This is the opening to a story I’m working on. There will be more to come very soon.
Mumbi could smell the sea. There wasn’t an echo of water for miles around. But she could smell it. Even as the mud from her rich brown land squished between her toes, she knew that somewhere, off in the distance, the water awaited her. It called to her like the drum beats during ritual, like the familiar beating of her heart that pounded in time with the seconds in a moment and space she imagined she would never leave. Every beat was a breath. And every breath smelled of sea water. Yes, she could smell the sea–she was keen that way. It was the sea her ancestors had played in and drew life from. It surrounded that place where everything new began. It was Alkebulan; her home. Some called it Af-Rui-Ka. But it was mother. It was birth in all its purity. It was the land of the people, the people who resembled the soil.
Mumbi was the seventh among her sisters. She was born under a full moon. She came into the world with the same calm and quiet of that cloudless night. All that rustled the wilderness was the wind. And even the wind seemed to stop when Mumbi opened her eyes and looked up at the sky. But she did not cry for the future that lay beyond the darkness. Instead, she looked around, almost examining the stars, as though she were picking up her life from a place she had left many centuries ago–as though she were ready to tell us her story–the story of where she came from and where she was going. Once upon a time, those were the words in her soul, and from the moment she could speak, she began to tell everyone of her once upon a time. She told stories she could not know at four years old. And she saw a future none could imagine lived anywhere but in her imagination. She would speak of the sea, and that one day the people of her land would traverse its great back. It would kick and buck them about like paper. And when it was tired of kicking them about, it would swallow them whole. Her stories became legend. But before they would become legend, they would come true.
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