Snapshot: Colonization
by Danielle Leigh

Snapshot is a series that is in no way connected.  Any season, any 
universe, anything at all.  A slice of life examining the lives of the 
members of the xf universe.


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She is nothing to me and I am nothing to her.  
	
At least that's what they tell me.  But I know better.  When I listen 
to her soft tone rattle out the next tale, my eyes following her 
quiet, competent hands as they knit, and I sit at her feet watching 
the gentle rocking in her worn wooden chair.  There's a rhythm to it; 
infinite and constant.

I'm not the only one present for these sermons--as some call them 
bitterly and mockingly--there are other young ones who are as 
fascinated as I.  But the numbers have diminished.  Words are 
dangerous.  Memories even more so.  But I have no one to caution me 
from her.  My parents are dead.  Before I knew her, I knew nothing of 
them.  I still don't, really.  Her tale of them is at best a kind lie. 
But how badly I want to believe.  To romanticize this life; to see 
honor in the pain, in the waste.
	
I can't say it began innocently.  I knew from the start it was 
forbidden.  Dangerous.  Punishable.  Yet still I came.  If only to 
gaze at her glorious head, her lovely red crown of the chosen.  If I 
struggle hard enough I can remember that color from the most beautiful 
sunsets when I was a small child.  
	
Some are vicious and call her vain.  Henri, the useless old man, told 
me the story of her arrival.  She was handcuffed, dressed in 
utilitarian grey like everyone else when the soldiers brought her in. 
The line of her back was strong, her chin high, her eyes the color of 
the hottest part of the flame.  A white kerchief covered her head.  
Together the community gathered to see this priestess, the vanquished 
rebel.  They looked at her without comprehension.  I wonder now, did 
they see her strength?  Her quiet power.
	
It was a pudgy, well-fed complacent soldier who cruelly snatched the 
white cloth off of her head to reveal the jagged, short angry points 
that were left of her glory.  She reacted not at all.  But it wouldn't 
matter.  Her incomplete beauty seared the eyes of every man, woman, 
and child in the crowd.  The sight of her, so badly fractured could 
not be forgotten.  After that she never covered her head again, her 
pride would not allow it.  But she lost something that day.  It was a 
humiliation she has never forgotten.  
	
Now her hair is long, flowing over her rounded shoulders to the main 
of her back.  No gray shows, as she is not quite past forty and five. 
At least that's what is believed here.  Her skin is smooth and creamy, 
with no hint of time.  She could be any age from twenty to fifty.     
 
The other boys make fun of me.  They say I'm her lover, her 
possession.  When I sneak back from her small quarters, loping back to 
the large dormitory in the dark, I hear their sharp angry taunts 
ripping me apart like dog's teeth.  But they don't tell the men.  It's 
a silent honor code among us.  To break it, to be complicit in Their 
imposed order, would mean certain death.  Betrayal is a luxury and we 
are given none.
	
But in one sense they are right.  I am her possession.  She claimed me 
over ten years ago.  Everything I am and everything I will be is 
charted by her will.  I am her pupil and she is my teacher.  But it 
goes beyond that.  I do not think there are words to express what she 
is to me and I am not yet entirely sure what I am to her.
	
Tonight the tale is about a girl and a boy during the old times.  When 
they were young the girl and boy were all and everything to each 
other.  The played and talked and argued and were the best of friends. 
When one was sad, the other was sad and when one was joyful, the other 
followed suit.  As they got older life forced them apart and the boy, 
who became a man eventually as all boys must, went East in search of 
his future.  The girl, who was now a women, found her own way through 
to the West.  But her path was hard and lonely and her memory of the 
boy was gone, replaced by the memory of the man.  It wasn't until the 
girl saw life again, stubborn and passionate flourishing arrogantly in 
spite of everything, did the memory of the boy return.  This memory 
gave her strength and she was never alone again.
	
The story seemed to make her sad, in the telling of it and her busy 
hands slowed.  A small cap, designed for a child was stopped in it's 
growth.  I knew one of the three Marys was pregnant; perhaps the cap 
was for her child.  Her words landed painfully in the air, hitting the 
wrong spots, her brilliant voice and usual rhythm disappearing slowly 
in the night.  Outside the crickets voiced their displeasure and her 
large black cat shuffled in annoyance at her feet.
	
"But it's a happy story, isn't it?" I asked.
	
She looked down at her hands and smiled slightly at their laziness.  
Briskly, the knitting continued.
	
"Happy?"  She tasted the word carefully, it's sound hollow in the 
small room.
	
We were alone as we had been for awhile.  Any child found here would 
get a harsh beating from their parents, but I have no one to beat me. 
 Only the guards.
	
"No," she said quietly.  "Its point is not happiness."  She stared at 
me and waited silently.
	
This is the way it went.  Sometimes in my worst nightmares I dreamed 
the wrong answer and was taken away from her forever.
	
"The memory of the boy.  It helped her remember to live."
	
Her smile traveled over me like the yearly sun, it's warmth stronger 
than a 1,000 stars.  She ran her fingers through my beloved dark hair 
and I placed my head on her lap.
	
"Time is so short.  I curse my failing memory.  I wonder each day, is 
this what I should teach?  Will this give one the strength?  Should I 
tell you to question or forget?  Fight or run?  What gives a man the 
strength?"
	
I sighed tiredly and closed my eyes, her warm hands absently stroking 
my neck.  The grey woolen skirt I bury my face in is scratchy and 
harsh.
	
"Is it true what they say?"
	
Her hand stills on my shoulder.
	
"What do they say?" she asks mildly.
	
I raise my head and stare up at her waiting eyes.  "They say that 
someone bought your safety.  That's why you're here, instead of..."
	
"Instead of where?"
	
I hesitate.  "I know about the tests.  And the labor camps.  I know 
that we're spared the worst.  And I know that most people are here for 
a reason."
	
"Who told you about the tests?"  Her voice is deceptively calm, 
beneath it I can hear the same fire I've seen when a small child is 
reprimanded severely for disobeying the men.  Once that child was me.
	
"Jori did."
	
Jori, my lovely Jori, now long gone.  She disappeared one night in the 
darkness, nobody but me much cared.  Her dangerous ideas and stories 
made many people afraid and angry.  Henri said the men took her away, 
that she had be punished for her crazy talk against the men.  I myself 
had warned her of speaking up too loudly.  But it was painful for me 
to warn her, I loved to see her large green eyes light up when she 
discovered a new shiny thought from the rich mine of thought in her 
head.  At night I often dreamed I met her on some distant green hill. 
 She was dressed in brilliant color and she waited there with her own 
band of rebels to fight.  Sometimes a man, an older man, was with her, 
his eyes the same shade of jade as Jori's.  He usually touched my 
cheek and said, "I've been waiting a long time for you.  A long time."
	
"Yes, someone bought my safety," she said quietly, interrupting my 
thoughts of Jori.  "We are all relatively safe here.  Even lucky.  Do 
you know why, Thomas?"
	
I shook my head.  With a quick and efficient swipe she split open the 
skin of her thumb.  I watched the rich, red blood drip in large 
splotches on to her skirt.  Calmly, she wrapped a cloth around the 
wound, the sea of blood slowing spreading through it, soaking it.
	
"Our blood."
	
I swallowed.  "What's in our blood?"
	
She smiled triumphantly, a cold and victorious smile.  "Answers.  
Questions.  A cure.  A plague.  Immunity.  Disease," she chanted 
hypnotically.
	
"Life and death," I whispered.  I could feel it, hot and flowing like 
lava, in my body, traveling through the strange aortas and veins and 
capillaries she had taught me about.  Would our blood be resurrection 
or destruction for others? 	
	
"Why are you still here," she asked suddenly, sounding annoyed.  "Go 
back, it's late.  The dogs will be out, hungry and waiting.  Don't 
destroy all of my work with your stupidity."
	
Stung to the quick, I sprang up feeling my heart in my throat.  They 
were right.  I was nothing to her.  Just an experiment, a test, like 
the ones they always conducted on the newly born infants.
	
"Wait," she ordered.  I stopped in the door way, my face hot and my 
vision blurry.  "Here," she said gruffly, putting a pair of cloth 
woolen objects in my hands.  "It's cold out."  It took me a moment to 
realize what they were.  A pair of gloves, knitted tightly to guard 
against the snow.  
	
I ran then, back to the large boy's dormitory, the cold, blue moon 
lighting the way. 
	          
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