Eliza Collins. A fictional character, set in history. A woman fascinated by language, with dreams, with exotic sounds and unearthly melodies. Let me introduce I am magpie.
We first meet Eliza in the Spring of 1789 in a fledgling colony on the other side of her known world. A woman of the enlightened age, cavalier with her freedom and empowered by her dreams, Eliza has journeyed to a new land, with a theory, a social contract, informed partly by her own brand of mysticism and partly by self-taught empirical thought.
Inspired by the young astronomer and scholar, William Dawes, Eliza feels ready to join him and a circle of women on the headland. It is here in the night that she hears a language of resonant beauty and mystery. In her dreams she can hear deep intoning and luminous melodies, and can almost touch the elusive beings that dwell among the stars. Eliza will turn and return to her dreams, to the language, and to the women on the headland, hoping for a new consciousness to find ground. How can she lift the darkness that surrounds her and that also somehow remains within her?