Heritage: Fractured Roots

The sky is ash.

Or whatever.

The forest is moody. Sky captured Evil spirit and dangled his scrotum over the forest out of pure spite. Jaaja Mwami said that. Drunk idiot. I'm stealing it anyway. Because it sounds better than "the trees were there" and better is all that matters.

Under the same sky, Mwami Senoga has wives. Two of them. Forcing every woman who passes to suck her teeth and realize her life's best work was saying no.

This is how the story wants to be told. Primitive. Heavy. Physical. The kind where women talk - loud, mean, in side-eye and silence - and children take sides.

But the telling keeps tearing.

Sometimes a voice cuts in. Impatient. Modern. Talking to you like you're across the table with chai. Words swap when she's rushing. Sentences run when she's mad. She says she's just trying to get the story out before she loses it.

She says the elder way is the right way.
She doesn't sound convinced.

By the time the crow shits on forty seasons, you'll know two things:
One: This story is about a girl who won't learn.
Two: The narrator never sat still.

Just a girl, a pen, and forty seasons before she says 'I'.