There are skies that do not merely watch; they wait. And there is rain that does not fall just to quench the earth, but to deliver a message. When the sky remembers, the world must listen.
That morning, Elegosi woke uneasy.
The sun rose late and strange. Its light did not shimmer but hovered, slow and thick like palm oil. Birds flew lower. Markets opened half-heartedly. Even the Oru Sanctuary felt it—the weight in the air, as though something sacred and sharp was about to break loose.
Odogwu stood at the edge of the memory grove, arms crossed behind his back. The trees whispered, not in joy or song, but in warning.
"They are coming," one leaf hissed.
"From the place where shadows eat their own names," another muttered.
It had been weeks since the last attempted sabotage. The Oru Movement had grown too vast to be ignored. From Ghana to Malawi, from the Nile's banks to the shores of Luanda, memory trees bloomed. Stones whispered. Songs stirred the souls of cities.
And in a room far away, where smoke clouded the ceiling and deals were made with clenched fists, the Ụmụ Ọchịchị gathered.
Their leader, known only as The Face Without Eyes, spoke:
"We let him build too long. He has sown stories into the soil. If we do not raze it now, we will one day answer to our children."
"The sky remembers. But we shall erase."
They sent word. Not with letters. But with lightning.
At dusk, thunder cracked across Elegosi with no clouds in sight.
Then came the rain.
Not drops. Blades.
Each one cold, metallic, and humming like an ancient horn.
People screamed. Children ran into the memory grove, believing the trees would shield them.
And the trees… responded.
Leaves turned to shields.
Roots rose like arms.
Fruits glowed with a fierce light, creating domes of warmth.
It was a battle between memory and oblivion.
Odogwu, soaked and still, walked to the center of the storm.
He held no weapon.
Only the flute carved from moonstone—gifted by the Keepers of Uloka.
He blew one note.
Soft. Long. Ache-filled.
And the sky paused.
What followed was neither miracle nor magic. It was remembering.
The rain faltered.
And then reversed.
It fell upward.
Back into the sky.
And from above, something began to descend—slowly, like a forgotten promise returning.
A figure cloaked in rain.
Eyes closed.
Feet not touching earth.
Zuru gasped. "That… that is her."
"Who?" Ngozi asked.
"Anele. The Woman Who Speaks in Storms."
Legend said she had vanished centuries ago—carried into the clouds when the first empire tried to burn memory into obedience. That she would return only when memory itself stood on the edge of erasure.
Now, she hovered above them, her voice a thundercloud laced with lullabies:
"You remembered when others forgot."
"You sang when the world silenced."
"Now let the sky remember with you."
She raised her hands.
The clouds shimmered.
And rain fell—not like before.
This time, the rain sang.
Each drop told a story.
A forgotten resistance song from Aba.
A cradle hymn from Timbuktu.
A prayer once uttered by a dying warrior in Kano.
The rain etched these stories into the stones, the trees, even the walls of Elegosi's towers.
No one could escape them.
Every mirror in the city wept.
Every screen flickered with visions of ancestors dancing.
The Ụmụ Ọchịchị tried to flee, but the wind carried their names back to them.
They saw their mothers.
They saw their sons.
They saw the futures they had tried to erase.
And they wept.
When it ended, silence reigned.
Not emptiness.
Fullness.
The kind of silence that holds truth in its palms.
Odogwu stood beneath the ancient iroko at the grove's center.
Children gathered.
One girl handed him a leaf.
It bore a single word: Ọganiru—Moving Forward.
Zuru approached, voice trembling.
"We've won."
But Odogwu shook his head.
"No. We've remembered. The war is not to win—it is to keep remembering, even when it hurts."
He looked to the sky.
And the sky… smiled.