Nokthula watched as Mbuso gently caressed Nomusa's growing pregnant belly while she also returned a beautiful and gentle smile back at him. They sit on the far end of the garden on a checked picnic blanket and a basket of goodies before them as she rests against his body
with beautiful faces of Joy ,while little Mandla runs to the both of them showing his father a grass hopper that he had picked up from the garden.
They smile proudly at him and listene to his little rambles about the new found animal in his hand, Nomusa giggle at Mandla with so much love, intrigued before asking him to take her to where he had picked it, "to look for more" they said and they both waddled of together, Nomusa with her pregnant belly and Mandla still trying to understand how walking works hand in hand while he watched his little family with pride.
For two years Nokthula had been married to this man and not once has he ever looked at her the way he looks at Nomusa, but then there was her son...
Mandla had always been the fearless type he still is even now, hot headed and messy, that's who Mandla is but at his core he had always been his father's son. Their relationship dynamic had always been complicated but one thing that remained constant is the hatred that grew inside of Nokuthula everytime she stared at Nomusa. She felt as if Nomusa had robbed everything from her, her life and her love.
Nomusa had been unaware of what she would be walking into the minute her eyes laid on Mbusos on the morning of their Lobola negotiations, it was clear from that day on how much love there would be between the both of them and this disgusted Nokuthula the most. Although her marriage to Mbuso was only recent but there had been plenty of history between them, before Nomusa, history that stood as a advantage for Nokthula, history she took advantage of but the same history that came to nip her in the butt.
She felt her chances slipping through the cracks everytime she witnessed their love, she had thought that with the birth of her son she would have her turn of his attention and queen treatment, the endless pampers, gifts, the works, Mbuso did not fail to deliver but in doing so he only did in capacity of the father of their son and nothing more, Mbuso worshipped and respected her as the mother of his child and not has his wife, this soon became clear where her place is... he needed a baby and he decieved and used her and made her tool for his dying throne and then treated her like she was nothing, gave her a ring then set her aside on a lush comfortable, money stuffed pillow forever while he focused on the woman he loves.
This isn't what she had been promised when they asked for her hand in marriage and the Gumede heir, sure she gained a hell of a lot more but she thought that this might not even turn out to be what this is now, she thought that at last that man might finally be hers and hers only not until the Tswana princess Latin danced her way into his heart and to Nomusa's defense she hadn't expected for her heart to grow this fond of Mbuso all within the first six months of their marriage. Mbuso is her first everything, her first love and the first man she had ever laid beside and that man so happened to be the man she would spend the rest of her life with, this arrangement between both their families had worked out a lot better than they had expected for them both till date.
At dawn Nokthula sets out of the palace with an aching heart and for a solution, her life had been turned upside down by a privileged MoTswana princess, a women who has never had to fight as much as she has, a women whose had a Silverspoon between her lips her entire life, a women who's snatched it all away from her. She doesn't know the pain of having to fight tooth and nail for everything single thing that you've ever had to own, you've never had to scheme and hustle your way through life, shes never had to suffer, she doesn't know suffering and she doesn't know what it means to scramble for happiness.
Nokthula bangs on Gogo Gwala's door in the wee hours of the night as she holds onto a sleeping baby Mandla as the wind blows over their ears as she let's out a small shiver.
