The old woman's story - elements (1)

The adventurer crouches in front of the old woman. When he is still, the old woman reaches into a bag on the ground at her side and pulls out objects, one by one, which she lays carefully between them. They are: a clothes peg, a map of Alaska, a small carved figure of a woman, a discoloured animal fang, very curved, and a shard of corroded mirror.
She holds up a finger, not to indicate a stop, but a pause. He thinks she is telling a story with the objects, but they say nothing to him. He has no past to give them meaning, no language to give them order. He is new born on this continent.