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Ntu ntu bugs were an Oomza insect whose eggs were a vibrant orange-pink that softly glowed in the dark.
She had an actual notebook and pencil in hand, so Earth basic.
I knew Professor Okpala well; there was a galaxy of activity behind that frown.
But if we meet outside this university where I am not your teacher and you are not my student, one of us will die and it will not be me.”
I- there’s gotta be something illegal about this LMAO. And yet I respect the beef
“But if the Khoush make war, I will stir it with them, like you stir your otjize.”
BARS
Haifa was much taller than me and one of those people who found motion so easy that she couldn’t resist moving all the time.
In some ways, Himba and Khoush were like night and day, but in matters of girlhood and womanhood and control, we were the same.
“Meduse like war, especially when one isn’t allowed to make war.”
The three days passed, as time always does when you are alive, whether happy or tortured.
“I will wash this off soon,” it said. “It’s not good to feel this pleased with life.”
“I have respected your wishes, Binti,” Okwu said coolly in Meduse.
He is here in peace . . . unless treated otherwise.
My mother began to clap furiously, and soon everyone else did, too.
“These Meduse,” I heard my father tell my mother. “Look how the Khoush are afraid of just one. If I didn’t feel I was going to die of terror, I’d be laughing.”
Okwu and the dad are going to get along SO well lmao
Nothing was asked of Okwu and Okwu was pleased, preferring to menacingly loom in the background behind me. Okwu was happiest around human beings when it was menacingly looming.
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend . . . even if it’s a monster.”
You are Binti’s father.”
I love this, an inverse way of saying “you are your father’s daughter”.
“You don’t even sound the same. You’re polluted.
“The peacemaker? She spits in her older sister’s face.”
Her older sister’s face asked for it lmao
“My ancestors are dancing,” Okwu said in Otjihimba, its voice wavering with more emotion than I’d ever heard Okwu convey.
As I sat there, watching Okwu dance with its god, I thought about how strange it was that for me to swim in water was taboo and for Okwu such a taboo was itself a taboo. I remember thinking, The gods are many things.
“One of you finally somehow grows beyond your cultural cage and you try to chop her stem. Fascinating.”
Dancing was like moving my body in the way that I saw numbers and equations move when I treed. When I danced, I could manifest mathematical current within me, harmonizing it with my muscles, skin, sinew, and bones.
knew for a fact that he was proud that all their other children were too . . . and that the one who got the desert complexion and hair made up for it by being a master harmonizer.
Do I need to come get you? No. Are you well? Yes. The village is just far. Days away. Okay. I will wait here.
“Despite the fact that you’re darker like us, have the crown like us, have our blood,”
“I only know what I am taught,” I whispered. “That’s not true,” he said.
“Having curiosity is the only way to learn,”
Why don’t I ever want to do what I’m supposed to do?
The flow of death like water I’d fallen into that in some twisted way gave me a new life.
Everything comes with a sacrifice. I wiped my face with my hand and looked at my otjize-stained palm.
Really good subtle symbolism
