I Am Canada (A Hetalia Fanfic)

1639: Contact and Discovery

First Nation shuts her eyes lays on her bed, her skin blazing with unnatural heat and her muscles aching. Sweetgrass burns nearby, a smudging ritual said to bring healing among many of the native peoples. Adalene watches her from nearby, her face wrought with worry as she looks upon her sick mother.

"Mother?" she whispers. First Nation lifts her hand and beckons her closer, but she doesn't budge. "I could get sick..."

"You cannot get sick. Trust me," she murmurs.

The little girl nods before padding to her mother's bedside. "What's caused this? Do you know?"

First Nation takes a shaky breath in. "The Wendat...near the Great Lakes, they're very sick."

"What? They are?"

"Smallpox...from the Europeans," the female nation explains to her young child. "My people's pain is my own. I will be fine."

Adalene frowns, pondering her parent's predicament. She kneels next to the bed, resting her tiny hand on her mother's. "Mother, if I'm going to be a strong power one day like you say I will, will I also feel my people's pain?"

"Yes, but that's a small price to pay. Protecting my people is the reason I go on," First Nation murmurs, a small smile on her face. "Daughter, please go play while I rest."

"But...I want to help."

"You can't. I will get better when the people do." She gives her a weak smile. "Go and explore. Perhaps you'll discover more about who you are."

The little girl nods in obedience, getting to her feet and stealing from the longhouse her mother is residing in. She hurries out of the village in the trees, starting to run. She runs so fast that she feels as though she could take flight and soar into the sky with the birds she sees hopping around in the trees.

She stops as her lungs start to burn, realizing just how far away she's gotten from the forest. She spins around, the sweet summer breeze blowing her long dark hair around her face as she wades through the sea of tall grass.

She hasn't spoken to First Nation about it, but Adalene has already been thinking a lot about who she is. "Adalene" is a fine name, but it's just a name...a human name, and she knows that she isn't human. She's something more, like her mother.

She looks down at her hands, her light brown skin warmed by the sun. She isn't dark like her mother, and from what she's seen of her father, she's darker than him. It confuses her to no end.

"I'm not French. I'm not First Nation. I'm both," she mutters, trying to make sense of her confusion. "I'm...I don't know. I'm mixed."

That word makes a new thought spark in her mind; mixed. So simple, yet she feels as though she's suddenly realized something about her identity, however small it is.

"Métis," she whispers, the word soaring into the sky and churning on the breeze. "Métis," she repeats, just trying it out on her tongue as a tiny smile flickers across her face. "That's...that's my ethnicity. I'm mixed, Métis, but that's not my name. My name has to be somewhere."

She keeps walking, running her hands along the sweetgrass and humming to herself as she goes. The sun sets, yet she's still walking. She doesn't want to go back to that house just to see her mother in so much pain. It makes Adalene frustrated beyond belief to know that she can't do anything.