una_persson: (inscrutable smile)
Una Persson, temporal adventuress ([personal profile] una_persson) wrote in [community profile] resort_link2014-12-11 02:17 pm

[Video]

[On screen: a handsome woman with chestnut-brown hair and grey eyes, wearing a tailored tweed blazer over a plain blouse. She smiles, offers a little wave in greeting; when she speaks, she has a crisp, cut-glass British accent.]

Hello. My name's Una Persson. I'm a new arrival—just accepted a post as a Travel Agent.

[A beat; her gaze flickers down for a moment.]

I've been here before, but you'll have to forgive me; my memories of that time are hazy at best. Something to do with the trans-temporal travel. [She says, as if this is somehow strange or a surprise to her, which it so very much isn't. People don't need to know everything about her.] So for all intents and purposes, you may consider me a complete newcomer.
archeologue: (pith helmet)

fast-forward sounds good!

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-08 04:39 am (UTC)(link)
[The current dig site was in the midst of a vast spread of old excavations. Whole buildings unearthed, empty, ancient. Desolate streets. An abandoned and dead city, like Pompeii. As Belloq takes Una through the ruins, he points out items of interest here and there.]

You see the carvings above the lintels of some of the buildings, the death's head and archer's bow. We thought it was merely symbolic before, until skeletons armed with bows and arrows attacked the village a few months back. The carvings are probably apotropaic. "We respect you, now go away from my home." Or possibly invoking the creatures as guardians. "Do not rob me or may the skeletal archers get you."
Edited (html fail) 2015-01-08 06:00 (UTC)
archeologue: (Default)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-09 05:34 am (UTC)(link)
Are you all right, Una? May I call you Una?

[But whatever brief spell she has seems to pass quickly.]

Believed to have the ability to ward off evil or ill fortune. Sometimes pictures or symbols, sometimes gestures--the most famous of which, a finger gesture to ward off the evil eye, is now considered obscene, its old purpose forgotten.
Edited (inappropriate apostrophe) 2015-01-09 05:34 (UTC)
archeologue: (looking up)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-13 09:22 am (UTC)(link)
I apologize for tossing around the obscure technical terms. It's a fairly new word for the old concept. Anthropologists decided that we should have a name for it, and once I saw it in a journal a few years back I became quite taken with it.

The skeleton motif is the most common, and was the most mysterious up until a few months ago. Spiders feature heavily, and other native animals. Interestingly, there are no depictions of warfare or fighting among anything we've found. A most unmilitaristic race. Rare, in my experience.

But the strangest icon of all was one that I saw in a temple. It was a figure, long and emaciated of limb, and burning eyes like a demon from the infernal reaches. I've never seen anything like it among the artifacts, before or since. It was terrible to behold.
archeologue: (open shirt archaeology)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-14 02:51 am (UTC)(link)
I've never heard of any creature like it, or as much as a rumour or a whisper of one being seen in the flesh.

It may be no more than a myth, but of course that's what we thought about the skeletons.
archeologue: (looking up)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-14 09:45 pm (UTC)(link)
None. Or if they have, it's nothing we've yet been able to recognize as writing.

I've excavated many civilizations, in many foreign lands, but none so foreign as an alien planet. I find myself making the most basic assumptions about them based on what I have always known--assuming they have two eyes, that they have male and female--and then catch myself and remember that all other mammals we've seen on this planet have four eyes and are hermaphroditic, and perhaps these people were as well. So I think we have not found any writing, but perhaps their way of writing is simply beyond my understanding and requires four eyes to see.
archeologue: (open shirt archaeology)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-18 06:32 am (UTC)(link)
I would be very happy to have your company and assistance. Have you done much field work before? It is often hard and dirty work, but you don't look like a woman to be put off by such things.
archeologue: (i like you)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-19 05:13 am (UTC)(link)
Were you a nurse in a war?

[Even knowing that this is an alien planet and the people are from many times and places, and that the battlefields she is talking about may not be the battlefields of the First World War, his first assumption is that a woman on a battlefield is probably a nurse.]
archeologue: (looking up)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-20 06:26 am (UTC)(link)
[Her answer forces him to stretch beyond his expectations. Familiar with battlefields, but not a nurse. He knows that in other times and other cultures sometimes women fought, but it still seems rather miraculous to him.]

You were a soldier?

[Asked as if he can't quite believe the conclusion he's come to.]
archeologue: (default)

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-20 11:37 pm (UTC)(link)
I have heard of Petrograd...

[He offers in answer.]

But I don't travel to Russia much since the Revolution, and before the Revolution I was very busy in France and Belgium. It would not overly surprise me, however, if some of the men at Ypres were actually women. It seems there is hardly a major war throughout history that does not have at least a few women joining in, whether the men in charge have officially permitted them or not.
archeologue: (i like you)

and now with the proper account...

[personal profile] archeologue 2015-01-22 06:56 am (UTC)(link)
["Actress" is very easy for him to believe. She has a classic beauty that would suit stage or cinema very well.]

A revolutionary too? You've had a very eventful career. There is nothing we French love more than a good revolution. What cause did you fight for?