Inyanga's Star and Other Constellations

Inyanga's Star Prologue

Thank you to everyone checking this out. It's a draft of a prologue that I may include in the Inyanga's Star novella, after it has undergone some revision. All of your thoughts will contribute to that process, and all of the comments left on the novella led to the writing of this new piece! I can't say how grateful I am for that!

Inyanga's Star Prologue

Two little girls run hand in hand across campus, so small they may as well be ants on the purple lawns. The place is devoid of big girls for the summer break. Without students for scale, these little ones dreaming of all the magic hidden beyond the walls of the lecture halls, many of which float overhead, could almost be mistaken for the pupils who actually go here.

The two run together as if running to their favorite ice cream place, a relay and not a race, the whole team needing to get to the finish line together.

The shorter one, Amafu, lets out squealing laughs as if they're out of her control, each laugh pushed out by the stomp of each running foot. Every stitch she wears dances with magic animations; on her hairband clouds billow and turn gray to blue, shooting stars arc across her black slippers and wink out, and a rainbow spreads over her lace blouse.

Amafu's plaits, braided with a spell to make them perfect in seconds, contrast with her taller friend's. Inyanga's were done with hands and love by her Grandmama Amandla, sans magic. Little curls break loose, imperfectly perfect; what some might call frizz, Inyanga calls her baby curls. Both girls' indigo eyes burn with the flame of immortality, an eternal animus revealing itself like an electric fire in their pupils. Only those who will live forever have such an animus, an eternal soul, marked by the infinite brilliance behind their eyes, flamed with potential like the joy of a million possibilities.

It's easy to see they're friends and not sisters as they run, from the way they hold hands; it's easy to see they chose each other, and theirs is not an enforced bond but one they opt into; holding hands, they run from their umamas, Star and Kyuma, who traverse the grass toward campus with more patient steps.

A combination of trotting and sprinting steps bring them to the courtyard outside and below the most sublime magic school building, the one they always race to see, and now that they're close they drop hands, stop, and stare. It's a spherical levitating lecture hall, and in its core, the girls know, the library has no gravity, so if you want to brave the stacks, you have no choice but to fly.

As Star and Kyuma catch up, eyes on Al-Maysan Hall the whole time walking, those eyes, purple starfire filled as well, get glassy with tears as they think of the day their daughters might step into a link and teleport inside the hall named after the Orion Constellation. Al-Maysan means 'the shining one.'

By the time they reach the courtyard outside their favorite magic school building, the time for handholding was done. Amafu tagged Inyanga and dashed straight into an azaleawood bush, orange petals glaring like coal fires or firefly butts lighting up in a bioluminescent flare.

It didn't take Inyanga long to tag her back, because her short friend may be a ball of infinite energy but Inyanga was all legs, even at eight and a half, and soon the chase reversed, with little Amafu coming after her friend, feet pounding with the same rhythm as her laughs. The quieter one, Inyanga kept her mouth shut and focused on getting away, but when she got close to the hedges bordering the entrance to the lecture hall, a call from her umama drew her back.

"Come back around, you're not going in that hedgemaze today and getting lost!" Kyuma shouted.

And as she skirted long to obey Umama's directions, Amafu darted in and tagged her, reversing the game again.