Vox Meditantis

Quebec City, New France – 3rd July 1608

Part I: Dreams Upon the River

Marie’s Vision

Marie Rollet pressed her palms against the rough bark of an ancient pine, feeling the pulse of sap beneath her fingertips as she gazed across the St. Lawrence River’s pewter waters. The morning of July third dawned crisp and promising, mist rising from the river like the very breath of this new world. Behind her, the sounds of men’s voices carried on the wind—Champlain’s expedition making final preparations for what would become the most romantic venture she could conceive.

Romance, to Marie, was not merely the flutter of hearts or stolen glances beneath cathedral spires. It was this: the audacious dream of planting civilisation in virgin soil, of nurturing life where none had flourished before. She thought of her husband Louis, still in France but planning to join her with seeds and saplings, medicines and hope. Together, they would create something unprecedented—a garden of French cultivation in this vast wilderness, where their children might grow tall as these towering pines.

The river curved majestically before the chosen site, offering protection and passage to the wider world. Marie could envision neat rows of vegetables, herb gardens for healing, perhaps even apple trees that would, in time, bear fruit as sweet as those in Normandy. This was romance incarnate—the marriage of human ambition with nature’s abundance, the consummation of dreams long deferred.

Yet even as she indulged in such reveries, Marie understood the weight of what they attempted. Romance, she had learned, was not merely beautiful; it was perilous. The previous winter had claimed so many souls, their bodies committed to frozen earth whilst dreams of spring sustained the living. True romance required sacrifice, demanded everything, and promised nothing save the chance to transform vision into reality.

Étienne’s Wandering Heart

Young Étienne Brûlé crouched beside the water’s edge, watching silvery fish dart through shallows that reflected both French tricolour and Indigenous birchbark canoes. His romance was movement itself—the intoxicating freedom of paths untravelled, languages unlearned, peoples unknown. At barely twenty, he had already lived amongst the Huron-Wendat, their customs becoming as familiar as his native tongue, their wisdom as valued as any Parisian education.

Today marked not merely the founding of a settlement, but the birth of something entirely novel—a bridge between worlds. Étienne saw himself as that bridge, suspended between French ambition and Indigenous understanding, translating not merely words but entire ways of being. Was this not the highest form of romance? To serve as conduit between civilisations, to love so deeply that boundaries dissolved?

He thought of Aiyana, the Huron woman whose laughter had taught him that joy transcended language, whose hands had shown him how to read the land’s moods like scripture. Their connection defied every convention he had known, yet felt more authentic than any courtship conducted in drawing rooms. Romance, Étienne believed, was recognition—seeing oneself reflected in another’s eyes, regardless of the colour of skin or shape of prayers.

But such love carried consequences. Already, whispers followed him through the settlement—half-breed sympathiser, savage-lover, traitor to his own kind. Romance required courage, he was learning, not merely to love, but to defend that love against a world determined to name it wrong.

Tekakwitha’s Burden

Tekakwitha—she who had agreed to guide these pale strangers to the sacred confluence—knelt by the river’s edge in the pre-dawn darkness, offering tobacco to the waters that had nurtured her people since time immemorial. Her romance was with the land itself, with the intelligence that moved through all living things, connecting eagle to salmon, cedar to stone, grandmother to unborn child.

She had watched the French ships arrive like floating islands, disgorging men hungry for something they could neither name nor understand. They spoke of claiming this place, as though the river could be possessed like a beaver pelt or copper pot. Yet she sensed something deeper in their eyes—a longing that matched her own, though directed toward different horizons.

Romance, to Tekakwitha, was relationship—the sacred reciprocity that bound all existence in delicate balance. The French sought to impose their vision upon her homeland, yet she recognised their yearning for belonging, for roots in earth that would welcome them. Perhaps romance was not possession but participation, not conquest but conversation.

Still, her heart carried sorrow like winter carries snow. She knew what these ships portended—the great disruption, the severing of connections that had sustained her people across countless generations. Her romance with the land had taught her to read the future in bird flight and water flow, and what she read spoke of endings as much as beginnings.

Part II: The Day of Founding

Marie’s Labour

By midday, Marie’s hands were raw from hauling stones for the foundation of what Champlain had named “L’Habitation.” The July sun beat mercilessly upon their labours, transforming romantic vision into backbreaking reality. Her fine French gown, already much mended, tore further as she knelt to plant the first row of herbs in soil that seemed more rock than earth.

Yet something sublime emerged from this brutish work. With each stone set, each post raised, each furrow turned, the dream acquired substance. Romance, she realised, was not the moment of inspiration but the months and years of faithful labour that followed. It was rising before dawn to tend seedlings, nursing the sick through fever, mending nets and hopes with equal patience.

Around her, men shouted orders in French whilst Indigenous voices responded in tongues she could not fathom. The sound created an odd music—discordant yet oddly hopeful, like an orchestra tuning instruments before performance. Perhaps this cacophony was romance too—the beautiful struggle of different peoples learning to make harmony together.

When Étienne appeared beside her, offering water and words of encouragement in his gentle way, Marie glimpsed another facet of romance. Not the grand passion of poets, but the quiet kindness of souls recognising common purpose. They were all strangers here, she realised—French and Indigenous alike—trying to birth something unprecedented from their mutual displacement.

Étienne’s Translation

Afternoon found Étienne standing between Champlain and a gathering of Stadacona leaders, words flowing through him like river current. Each language carried its own music, its own way of conceiving the world, and his task was to find the bridges between them.

When Champlain spoke of “New France,” Étienne heard the romance of empire—the dream of extending European civilisation across uncharted waters. When the Indigenous leaders spoke of their ancestors’ bones resting in this sacred earth, he heard the romance of continuity—love expressed through generations of careful stewardship.

Both were beautiful. Both were true. Both were incompatible.

Romance, he was learning, sometimes meant holding contradictions without resolving them, loving fully whilst acknowledging the impossibility of perfect union. His heart ached for Aiyana, yet he knew their love could exist only in the spaces between worlds—too Indigenous for French society, too French for Indigenous acceptance.

As negotiations continued, Étienne watched Marie arranging her meager household goods with the same care she might have given to fine china in France. Nearby, Tekakwitha observed everything with eyes that seemed to hold both welcome and warning. Three forms of romance converging at this confluence of rivers—domestic, adventurous, elemental—each necessary, each insufficient alone.

Tekakwitha’s Witness

Evening brought ceremony as Champlain formally claimed the site for France, raising a wooden cross whilst his men sang psalms that echoed strangely among ancient pines. Tekakwitha watched from the forest’s edge, unseen but present, bearing witness to this moment of transformation.

She thought of romance as her grandmother had taught her—not as taking, but as giving thanks. The French took possession of land that had never been without possessors, yet their gratitude for its beauty seemed genuine. Perhaps romance was learning to receive gifts that had always been freely given, recognising abundance that had been waiting for acknowledgment.

The cross stood straight and pale against darkening sky, and Tekakwitha saw it not as conquest but as another tree, rooted in earth that would either accept or reject it according to natural law. Romance was trust—allowing the future to unfold whilst tending present relationships with all the care they deserved.

As French voices rose in prayer, she offered her own silent words to the spirits of place, asking for wisdom to navigate the changes ahead. Romance required faith that love was stronger than difference, that understanding could grow from the most unlikely soil.

Part III: What Remains

Marie’s Understanding

One year later, Marie knelt again in her garden, this time harvesting vegetables that had somehow thrived in their transplanted exile. The settlement bore little resemblance to her original vision—rougher, smaller, more precarious than she had dreamed. Yet it lived.

Romance, she had learned, was not the fulfilment of dreams but their transformation through encounter with reality. Her neat French garden had become something wilder, more various, incorporating plants Tekakwitha had taught her to recognise and value. Indigenous knowledge had intermingled with European technique, creating hybrid wisdom that belonged fully to neither tradition yet somehow honoured both.

Louis had arrived with the spring ships, bringing seeds and wonderment at what she had already accomplished. Their reunion had been tender but different—shaped by all she had learned in his absence, by the woman she had become through winter’s harsh tutoring. Romance was not preservation but evolution, not keeping love unchanged but allowing it to grow strange and strong in foreign soil.

Watching Étienne and Aiyana work together in easy harmony, Marie glimpsed another definition of romance—the courage to create new forms of belonging when existing ones proved insufficient. Their love had carved out space for itself between worlds, becoming indigenous to possibility rather than geography.

Étienne’s Bridge

Étienne stood where river met river, the spot where two waterways joined to flow toward unknown seas. A year of translation had taught him that romance was not union but conversation—the endless, delicate work of creating understanding between different ways of being.

His French had grown rough with Indigenous phrases, whilst his Huron carried French concepts that had no equivalent in either language. He was becoming something new—not fully either tradition, but a living bridge that allowed both to expand. Romance was metamorphosis, he realised, the willingness to be changed by love rather than changing the beloved.

Aiyana approached through morning mist, her step sure on ground that belonged to her ancestors whilst her smile belonged to him alone. They had created their own language, part French, part Huron, part gesture and glance and touch. Their children, if any came, would speak this hybrid tongue naturally, citizens of the borderlands that he had chosen as home.

Romance was risk, Étienne knew now—the risk of becoming someone unexpected through the alchemy of genuine encounter. But it was also faith: the belief that love could create new possibilities, new ways of being human in a world larger than any single vision could encompass.

Tekakwitha’s Gift

From her place among the pines, Tekakwitha watched the French settlement take deeper root with each passing season. Some of her people had left for territories farther west, but she remained, called by a romance she was still learning to understand.

Romance, she had come to believe, was not possession but participation in something larger than oneself. The French brought changes that grieved her heart, yet also gifts that enriched her people’s lives. Metal tools and woollen cloth, strange foods and stranger songs—all required careful integration, like new plants introduced to ancient gardens.

She thought of Marie’s children, who would grow speaking both languages, comfortable in lodge and habitation alike. Romance was the long view, the faith that understanding grew slowly, like trees, requiring generations to bear full fruit.

The settlement would endure, she knew—not as pure French or purely Indigenous, but as something unprecedented, shaped by the demands of this particular place and the needs of all who called it home. Romance was adaptation, the beautiful struggle of different peoples learning to live together on shared ground.

Standing at the confluence where the French had planted their wooden cross and she had planted her prayers, Tekakwitha offered thanks for the complexity of love that could hold contradiction, nurture difference, and still find ways to flow forward toward uncharted seas.

Romance, she whispered to the ancient pines, was not the answer to life’s questions but the willingness to live within them, trusting that rivers always found their way to the ocean, regardless of which languages named their waters.

The End

Bob Lynn | © 2025 Vox Meditantis. All rights reserved.