The African Geek Girl

What’ll it be this time?

MYTH – a memory

Once, the earth opened up and sighed. Long and low, his sigh rolled across the air until it reached the cosmos. In the cosmos it wisped and faded, became an echo which continued the journey – for nothing truly stops in the realms of the gods. Earth’s deities heard both the sigh and its echo, others only the echo. Still it moved and changed and lived. Still gods listened as it passed and wondered – what does it mean?

So they made their way to earth. One by one, and pantheon by pantheon. They came to hear and see and taste. Settling above the earth, they blinked into view – tiny lights, perched and curious. Pantheon constellations; proud and singular burning things. So they made the sky. They looked down at the earth and he looked up at them.

Who are you? What do you want? What was that sound you made? All of these are questions that the gods could have asked. But they are, by their nature, proud beings. So they sat and waited for an explanation to come. And still, they sit. What are a few millennia of waiting to the ageless, after all?

Since then, the earth has not sighed again, because what he once lamented, he now has. A hundred thousand admirers, and amongst them, hopefully – several dozen friends.

SACRED – a legacy

My mother had a jewel. Quite a worthless one, in the estimation of any competent jeweler. Old, certainly, but not worth the time it’d take to polish for sale. It was a beautiful, murky red. In the light, it shone alternately brilliant at one angle then absorbed light and refused to reflect the next. When I left home, she gave me this jewel and told me to always keep it close. I asked why, and she said I would know when I needed to know.

Because asking one’s mother if that’s her best impression of a psychic hack is poor form and also counter-productive to continued living, I took the worthless thing. When I settled, I put it in my jewelry box and over the years when I missed home, I held that stone and felt comforted. Then came the call – your mother is ill.

So I went home, sure that this was goodbye and determined to smile with her just one more time. Death was camped outside her door, I could feel it as I entered. My mother was never a frail woman, but whatever illness was determined to take her had turned the shoulders which bore the weight of the world and of my wayward ways, and turned them into brittle things. Like too vigorous a hug would end it all – that was how she looked.

“Do you have it?”

Why I brought that worthless jewel with me, I cannot say. But I had. and I handed it to my mother. She smiled, and the effort shook the musculature of her cheeks.

“Come back tomorrow, I must rest.”

“But I just got here. I have so much to tell you…”

She was, as ever, uncompromising. So I left, and hugged my father, and cried with my sister. And drank with my brother. Not in the house, of course. In the yard. Sleep took me in the small hours just before dawn. And when I woke I went to my mother. Because the sun was up and that meant that it was tomorrow.

The jewel sat on the made-up bed, reflecting strangely brilliant light. My mother sat at her dresser, running a large-toothed comb through her hair and humming. Shocking, I know.

To this day, I don’t know what that jewel is, or what it did. My mother never explained, because what is sacred need not be named.

PAIN – a sacrament

Pain, a beast of solitude

Digs in claws and asks for peace

As NaNoWriMo gets underway, I’ve finally completed my Inktober work! So I’ll be releasing the rest of these shorts whilst I work on (hopefully) something approaching a cohesive novella for December. Stick with me, I’m trying!

NATION – a concept

Wandering is a kind of peace, to be sure. An open world, full of people to know and to love and to miss in fond memories when others’ cadence, others’ smiles capture one’s attention. Wandering is a practice of solitude.

But even the nomad came from somewhere – a land which called them mine. A land where the slant of noses and the colour of eyes was a mirror. Even the nomad, in solitude, was once a native, in plurality. And sometimes, when the nomad lays down their head to sleep in a place which almost feels like home, they can hear the whisper of their origin, asking when they’ll come home?

DISGUISE – a comfort

His body felt heavy. Not in the way a body does when you eat too much then struggle to move, but in the way that you do when you’ve been outside of yourself for too long and you must relearn what it’s like within flesh. He lifted his arm, or thought he did, because when he relaxed his muscles there was to tell-tale dull thud of meat hitting concrete. And he was, as far as he could tell, lying on a concrete floor.

Remember that you are youtself. You are simply… also somebody else.

Right. Himself. As he remembered to know that he existed, this body he had taken began to obey instruction. Breathe in – cough and wretch, because the lungs have forgotten the rhythm of staying alive. Stretch the toes, then work the ankles… work your way through the joints. The process is long. Longer if you try to be a hero and get up too soon.

A hero he was not. Just a soldier who’d signed up to do some terrible things in service of a glorious end. Much like… whoever he’d landed up in. As the body which used to belong to somebody else gave over control to his mind, he rose from his incredibly uncomfortable position on the floor. Why couldn’t he land when the host was sitting down? Or sleeping on a bed? Why always this kind of undignified entrance… this time apparently after a long night of alcoholic over-indulgence.

His head was killing him, but still he moved through the empty apartment to find a bathroom. Flicking the lights on he regarded his newest disguise. Nothing to write home about, which was good, but disappointing. People liked attractive people, they gave them liberties. But they also remembered them.

Never snatch the pretty ones.

Well, he’d certainly followed that rule. Familiarising himself with his identity for the foreseeable future, the snatcher idly wondered what it would be like to be back in his own body again. Would his limbs remember the way of him? Would he smile like he used to? Or would he carry the tics and habits of his disguises back into himself and remain a stranger until he died?