Every family got secrets. Some ain't meant to stay buried.
Returning to Brooklyn was supposed to be a fresh start, but some things don't stay put, no matter how far you go.
History don't just repeat itself-it calls your name.
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The air pressed close, heavy with the scent of burning herbs. Smoke twisted and curled through the room, settling like a fog around the flickering lamps, casting shadows on the walls. They moved-those shadows-like figures of old, as if ancestors themselves were walking the earth once more.
The drums echoed from somewhere far beyond the walls, deep and steady. They reached into the bones, rattling the air. Each beat hung in the room, vibrating the earth beneath their feet. The rhythm was both distant and near, pulling at the breath in their lungs, aligning the pulse of the living with the pulse of something far older.
At the center, a woman lay. Her face was streaked with sweat, her chest rising and falling with each breath. Her body trembled with the strain of the moment, but she did not scream. She had learned the silence of strength long ago. Her eyes flickered between half-lidded exhaustion and the sharpness of resolve, matching the slow, deliberate beat of the drums. She gripped the earth beneath her-grounding herself-and for a moment, she could feel the land stretch far beneath her, stretching through time.
Around her, figures moved, dark and silent. Each person held an object-carved wood, beads, a bundle of sacred herbs passed down from those before them. They did not speak; the rhythm of the drums said all that was needed. Some traced symbols in the air with their hands, slow and precise. Others knelt, offering silent prayers to the earth beneath them.
The first elder stepped forward, his movements deliberate and firm, eyes wide with the weight of years. His voice was deep, the sound rolling like thunder.
"Bondye, tanpri, gade nou..."
(God, please, watch over us...)
His hands swept down, touching the earth, brushing the dirt with fingers that had long ago learned to read the land's pulse. As if answering, the woman's body shuddered, and she moaned, a low sound that echoed in the room. Her hands curled tighter around the cloth beneath her.
The second elder, a woman with silver in her braids, knelt beside the woman. She did not speak at first, just placed her hand on the woman's shoulder, steadying her. Then she whispered into the space between them, her voice gentle, a current flowing under the weight of the moment.
"Nou se sa ou te chèche..."
(We are what you sought...)
The woman's breathing hitched. The rhythm of the world seemed to slow for an instant. She could hear the land beneath her, hear the hum of the earth-the pulse of life itself, slow but strong, like a heartbeat that had always been here. The pulse of the earth, the pulse of the child.
