[piosenniel]

Piosenniel's post:

It was early evening. Families were gathered in front of their tents, eating the day’s end meal. Children laughed and ran among the groups, stealing a bit of flat bread here, a slice of fruit there. The elders clucked at them in mock remonstrance, their wide bright smiles belying any real anger.

‘Little birds,’ they called out to them, ‘why do you steal a poor man’s last crumbs!’

The children shrieked with laughter at the question, their voices trailing off as they ran wildly into the tall grass toward the last rays of the setting sun.

Jamíla picked at her food as she watched the children. Though the approaching night was warm, she felt a chill creep across her shoulders. ‘Some unlucky breeze from the north,’ she thought to herself, though glancing up, the tall grass of the plains stood deathly still against the last inches of light, the tip of each stalk seeming to burn with a reddish glow. She shook her shoulders trying to shake off the cold feeling, and placed her right palm against her heart to ward off evil.

Until a very few years ago, life for her had gone smoothly. There were birthings to be seen to, and dying to be eased. Women seeking husbands, wanting babies. Men seeking wives, better fortunes, greater luck in the hunt. Rites of passage to be seen to. The ordinary things that made a full, good life for her.

But then came the first hints of shadow and despair. First on the ashy wind that blew sometimes from the north, bringing a faint sharp, bitter smell, then in the darkness that grew in her readings as she cast the bones to augur at the new moon’s rising. And now, among many of the young, a festering shadow had crept in to devour their spirits.

Jamílah stood and beckoned for her daughters to stand also. ‘Call your children in,’ she told them in a low, urgent voice. ‘Call them quickly. Keep them close. Some shadow comes for us, and soon . . . with bloodied hands . . .’

[ June 05, 2003: Message edited by: piosenniel ]