Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Nkosana

Sibyl was praying again. The sun was high in the sky and she knew that she would soon have to go home and make food for the men. She took her pot of milk and placed it on her head holding it only with one hand. She knew she wasn't thinking straight, she was too absorb in her prayers but she couldn't take the risk of spitting the milk on the ground and being beaten for it by her husband. So she was holding it carefully. The church was in the center of the village, she had been putting light every day now. It was expensive and the god of the white men refused to answer her prayers. If she didn't get pregnant, her husband would take another wife. She was laughed at in the village, she couldn't give him a son. 

It was afternoon and Sibyl was alone again. It would soon be time to go taint the clothes with the other women but first she had decided to do a ritual. The ritual had been banned by the white man, they call it witchcraft and it was prohibited because it was making their god angry. She didn't mind making him angry he had never talked to her anyway. Her mother had taught her the secret of her ancestor before she dies, she had tell her to talk to the trees, the trees had been here a long time, longer than any men the trees knew a lot of things and they would talk to you when you really listened. Sibyl didn't listen for a long time. She had tried to listen in the church but she didn't understand the words of the white men so she was always thinking about something else. She had listened to the trees when she was a little girl and now she would listen again. She prepared her colors and walked to the forest. She stopped under the biggest baobab and poured some milk on the ground. It was good to feed the trees it was making the forest happy. She turned around the tree caressing his trunk with the tip of her finger, asking for a baby boy.

The following day she came again, earlier and earlier she came to offer her milk and wishes to the tree. One day the tree bent and gave her a seed. It was brown, as dark as her own skin. She went home and planted the seed in a little pot. She was taking good care of the seed, giving it milk and honey. Her husband became angry and menaced to throw away the seed so she took it back to the tree and continued to care for it. 
After few months the seed was growing into a little plant with the shape of an infant. Sibyl was really happy, every day she would spend more and more time near the tree and telling stories to the seed about life, about how it was before the white men arrived, about how it was before she was married, about the secrets of the trees, like her mother had taught her. But once again she was late to care for the house and late in her cores and her husband beat her. She went back to the forest the following day and he walked furtively after her. He wondered who she had been seeing in his back. She stopped under the tree. A little boy was standing there where the seed had been. She picked him up laughing. 
"I will call you Nkosana for you are the prince of the baobab tree."

Nkosana is a character of Demon Soul.

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