believe to give someone death is and always should be done with grace and respect... such as the situation allows, of course. On the battlefield one does what one must, it is not the same.

I also believe it is usually best to live in the moment, to take pleasure when life is good because it will end quickly.

I have departed from other aspects of their philosophy, however. Of course, should any Crows come through the gates, they would surely argue that to depart can only be done at the end of their blades.