A Secret Dream

The afternoon sun beat down on Oraifite, making the dust on the path shimmer like tiny diamonds. I walked with Elder Obi, his hand resting gently on my shoulder. We had just left Chika’s compound, and my heart felt heavy, like a stone in my chest. Chika’s eyes, usually so downcast, had held a flicker of something else today, something I couldn’t quite place. Elder Obi had noticed it too. He’d seen the way her small hands, roughened by endless chores, had tightened around the tattered edges of a book hidden beneath her worn cloth.

“She has a spirit that even her aunt cannot break,” Elder Obi had said, his voice a low rumble like distant thunder. “There is a light in her, Emefiona, a light that deserves to shine.”

I thought about Chika, about the way she flinched when her aunt’s shadow fell upon her, the way her voice was a mere whisper when she spoke. She was a small bird, trapped in a storm, yet somehow, she still held onto a song.