The evening air settled over Lagos like a thick, damp blanket, heavy with the scent of frying food and distant rain. The city had begun to slow, the relentless hustle of the day giving way to the murmurs of night quiet footsteps on cracked sidewalks, the faint hum of a generator, the occasional shout echoing from a nearby corner.
Iyi sat outside his small home, his wrist throbbing softly beneath the worn fabric of his sleeve. The scar left by the blade from the men who had come in the night was still fresh, a crimson line against his dark skin. His thoughts swirled with everything that had happened the black envelope, the cryptic messages, the terrible warning that now weighed heavier than hunger itself.
The sun dipped behind the horizon, shadows stretching long and thin across the walls of the neighborhood. His mother had gone to bed early, exhausted from the day's labor and worries, leaving Iyi alone with the growing storm in his mind.
Suddenly, the sound of footsteps interrupted the quiet. They were soft but deliberate, stopping just outside the gate. Iyi's eyes flicked toward the source, heart quickening. In Lagos, strangers at your doorstep after dark were rarely a good sign.
A figure stood silhouetted against the dim streetlight a woman wrapped in a faded shawl, her face obscured by the folds. She held something in her hands, wrapped carefully in a cloth.
Iyi rose slowly, cautious but curious. The woman's voice was low and steady as she spoke, her words barely above a whisper.
"I have something for you, boy. From the river."
She stepped forward and placed the bundle on the doorstep before retreating into the shadows without waiting for a response.
Iyi stared at the wrapped object, uncertainty twisting inside him. He hesitated before unwrapping it, revealing an old, soaked sponge, its fibers dark and heavy with water. The scent was faint but unmistakable a hint of river mud, wet earth, and something ancient beneath it.
His mind raced. Why leave a sponge? What message was this?
The sponge felt oddly alive in his hands, heavier than it should be, as if it carried the weight of untold stories.
He turned it over, feeling the rough texture beneath his fingertips, and then his eyes caught a small, barely visible inscription carved into the wood of the sponge's frame symbols he didn't recognize but that somehow stirred a deep, almost forgotten memory.
The city around him seemed to hush, as if holding its breath.
Iyi's thoughts drifted back to the stories his grandmother once told tales of spirits and rivers, of gifts left by ancestors to those who listened. The sponge, soaked with river water, was not just an object. It was a sign. A calling.
He felt the hunger inside him twist and pulse, responding to the sponge's silent voice.
The night deepened. The streetlights flickered, casting eerie shadows that danced on the walls. Iyi knew he was standing at a crossroads not just in the city's streets, but in his life.
He had taken steps into a world beyond the one he knew, a world where hunger was not just physical but spiritual, where debts were paid in blood and silence, and where the past whispered through objects like the sponge in his hands.
Iyi wrapped the sponge carefully and took it inside, his mind spinning with questions and fears.
Who was the woman? What did the river want from him? And how much longer could he run from the hunger that was closing in?
The city around him hummed with life, but inside, a new silence was growing a silence filled with secrets waiting to be heard.