WPaRG: Indigenous Days - Chapter 5 - chelonianmobile, MultiFanGirlWickedPony, Writearoundchic (2024)

Chapter Text

“Feels appropriate to do this here, yeah? The first ever humans in Africa would have gathered around fires to tell stories, too. The Flame of Remembrance in Cape Town might have been more appropriate, but it’s in Parliament so we can’t get as close to that one.”

May 25th, Africa Day. 2025, the last birth year of Generation Alpha. Johannesburg. Constitution Hill. They aren’t exactly gathered around the flame - no one is allowed to get that close - but they stay in sight of it. The camera clicks. The recorder clicks on, and the Firestarter speaks into it.

“Generations of Fire, interview number one.”

“One: a fire involving low-growing plants. Two: a minor conflict or crisis.”

The Brushfire is sixty years old, though still baby-faced, with moss-green spray covering any grey in his hair. Braided in the French style, framing his face. Wide eyes. Freckles. GUNDUA, OKOA, LINDA on his T-shirt.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1965.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Brushfire is born to a family of herders. Rural Uganda. A village so small it has no name. His sister comes home smelling like cattle. His parents are gone. And at fourteen, rubbing green wax into his hair for the first time, the Brushfire resolves to be a man if he cannot be a child and finds (after some trial and error) that he isn’t much good at either approach.

“Brushfires are actually really important to the health of a forest, did you know? Most of them burn out pretty quickly and they take all the dead growth with them. They become a problem when humans stop them too soon and let the kindling build up, until after a few times you get a fire too big to put out. I never lived in a forest, but I always tried to help the environment too, not harm it. I hope I don’t burn out so fast. I haven’t yet.”

Also in the underbrush; high pitched whines and keening voices. Sharp teeth and fur the color of the dead growth that hasn’t burned away. Black and brown and dappled. Like ash and earth. Like spotted leaves. And the sourness of blood clinging to them. And to his sister when she comes home from the fields.

Hard day, was it, KK?

Don’t call me KK! she snaps. Then lays her head in her hands. More cattle. Missing!

Stolen?

Eaten! Mbwa mwilu! f*cking wild dogs!

“We raised cattle, and it’s hard work. You need to be strong. Smart, too. People think that if it doesn’t have a microchip it can be done by idiots. Have you ever tried to outsmart hyenas? Lions? What about painted dogs? They’re some of the worst.” He sighs wistfully. “My family hated them, but we always respected them, you know? The way you respect a rival. They’re perfect hunters. And then I learned more about them, and I started to worry for them. See, humans are perfect hunters too. We killed them because they killed our cattle, and the fur traders killed them because they’re beautiful, and the rich tourists killed them just to say they did. No respect from them.”

Uganda creeps toward the eighties. And the dogs creep low into the grasses. Dwindling. Ever dwindling. And KK is happy when she counts their cows.

“I used to follow her. Her and my uncle and our cousin - his son. I wanted to be a herder. I… I still do! But I think… maybe I was wasted there. H-herding the wrong thing.” He pulls out his phone. “Her name is Roho, like her great-something-grandma’s. First one I’ve raised for a while. I only keep the ones that won’t survive in the wild.”

A wall-eyed calf struggles through the undergrowth. She cries out and the Brushfire is there to help her. He’s expecting a hole or a troublesome stone. Instead he finds a patch of white among the green and brown. A tiny, lively creature. Covered in afterbirth. All sweet and sticky red.

On the screen; long legs and white fur and radar-dish ears, and an air of cautious not-quite-friendliness.

“Even after a few generations knowing me, they aren’t really pets. It’s pretty much impossible to tame painted dogs, usually. They trust their pack more than they’ll ever trust you, and that means you can’t trust them an inch. But the ones I’ve kept don’t have a pack. I’d seen it with cattle - if an animal’s born too different, the mother won’t want it. The pack didn’t want the first Roho, they need to be camouflaged and hunters and prey could see her coming. But predators are the brushfires of animals. Did you know, in Britain and parts of America, they cleared out the wolves, so now they have too many deer? The deer strip the forests bare, injured ones linger for days in pain, disease spreads, it’s terrible. The world needs all the painted dogs it can get.”

Roho isn’t hunting anything for the time being. An infant. The Brushfire is no nursemaid. And a poor excuse for a painted dog. His sister is the herder. It’s his job to sit at market with the milk and meat and living calves. He buys puppy formula from one of the few permanent stores. And lingers in the doorway, peering at the shopkeeper's television. (The only one for miles around.) More dogs on the screen. Just one or two.

“They’re dying. They’re all dying. The tourists. The poachers. The trophy hunters. The dogs are dying. They’re gone. Well, except Roho. There’s this thing K- um, my sister said to me once. ‘The little ones don’t make it out here.’ But maybe… they just get left behind?”

He isn’t the only one who cares, at least, even decades ago. Environmentalists. Eco-tourists. Wealthy White men and women, some with their hair done in clumsy imitation of Brushfire’s people’s. Plenty truly want to help, but few truly know how. The wise ones listen to the locals. Not enough of them do. Brushfire talks to as many as he can, in between his trips to the market, in between bottle-feedings turning to meat-feedings turning to dragging chunks of carcass on a rope for her to learn to pounce. He doesn’t tell his sister. He tries not to let the tourists see him.

“Lots of people love the dogs. They’re lucky in that.” He taps his T-shirt front. “Do you have any idea how hard we have to work to get people to fund protection of beetles, or toads, or anything that isn’t pretty or cuddly or badass-looking? Lots of people want to protect beautiful things. But then we got the vegans. Uh, no offence meant, I’ve got nothing against people who just don’t eat animals, but so many American vegans don’t get that not everyone can not eat meat. There are plenty of plants out in the grasslands, yeah, but they’re almost all grass. We can’t eat that, and it’s not like we can afford to ship in much. Some of them get that just fine, but some of them seem to think we’re just not trying. And then once or twice I’ve met the real crazies who hate carnivorous animals too.”

It spills out into his sister’s world. Bit by bloody bit. The dogs. The cattle. The perfect hunters. Sneering faces - White faces - grimacing at her in the fields, at Brushfire in the market. Cleavers and knives and chunks of meat. And you call yourself an environmentalist.

“No, I didn’t. I never said that. That was their word for it.”

In the end, his own pack turns on him. White faces. White hands. White tourists with green on their tongues. They force the Brushfire down and force his legs apart. Laughing like hyenas.

“I’m just another soul, in just another body. Like my sister. Like Roho and her descendants. Like all the others.”

He screams for his sister. She isn’t there. He screams for his parents. They aren’t anywhere. He screams for Roho…

“And it was like… I mean, I’m not their master. It’s better than that.”

It’s like it was when he found her. The ghostly dog. White against the brush and bracken. Painted red.

“They’re my friends.”

And the Brushfire burns.

“A person - usually a woman, usually a girl - with a fiery temper. In other words… someone who is easily provoked.”

The Spitfire, thirty-one, has some White in him. Grey eyes. Blond hair. His skin is not light exactly, but lighter than his mother’s. (The Spirit Racer, leaning on his shoulder. Ever present. Always there.) But the swelling of his neck and stiffness in his fingers, but the discoloration from wrist to elbow and down his left hand… Well, it’s not the kind of white he truly needs drifting through his blood stream.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1994.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Spirit Racer, thirty-two years ago and healthy, in a car so fast the camera barely catches her. Applause and praise and money she needs, money that gets her out of the slums. Respect she craves, respect she deserves. (An ocean away, tiny Speed Demon watches her on a top-of-the-range TV, stars in his eyes. I didn’t know they had cars in Africa, Mommy…)

“Spitfires were also a type of plane used by Britain in World War Two. Fighter planes. Fast ones.” He pumps a fist to punctuate, then flexes his fingers and winces. “I’ve never flown a plane, but fast vehicles are mine and Mama’s thing. She raced cars. Then she had to stop.” He bites his lip. “They call us Freedom Babies, you know. There was a bit of a baby boom from people celebrating. I’m not one of those. In the morning Mandela was president. And Mama was… and Mama…”

A White man from the richer part of Johannesburg. In a suit worth as much as their rent for a year. He races the Spirit Racer - Spitfire’s mother before Spitfire - and loses. She sings in isiZulu and dances on the hood of her car. On the night of the election. The first election that’s meant anything. She’s faster than her rival. In a car and out. But he’s stronger. Nine months later, Spitfire is born, and Spirit Racer is sick.

“She loves me. But it’s hard for both of us, you know? Just looking at me, people know where I came from. That I’m not exactly like them, whoever they are. And… they can tell I’m sick, and that so is she. When I was a kid, my bullies used to tell me I made her sick. That’s nonsense, whether she’d had me or not he’d still have… ugh. But sometimes it’s hard not to believe. And since she was sick, she couldn’t race anymore, so we never had much money, so we had trouble paying for medicine, so things got worse. And since this was the 90s, at first there wasn’t really much great treatment to be had for any money. We both got so lucky to live this long.”

They catch it early. Soon after onset. Like they did with Intare. In some ways this is kinder. Spitfire has never known violence. Not like Ikamba ya Rwanda. Not like the Spirit Racer… In some ways this is crueler. The Spirit Racer watches her baby cry out in pain. Watches him struggle. Hears the people here - her people - whispering whenever her back is turned. Still though. Still. In some ways it isn’t anything. It just is. And she calls Spitfire My beautiful son.

“I’m not White enough for the Melville crowd, and I don’t want to be either. I wanna be Zulu. Like Mama. And everyone else we know.”

As he grows, he has people to talk to about it. Mostly online, but it’s something. On one account:

'Oh, that sounds so awkward. Everyone just thinks my family are white, so I don’t really know what it’s like, I guess, but… yeah. Sympathy.’

On another:

‘I went without my regular meds for a while once, too. It REALLY sucked. I can’t imagine how bad it must have been to go longer.’

He doesn’t let the two cross over, fearful one crowd will judge him for the other.

“There’s this one guy I know. From Rwanda. I don’t keep track of where most folks are from but I remember that. Always going on about his brother. I don’t… I get it, okay. I get it. But I don’t wanna sound like that. I wanna be Zulu.”

Zozo. The Spirit Racer takes his face in her hands. You already are. All the different parts of us make us Zulu.

Even the White parts? Even the sick-

Yes, she says. Even those.

“Meanwhile this White guy gets free run of the city. He’s rich too. Nothing and no one to hold him down. I’d like to… Maybe that’s why she never told me his name. Maybe she thought I would try to find him. Maybe I would have, and have gotten myself hurt. No, I don’t think I… I’m a racer. Not a killer. No matter what, I don’t think I could do anything that bad… A-and even if I could, that still wouldn’t be near as bad as what he did to her. To both of us.”

He turns eighteen. The Spirit Racer teaches him to drive in her 1994 Corvette. The nicest thing they own. And her eyes glow with all the fire she passed to her son. And she drives fast. And he drives fast. And it feels beautiful.

Spitfire brushes his brown hand down the bluish arm. “It’s okay with the medicine. Sometimes, though. Sometimes it’s bad. I hope it’s worse for him. It’s probably not. That’s how it is anywhere if you’ve got money. That’s how it is when you’re White.”

He’s almost nineteen. Been driving for a year now. Spitfire isn’t as fast as his mother was when she was his age. He’s plenty fast enough. And then a White man in a white and blue suit turns up in Soweto. Calling for the Spirit Racer by her name - her racing name. Mkhuzi!

And Spitfire’s mother steps in front of him, pushing him behind, as their black cat slithers between their ankles and hisses at the man.

Mama-

Not now, Zozo! Let the grownups handle this.

But-

Wait in the car. Now.

So he goes. And sits there. Foot hovering over the gas pedal. Fingers popping against the ignition.

“I could have done something. Right then and there… but I didn’t. I kinda wanted to.” He flexes his foot as if stomping on a gas pedal. “He’d bought out most of our neighbourhood. Was gonna strip it out and rebuild as something for the fancy folks. Mama bet him the neighbourhood that she could outrace him again, but the day of the race she got really sick again. So I put on a mask and went out for her.”

They’re about the same height, and with loose clothing both their skinny, sickly bodies look about the same. No one notices. He gets in the car at the racetrack and pushes the pedal, and as the speedometer needle creeps up to press the top of the gauge harder and harder, he feels less sick, less lost, more at home than ever.

“It was… amazing. But maybe I should have eaten something or slept better before going out. I think I fainted partway through and the car kept going, my foot must have still been on the pedal. I swear I saw my ancestors and they were all rooting for me. Maybe it was just one of those fugue state things. I hope it wasn’t. I hope I didn’t just hallucinate that they told me they were proud. But…”

He gazes, dazed, into the distance halfway around the track, falling behind, car slowing down and drifting to the side. Perhaps it’s the cries from the crowd which snap him awake, but the important part is that he does wake, and he slams his foot on the pedal. The White man, complacent, catches sight in the rearview mirror, and is too surprised to react for a moment as Spitfire speeds past him… but he does react, and catches up, and…

“It was a draw. Perfect photo-finish draw.”

He falls from the car, stunned, horrified. His mother runs forward, his mask slips off. Doesn’t matter now, they lost anyway… The White man steps from his car, frowning. Squinting at Spitfire…

Mkhuzi didn’t lose, he says, extending a hand. I concede to a worthy opponent. Two worthy opponents.

Huh? R-really? Spitfire blinks, Spirit Racer glares… but they shake on it, and their neighbourhood is saved, and the crowds cry Laduma! as if they simply won.

Our next race won’t be so easy, the White man says, but he’s smiling. And there’s just something about his face, just a little quirk somewhere, that Spitfire recognises from the mirror.

“I… wish he hadn’t done that, even if it meant we lost. I wish he’d just been bad all through so I could keep hating him. Hating him as much as he deserves for what he did to Mama. Does that make me a bad person too?”

And Spitfire burns.

“In German Osterfeuer, the dry fire that begins the liturgy of the Easter Vigil on Holy Saturday. Represents Christ’s Resurrection.”

The Easter Fire, seventy-nine (and the Paschal Fire peeping out from behind her like a child although he’s less than twenty years younger), with a cannula taped to her lip (and a monitor clipped to his chest). High cheekbones and a series of birthmarks. Eyes deep and dark as the river Esimirin. And sad.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1946.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Ilé-Ifẹ̀. 1953. The violence begins.

“That… that… Boko Haram wasn't around when I was a child. Or when my Luo was born. But they didn’t come from nothing. Just like a fire rising from the dust.”

The Easter Fire is young and pretty. And Christian. Anglican. Not that anyone cares to remember. She’s not Muslim. That’s all that matters. That's what they focus on. More than anything else.

“Now, it’s not as dangerous as the Westerners make it out to be. At least…” She opens her mouth and closes it again. The Paschal Fire moves a little closer, burrowing tight. “There are almost as many of us as there are of them. Forty something, I think, to fifty something. There is no apartheid. They don’t control the government. They didn’t back then. And they’re still killing us. That’s almost worse. In some ways. We’re dying and nobody notices. Except for those same Westerners, so they can make it about themselves, and cry on TV.”

The Easter Fire cries when they come for her. Young. Terrified. They shoot her mother and her father and they gift her to one insurgent’s son. He’s younger than the others, but older than her by a significant margin. They’re married first. Before he takes what he wants from her. Her period doesn’t come. Her stomach swells. The Paschal Fire is born nine months later.

“However he happened, I love my son. I can’t say all women in my position loved the resulting children, and I don’t blame them, but I do. That made things easier at first, but much, much harder later.”

For what it’s worth, he loves her too. She knows, even if he doesn’t say so - the Paschal Fire doesn’t say much at all. And Easter worries. His father - her “husband” - knows better than to bring him to a doctor and risk the questions that would come from that.

“It was never about having children for him. That man, I mean. It was always about possessing me to do what he liked with. After Luo was born, I wasn’t fit to have more children. That didn’t matter. He didn't care.”

The Easter Fire makes her plans. She will save. She will pack. She will prepare. She will run. She will not look back. She will take the Paschal Fire…

“But I… I…”

He finds the box beneath the floorboards. Filled with loose dollar notes and tarnished coins. He throws it hard at the Easter Fire and beats hard against the walls and floors. Through the window and down the stairs. He beats her and he beats her and he beats the Paschal Fire too, when their son steps in the way.

“And it made a sound like an empty pumpkin. All wet inside and splattering hard. He hit my Luo. My baby. So hard that… He fell.” She swallows. “And I didn’t think he would stand up again.”

She runs. No clothes. No food. No money. Towards the river. Blood running down her face.

“What kind of a mother am I? I left my baby behind.”

She goes to the police. They ask the same question. And don’t seem to care about anything else. She goes home to her father’s family. They ask the same question. To her mother’s… They shut the door in her face and tell her to go.

“There was a position open at Obafemi Awolowo. Some minor medical work. I wanted to be a doctor, you know, when I was younger and it felt like I could get there on my own. At least I could still help.”

The Easter Fire bandaging arms and taking blood work. Mopping emesis and replacing lights. Sometimes, on good days, she talks with the students as they pass. Sometimes she pretends - with the smaller boys, with the masculine girls - that they’ve known each other for more than a minute, a moment, a month…

“I thought he was dead. Or else… he didn’t want me. How could he forgive me for leaving him behind?”

Easter Sunday. Easter Service. The Easter Fire stands to pray. And then she sees him. Across the room. Ashier now than he was before, sicklier. Eyes sunken and burning like turned coals. He sees her. And she sees him and-

“And he did want me back, and his father couldn’t stop me anymore. The rest doesn’t matter. Nothing else. Except for that.”

And the Easter Fire (and the Paschal Fire) burn.

“A phenomenon in which a luminous electrical discharge appears on a ship or aircraft during a storm. Regarded as a sign of protection given by St. Elmo, the patron saint of sailors.”

St. Elmo’s Fire is all wire and angles. Skin stretched thin over bones. Sunken eyes and hollow cheeks. Black dreadlocks brushed to one side. Fifty-five.

“An illness brought on by the ingestion of fungus-contaminated rye grain causing ergot poisoning. Common name derives from the medieval Benedictine monks dedicated to that saint who offered treatment to sufferers.”

St. Anthony’s Fire wears his natural, styled up. Sprayed with purple. His face is fuller than his day-one’s, but longer. And scarred on one side. Not badly though, not that badly. (“Ah, it’s nothing. Used to be worse.”) Same age.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1901.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; a woman with long and tattered dreadlocks. On a custom-built surfboard. Blown about by the wind and spray. She rides the waves without distraction, slicing through them like a hot knife in butter. Towards the boats that lie anchored a mile or three from the Durban bay.

“Obviously when we talk about the Greatest Generation, we don’t mean us. What’d we be, Gen X maybe? Anyway. We mean my grandma. Sorry you probably couldn’t have met her, she’d be like a hundred and twenty-four now. Greatest Generation and one of the greatest people we know of.”

“When people talk about World War Two online it’s always Germany this, America that, sometimes England or Japan. ‘Least for English speakers. People outside Africa forget it exists. But our people fought then too, and not only for the Europeans who forced us. Plenty of us had personal stakes.” He snorts. “The definitions we picked are kinda ironic - names of saints? People outside Africa forget some of us are Jewish, too.”

Ethiopian Jews. Beta Israel. This is where people’s minds go, when they remember Africa at all. That’s not who he means. South Africa. Lemba. The first Jews, though not as many call themselves that now. Grandma does. Locals whisper about her faith; the Europeans whisper about her skin, even as she helps them. She ignores them and keeps doing the right thing.

“You hear all these stories. Boats going to America. Full of Jews during the Second World War. People scared out of their minds. They came to South Africa - to Durban too - and we turned them out.”

“Some of them figured out a workaround. The boats would anchor out of sight offshore and Grandma would bring supplies out to them. For as long as she could. A backpack and a surfboard. And, yeah, it’s as dangerous as it sounds.” St. Elmo’s fire swallows hard. “They called her ‘Righteous Among Nations’. Sounds nice on paper, only… She was Jewish. Like we’re Jewish. Means they never saw her like she was. And there was a storm. I don’t know why she went out. But she did. And-”

Green lightning cracks across a slate colored sky. The water rises up from the deep. Like malformed fingers tearing for blood. And then the wind. And then the rain. White caps breaking over themselves like well-drowned corpses. And the refugee ship is tossed a mile high. She goes to help them. She doesn’t make it back.

“And the world carried on without her. Our parents banned us from swimming or surfing in the ocean in case the same happened to us, but of course we snuck out and did anyway, and we’re not dead yet, ja-ne? Still… still probably shouldn’t have. We could swim, but I can’t say we had a good teacher.”

The screen jumps by the minute. As children they meet in the community pool. Swimming lessons. St. Elmo’s Fire paddling in the shallow end, St. Anthony’s Fire venturing further out. The teacher is a wild-eyed woman. Gray haired and burn-scarred. Who takes a special pleasure in dunking them, holding them under a little longer each time.

“That’s how we learned to hold our breath.”

“We? Nah, man. Speak for yourself.”

People whispered about Grandma when she was alive. They still whisper. Not the woman with wild eyes. She asks - she always asks - always says exactly what she means. And that’s refreshing for a while. The same way the flood season breaks over the desert with those first drops of cold rain.

“She was younger than Grandma, but she knew of her, of course. Whole town did. She was… I dunno if she wanted to f*ck her or wanted to be her. Which is weird since they didn’t agree on some pretty big points… No, she was Lemba too. That wasn’t why.”

“I think she was for Israel? Am I remembering right?”

“Yeah, yeah. That’s her day-one. Grandma wouldn’t have been a fan, especially now. They’re actually not great to Holocaust survivors there, even though that’s supposed to be why Israel exists… But that’s kind of a tangent.”

The woman asks about Grandma sometimes. Her body. (The water.) Her board. (The water.) The plaque with her name on it in the Holocaust Museum. (More of the same.) She screams and shakes St. Elmo’s Fire.

Are you stupid?!

She wouldn’t have wanted the thing anyway. Not from them!

“She wasn’t ‘Righteous Among Nations’. She was just righteous.”

“And Black among the Jews.”

“It’s hard for us. You don’t know unless you’re Black. You don’t know unless you’re Lemba. The old lady, she wanted us to take care of each other. It’s hard when your own people… When they aren’t your people.”

St. Anthony’s Fire is more forgiving. (She’s not so bad when you get to… Well.) He will take her to the wreck site. He will take her down to dive. If she needs to see it. To understand. St. Elmo’s Fire waits in the boat as they go, watching shimmers on the water.

“We had diving gear. Pretty expensive. Even to rent. At least she paid for it. One for her. One for me. One for Njabulo in case… in case something happened. Which it did. You know?”

“I know.”

An hour each of oxygen. St. Elmo’s counts down to the forty minute mark. Then fifty. Then… He struggles with the equipment. Doesn’t get it on right. Doesn’t realize until he’s sunk a story deep. He’s hemorrhaging oxygen. He’s sinking.

“Pretty sure every moron knows oxygen deprivation is really dangerous. I didn’t care - if he was still under, he had even less to be going on with than I did.”

“One of the symptoms is hallucinations, just like with ergot. That’s why we picked that from the dictionary for this. That was probably why we saw what we saw.”

“That was why the cops said they couldn’t trust our statements. We’re guys and she wasn’t and that can be weird, I dunno if they’d have jumped at the chance to punish a woman or not wanted to admit some old lady coulda hurt two strong young men. But we’re Lemba, and the cops weren’t, so they didn’t even care that much.”

He dives down even deeper, looking for a glint of St. Anthony’s purple hair. All he finds is silver. Silver bones and silver hair. And he chokes when the wild-eyed woman wraps herself around him and rips him down the front.

“She tried to drown us both. We’re not sure why.”

“Was it… like that anime thing Maadi mentioned? Yan-something? Obsession.”

“I think so. We weren’t Grandma, so we weren’t good enough.”

It only takes a moment. To grab him still, to hold him down. And he’s terrified. Pearls in the water by the second thrust. She shoves him back. And the Fires climb for the surface. It takes five minutes. The world record is 11:35. They aren’t that good, but they surface just in time.

“Like we said. She taught us how to hold our breath.”

“Like we said, though, without breath, you hallucinate. I still have nightmares of what I saw. When she did it. Her all green and slimy and with squid arms in her hair.”

“Yeah… Me too.”

And St. Elmo’s Fire

and St. Anthony’s Fire

burn.

“Historians speculate it may have been made by combining pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide, sulfur, or niter. Its ability to burn on water made it an effective and destructive naval incendiary weapon…”

Pine Resin and Naphtha and Quicklime. Calcium Phosphide. Sulfite and Niter. Larger and smaller and skinny as twigs. Hair dyed red. Hair bleached blond. Greek Fire, a teen in the photo with pink and purple locs and just some black showing through at the roots. Forty-four years old now, with tattoos showing through her blouse sleeves. In the photo they cluster around her. Possessive. Protective. Parental. Peaceful.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1981.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Greek Fire and her components getting on a train. Her, sighing and rolling her eyes. The others fighting. Always fighting.

“Both sides of the family are Black South African and a lotta people think that’d mean solidarity, but we’re from different tribes - sort of - and ag, man, subsets of a group that’s overall oppressed are so much harsher to each other than when that group is doing fine. And that suits the guys on top just great. If we can’t work together, we can’t work against them.”

Shona and Tswana. Moyo and Talaote. Both have for their totem the symbol of the heart.

“You’d think, us being so similar, it’d make a difference. But it doesn’t. Even my parents get in on it sometimes, or they did. You’d think they’d know better at least.” Pause. Sigh. Roll eyes. Right on cue. “Still, it’s not like we were going to war or anything. It’s just family drama.”

As Greek Fire grows, she spends a lot of time online, researching the rather sparse information. Even in the Indigenous languages, there’s not much. Both families were cut off from their past so long ago; there’s so little anyone remembers or can recover. But the totems stick in her mind.

“Momzo and Baba thought it was kinda neat that we all have the same one. Just ‘kinda neat’. I thought it should be a bigger deal than that. I’m kinda more into the history than them - I can see why, too. So much of the history we can still actually find is depressing, and we’ve lost so much of it. I get why people wanna look more into the future, especially scientist types like both of them. But we can’t make the future better without looking at the past too, ja-ne? Doomed to repeat and all that.”

She listens to her father and grandparents in Shona. She listens to her mother and uncle and grandmother in Tswana. She begs them to listen to each other. They don’t, in any language.

“They were still fighting right up to my eighteenth birthday. I remember being pretty pissed about that. They couldn’t put their fights aside for one day? Maybe the most important day of my life? They made a fuss about me becoming an adult but they still kept fighting like kids.”

They take the train into Cape Town; they can’t even queue up peacefully, and block the door for long enough that Greek Fire almost can’t get into the carriage. She wanders ahead at Two Oceans Aquarium, and they don’t even notice till they bump into her gazing wistfully at the Diversity Gallery.

“I’m not so fundi with science as either Momzo or Baba are - before they retired she was a quantum physicist, he was a doctor. But I do like sea life. Cape Agulhas down on the south tip is where the Pacific and Indian Oceans meet. We got so many different fish that only live in this area, and the fish from one side don’t fight with the fish from the other any more than whatever’s normal for fish, right? I remember I thought it was symbolic. Silly, maybe…”

Bunny chows and sour figs and Greek Fire examines shweshwe fabrics at the market. With more room to separate there’s less to fight about, and she has hope the peace will last till evening. Alas, it doesn’t. She’s too busy trying to damp the fires to spot that they’re being followed.

“White schoolboys. Kids younger than me. There were four or five of them, maybe? And I think the youngest was like thirteen years old. sh*tty White folks start their kids young on following ‘em, sad to say. I’m not gonna say violent Black folks don’t exist, we all know about the prison gangs and stuff, but that’s not that many people and it’s mostly violence against each other, you know? We just don’t have the power or chance to get at White people that much, even if more than a couple of us wanted to. But they think we do, or they want to think we do, so they strike, uh, quote-unquote ‘back’.”

Two out of five a head shorter than her, but the other three more than make up for it. They drag her to an empty alley and hold her down in the dirt, and the bustling market noise almost covers her screams. Almost.

“Always at people who couldn’t be doing them any harm too. I was eighteen, I wasn’t armed. I was just some girl… That’s always it, isn’t it, all over the world? They pick on the easy targets, and they don’t care what we think, they wanna say to our dads and husbands ‘nyeh nyeh I touched your stuff’.” She grins wickedly. “I’m worth more to my family than that, and our women on both sides are stronger than they thought too.”

Her enraged mother; her huge, hulking uncle; her father’s father and her mother’s mother. Even her father’s tiny, wizened mother gets in on breaking hands and heads with her cane, while her father picks her up and tends her wounds. The boys flee, and the family work as a single unit to usher Greek Fire to a cab and to the hospital.

“We waited. We were pretty freaked out that they would report. We have money, but they were White, so kind of a coin-flip with our chances. They didn’t, eventually, or nothing came of it if they did. I think they just didn’t want to admit to being beaten up by my grannies. But we were worried for a while, and the third thing both sides of the family ever worked on together - second being the incident, first being me being born - was promising to be each other’s alibis.”

Over weeks, the house stays quiet. At first they don’t speak to each other very much at all. Only to Greek Fire, in the gentlest of terms and tones. The first time she smiles, though, is when her uncle asks her grandfather to pass the salt at the table, and says Please.

“They listened to me a lot better after that. And to each other, when I was there to help anyway. They all knew they loved me, but I guess they needed a chance to show each other. If ubuntu can come from something so bad, maybe it’s okay that it happened to me. It shouldn’t happen to anyone, but if it had to, I’m glad it was me and that I could use it.”

She doesn’t become a physicist like her mother. She doesn’t become a doctor like her father. She studies law and history and political science, and joins the Diplomatic Service, and both sides couldn’t be prouder of their precious peacemaker.

She pulls the neck of her top down, exposing just the very edge of another tattoo. Not enough to make out the details. Over her breastbone. “We share a totem. I got this to remind me that it’s from both sides of me, and also just for me. I made it my own, and I made myself our heart.”

Her components come together and the Greek Fire burns.

“Wildfires that never fully extinguish, and instead continue smoldering under the ground or snow for extended periods of time, emerging as full-on blazes when conditions allow.”

The Zombie Fire is a skinny, pimply man of twenty-eight. Loud and loud. Yellow on purple. Jacket over shorts. And long socks pulled up almost to his knee. On his phone. Filming.

“Lights - or fires - that appear in the atmosphere without an obvious cause. Examples include the onibi, hitodama and will-o’-wisp.”

The Ghost Fire looks pretty ghostly. Twenty-eight too. White on black hair. White on brown skin. In earrings and an overcoat. Both entirely too big for her - and she’s not small as it stands.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1997.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Zombie Fire with a homemade grappling hook at the stony ruins of Great Zimbabwe. He’s a skilled climber, but with terrible equipment and one hand occupied by a filming phone. The low rubber treads of his sneakers slip, and he cries out as he plummets to the ground…

“Obviously I didn’t die, I’m here, right? Someone caught me.”

Ghost Fire flinches. “No one caught my brother, at least not the way he needed.”

Ghost Fire and a different boy also climb the monument. When this boy falls, Ghost Fire misses; she runs for help, too late.

“There was some guy. Or some lady. It doesn’t matter now and I don’t remember anyway. He… she?… said they could help. I was hysterical. I didn’t think.”

The Zombie Fire flinches too.

The Zombie Fire… the Ghost Fire… They get into the strange man’s car.

You could be hurt. Let’s just get you checked out, yeah?

He could be too hurt to move. But listen, I’ve got some friends down the way.

“Big mistake. Big mistake.”

Beyond Zimbabwe. The Zombie Fire works through peatlands. Smoke rising to his knees. Bloody lips. Sweat falling like candle wax. Skin sliced in pockets big enough to put your fingers through. He walks with a limp that has nothing to do with the chain on his ankle.

“That’s where most kids like I was end up. Boys. Especially older boys. In the fields or in the mines or… I dunno, I didn’t pay that much attention when I was in school. ‘Labor trafficking’ - but that doesn’t mean they don’t wanna f*ck you. Just that nobody got paid if they did.”

The Ghost Fire’s is a more stereotypical experience. A brothel in Johannesburg. She’s a rare beauty. Pure snowy patches. Ghostly white hair.

“Kids like I was? Girls? It’s the brothels. We’ve talked about it. Both of us kinda wish we were in the other place, sometimes, no matter how bad the other says it got. I got to at least be indoors, sleep a little more between buyers. He still got f*cked, but less, and I guess… I feel like he got more respect? No, I know that’s a f*cked way to think about it, I’m sorry, but they want boys for labour because they think girls aren’t strong enough. Ya know? I’m strong. Even if I can’t be strong enough to escape, I want people to see that I am strong.”

“I get it, it’s okay. Times like that you wanna catch hold of anything to remind you you’re a person.”

No one else seems to think so. It goes how it’s gone for so many others. On a stinking, sweat-soaked mattress; in the mud of the fields and blood of his hands.

“I think my dad blames himself for… I don’t know. We were fighting when it happened. I barely leave the house without him even now. And it feels pathetic, you know. Needing your dad to protect you when you’re almost thirty. But when I was- It’s hard to live like you did before. Knowing how much stronger they were. How easily someone else like them could hold you down. And you wouldn’t be able to stop them… until they were done.”

The peat is harvested in its entirety. The police come that night. For the Zombie Fire. For the other workers. And not the men (and women) who brought them here.

“It’s still better than-”

“Don’t. Don’t.”

They don’t let Ghost Fire go. It’s a random search. The girls are arrested. The men are turned out. The madam stuffs her pockets and runs for her life. Cut; the Zombie and the Ghost Fire. A police station in Johannesburg…

“Still, they did call our parents. Half the kids there didn’t get that. We had parents to call. Lotta kids in our situation don’t. It’s usually the ones with no one to miss them who get taken and I guess we just got unlucky. Really unlucky. But it coulda been worse.”

The Zombie Fire flares to life. His father comes in and comes in swinging. This is my son - my son - and you treat him like a criminal?! And the Zombie Fire bites his tongue and refrains from mentioning the monument.

The Ghost Fire’s mother hugs her tight and sobs into her hair. Her brother isn’t there to do the same, and she cries harder for him than herself.

They both drive home to Masvingo.

“And… like I said, I wasn’t doing good for a while. And you weren’t either, were you?”

“No. But we felt better when we could talk about it. It’s kinda childish, but we got into making up this fantasy sci-fi world where we could pretend we’d gone instead. We wrote stuff, we drew stuff…”

Zombie Fire opens up an app on his phone. Muchadenga: An Afro-Futurist MMORPG. The mentor character in the tutorial looks just like Ghost Fire’s brother. “And when we got older, we made a career out of it. Doing pretty good now, eh, sis?”

His father. Her mother. Find the therapist. Load them into the car and force them out again. He’s waiting when she comes in. Looking like a ghost. Looking right at him like she’s seen one too.

Have we met?

Sorry, no. I was just thinking of my brother…

“Don’t call me sis.”

And the Ghost Fire ignites. And the Zombie Fire flickers. And they burn.

“The fire or fires regarded as existing in Hell.”

Holywater’s blue-black and covered in lesions. Looks like she’d smell like low tide on a hot summer day. Bloody lips. All washed out in a sunbleached picture. Thirty-eight years old in a picture from a hundred years ago.

Hellfire’s blue-black and bruises easily. Short hair cut in the usual way. His old mugshot tucked in next to her picture. Forty-nine now. Fourteen then. Reading from a diary too old to be his own.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1883.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Hellfire as the smallest of flickers. Playing in the water of some Cape Town beach. White sand. Blue water. A little boy and a man with big strong arms. To pick him up. To catch him. To throw him into the air again.

‘25th of May, 1921.

They call this place Robben Island. Like the bird. But not entirely. There are no robins here. It’s… quiet. Not much to write about. Even less to say. I miss Alani. And even Baba, I suppose… in a way.’

Hellfire and another young man who looks not dissimilar to him. Black funeral attire. Ashes scattered in the sea.

Goodbye, Papa…

Mati, I… It’ll be okay.

‘25th of May, 1922

There’s something about this place. The people here. They’re nothing like Baba was or my sister’s friends back home. I think it might be that they’re sick too. That we’re all rotting and dying. Like cut flowers in the sea. Even Alani didn’t understand me towards the end.’

Hellfire argues with his brother:

Look, man, this isn’t healthy-

They killed Papa, Sana! I should be out there making them pay!

You wouldn’t last a day out there.

‘25th of May, 1923

Alani wrote to me. Baba didn’t. She misses me. She said. She hopes they find a cure.’

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; two young women playing in the water. The younger one splashing and singing. The elder - Holywater - struggling behind.

Nhela! What happened?!

What? Is there a crab on me? Seaweed in my-

Your legs… Small lesions. Pink and white and off-color brown. I don’t understand… Was it the water?

‘25th of May, 1924

Think it’s getting worse. Can barely hold pen.’

Hellfire and a hail of bullets. None from his gun. He’s arrested anyway. And convicted (of what? He can’t say for sure). They strip him of the Black Power shirt he’s wearing. Maybe that’s reason enough.

Holywater and a man who looks like her. And a little like her little sister too. You don’t listen! You mock my rules-

Maybe if your rules weren’t so mockable.

Nhela, he breathes in deep, for someone in your condition…

‘25th of May, 1925

It doesn’t hurt too bad today. Maybe I’m getting better.’

Years later, no better. Holywater and her father and the doctor he found for her.

Can you help her?

Another definition: Long-term infection by the bacteria Mycobacterium leprae. Hansen’s disease. He doesn’t call it that.

‘25th of May; 1926

It hurts really bad today. Maybe I’m getting worse.’

The doctors take her. Her sister comes to see her before she goes.

Can’t you stay?

I wish I could. But she can’t.

They call this place Robben Island.

‘25th of May, 1927

The guards take him. The Alcatraz of Africa. His brother isn’t allowed to visit. And Hellfire wouldn’t see him anyway.

They call this place Robben Island.

‘25th of May, 1928’

‘25th of May, 1929’

‘25th of May, 1930’

And the same things happen there. For him, the men he’s locked in with. For her, the guards. He finds her diaries, hidden inside a wall. They bring some comfort.

“25th of May, 1931

I am leaving.

Goodbye,

Nhela Makhathini’

And she steps into the water.

Hellfire finishes reading, and he knows what she means, and he weeps for her as well as himself. When he’s freed, he’ll never marry; he’ll never feel as close to any woman as he has to this one long dead.

He puts the diary down, and has nothing more to say.

And Holywater simmers, and Hellfire burns.

“Arabic - حريق القاهرة. Also known as ‘Black Saturday’. A series of riots that took place on 26 January 1952.”

Saturday or not, the Cairo Fire isn’t Black. She’s not White either. Ninety-seven. Brown skin and once-brown eyebrows and brown ink on her chin. Three lines and the shape of a wavy-woven braid under her scarf. And sand and dust and stars in her eyes.

“Webb’s Dictionary. 1928.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; Egypt under English rule. The Cairo Fire is born in the dust. To a dusty father. A dusty mother. And by the time she reaches her teenage years dust is all that remains of them.

“1882 to 1956. Almost a hundred years. I was born near the end of things. It was longer for Algeria. I’m not Algerian.”

Poor as the dirt she sweeps. Dirt in her hair, dirt on her hands, dirt is all most people see of her. Cairo Fire clenches her fists and swears she will earn better for herself, however she can.

“The White men… It was White men - isn’t it usually? And White women too. Living here in our houses. On our land. I worked for one family. They kept horses. And I swear the horses ate better than me, most of the time.”

The man propositions her. More than once. In front of the horses. Eventually he gives up and forces the issue. And beats the Cairo Fire down and beds her in the straw. The animals watch him do it. And - even though she’s fed them and brushed them and tended sore hooves and hotspots - they push their big heads out towards him and, for her, turn them away.

“Stupid things were always biting me. And they say animals are a good judge of character. It’s all a load of bullsh*t. It always was. Did you know drug-sniffing dogs react more to their handlers than any real smell? At least you admit your dog-creature just likes you because you feed her.”

1939. Chamberlain’s challenge on the radio receives no response; the British Empire is officially at war. So are the Cairo Fire’s people, because the occupiers are. It makes little difference; Cairo Fire barely leaves the stables, the man stays put in the house. She’s afraid that it will make a difference, a little hopeful that if it does it will be him who dies.

“Of course he didn’t. And England and America took the credit when they won. No credit for anyone from Africa, of course.”

White men and women dancing in the streets. Drinking and cheering. The boss celebrates too. Some celebration; he simply enters the stables and does the exact same thing he always does.

“I think I hate them. I know I hate him. But the rest of them too. The English. The White men. And the women who let him do these things to me!”

She struggles and limps, and hurts like Zombie Fire. She miscarries on the stable floor and the horses fall upon it. And she hates them too. She hates them.

“They call it the Cairo Fire. It wasn’t just a fire. It was a riot too. And a murder before that.”

Fifty auxiliary policemen. British occupiers. The Cairo Fire is angry. All of Cairo is angry. The year is 1952.

“They set the city on fire. And I was there to watch it burn.”

Hundreds of buildings going up one by one by one. Falling bricks and broken glass. Someone kills the man who owns the stables. Cairo Fire looses his horses into the streets and runs through scream-singing to the featureless night.

Thee yadi en maddate-l-donia yada!

This is when they fall on her. She’s been catcalled before. And hurt this way - in many ways - long before she knew any of the names she calls them now. But this time it’s not just White men. It’s her own people. And that’s worse than it was before.

“The reason I don’t hate all men the same way I hate animals is the man who rescued me. He was a good man. Smart-aleck sometimes, but good. He’d gone out to help anyone who was injured. I guess I fit that. He brought me home, and I was still young enough to be glad of a father figure.”

He hears her screaming and brings a few people to chase the other men off. He takes her home. He patches her wounds. He tells her a little of his own story. Algeria. It’s the French for us. Same difference… He doesn’t ever harm her, and he doesn’t ever make her leave. At first she does the same work for him as she did before, sweeping and cleaning, but she’s happy to do it for a friend and not a master. And as the years pass, he helps her study for what she truly wants.

“Algeria didn’t start appointing female imams till 1993, Egypt even later. My friend didn’t live to see either.” She smiles. “But I made it eventually, just like I promised him I would one day.”

And the Cairo Fire Burns.

“Ardent devotion or enthusiasm for God or Christian ideals; Christian fervor.”

The Holy Fire has green lipstick and the most beautiful brown eyes. Long, thick eyelashes. And a septum piercing. And she doesn’t look up from her phone…

“See also: Holy Fire.”

The Sacred Fire with his red hair and light eyes, light eyes lined with kohl. And he doesn’t look up from his phone…

“Webb’s Dictionary. 2000.”

Instead of a spotlight, two movie fragments; EnVee videos over in seconds, working up to BlueTube videos hours long. Sacred Fire talks his audience through the process as he sculpts a perfect bird from stone. Holy Fire unwraps and models boxes and boxes of jewellery and clothes, sent by her audience or bought with their donations.

I don’t know about you, viewers, but there’s a lotta dust in the air after I sculpt, and I could really go for a drink right now. Luckily, this week I’m sponsored by Slurm - It’s Highly Addictive! And I notice I’m getting more viewers now - thank you all. Did someone popular mention me?

And for my last box, guess who my sponsor is this week… Ah, yebo! Nuka Cola in cherry and lime, with the new and improved rocket-shaped bottle! Hey, kids, check out the link in the description to find out from GodOfCreativity how to make one of these into a lamp. The channel’s pretty new, but I just have to recommend the guy!

“We’re influencers. Or we were. I think we’ll have to lay low for a while at least. Hopefully not forever.”

Holy Fire gets a lot farther. A lot faster. #goddessofplenty and her in yet another nice new dress. Her audience expands. Starting in Capetown and spreading upwards. South Africa to Southern Africa to the center, to the north to the east and west. She’s an English speaker. That wins her Europe. And America… And her recommendation pulls in a few more people to Sacred’s channel, too.

“It’s harder than usual. When you look like us… but especially when you look like me. Black is beautiful, but the White girls get more attention anyway.”

Sacred Fire squeezes her hand. “We both had, um… other social media, too, though. Crafts on one channel, arts on another, heh. No one cares what you look like when all they see is a drawing. And you can draw yourself however you want. Yeah, fursonas, but not only that. You can be just a human who looks different from you, too. And, um, yeah, I mean adults-only art. Lots of artists keep their safe- and not-safe-for-work channels separate, and we thought we’d managed to keep them distant enough.”

They’re not personally into everything they draw, but it gets attention and commission money and it’s often fun.

‘Can you draw me in this showgirl outfit for my website logo? Maybe make my legs longer and lips bigger like in your self-portrait (nice iridescent hair BTW).’
‘Sure thing! You look especially lovely in this photo, want me to use it as a reference?’

‘Can you draw yaoi? You said you’re a het guy and I’d like to check you’re comfortable with that.’
‘Of course! I don’t mind at all.’
‘Aaaaawesome. In that case can I get some Peppy Cola Bear/the Kool-Aid Man?’

‘Can you draw furries? I’d like to get some Spitzles art for my fiancee’s birthday. Maybe a comic page where Sprinkles helps Spitz change his tail bandages and it goes from there?’
‘That might take me a little longer, I haven’t practiced as much with furry characters, but I can try. That sounds adorable. And happy birthday to her!’

“Remember the Thunderbread guy?”

Holy Fire laughs so hard she chokes.

‘Hi again! Can you draw CBF scat please? Implied vore too I guess. Frybread and Toast based on this digestion fic’
‘Mm, not sure that’s in my comfort zone, but I know another artist who might…’
‘Thanks very much…’
‘I choose to read that as sincere.’

‘Can you illustrate some stuff from Lotus Petal Party?’
‘I don’t know that one. What’s it about?’
‘NOOOOOOOOO DON’T AGREE TO THAT ONE’

It’s all in good fun - but fun is not all it is, when they find the niches they really enjoy. Morbid as it is, explicit as it is, erotic as it is… There is real love here. In the hypersexualized proportions. In the glistening, pouting lips. In every muscle, taut and tight. It’s almost more fun than their other occupation. Almost. And then the comments start coming in…

“Remember the Asianfishing guy? Uh, girl?”

Holy Fire laughs so hard she cries.

The fire starts under one of her “normal” videos. Holy Fire putting on her makeup. Green lipstick. False lashes. Dark lining around her eyes.

‘Hey, um, what makes you think it’s okay for you to do this?’
‘????’
‘Your eyes, jackass. As an actual Asian person, maybe don’t copy my traits for your aesthetic.’
‘I have monolids too, asshole. You know, we had them first, evolution-wise.’

It’s true, but people who don’t know much about the Khoi don’t know that, and in America and Asia that’s most people. She goes viral for all the wrong reasons, even though she’s right.

“They didn’t come to me,” says Sacred Fire. “Maybe because I was a smaller account.”

“Your skin is lighter.”

“There’s that too. And I’m a man. And that… matters. Any place in the world. Though maybe it depends on how other people define a man.”

There’s another creator on this app - and most of the others - a man with a great AI filter. Lipstick and eyeliner and a dozen colorful wigs. The usual one, though, is quite like a certain idol singer’s. Green hair like hers, tied into twintails. He’s Khoi too. Just like them.

“That’s a bit generous, don’t you think?”

“Hatsubinki.” He groans. “See, most of you probably already know that hom*osexual acts have been legal in South Africa since the 90s. Lots of people outside Africa don’t know that. Earlier than parts of Europe, and they’re the ones who shoved the ban on us in the first place. But public opinion is still… not great in a lot of places here, and I’m not gay, but drawing pictures of gay sex and pretty men made people think I might be. And if you’re a girl, they think it’s bad for you to be drawing any sex.”

“Yeah, that’s a worldwide thing. Guys don’t like a girl liking anything about sex that she’s not having with them, and girls don’t like a girl who doesn’t keep to girl standards.” Holy Fire scowls. “Anywhere in the world.”

She’s right to say it. Besides Hatsubinki people who come for her are largely not African. Not black either by the looks of them…

‘Love how black people spend so much time telling us not to draw them with big lips and butts and then draw both themselves and us like this, huh? Do they really think Hatsune Miku’s that fat or can they just not recognise her as a woman without a couple of mattresses stuffed in her pants and top?’

‘I can see at a glance many demographics this content would offend. Please see this brief seventeen-page essay for further details.’

‘Kick the chair lol #die #DIEDIEDIEDIEDIE
‘Girl I know you DIDN’T just tell them black folk to hang themselves. feel like there’s a word for that…’

“Hatsubinki knew us in real life - well, he knew me in real life-”

“-and met me through her, when we did a public stream together.”

“He knew about my public account, and he must have found out about both our private ones. He was mad at me, and he told everyone.”

“The haters said it was what we deserved for drawing what we did. I think the American ones especially assumed it was just embarrassing for us, nothing worse.”

“I don’t think so. Some of them kept saying that even after we told them about… about… You know. And it can’t be that safe for all of them either, remember that what’s-it-called cult in California a few years back?”

“Ja-ne… At least they thought they were safer than us, though, and that counts for a lot.”

Another definition. Corrective Rape: a hate crime that involves raping someone because of their perceived sexual orientation or gender identity. Initially coined by Bernedette Muthien. Popularized by South African feminists. Far from unique to South Africa, but… but… this time it happens there again. And again. There’s more than one man he thought was his friend.

It’s almost the same with her, but there is no special term for when a woman is raped to punish her for overstepping, in the same way fish have no word for water.

“Do you remember those exclusionists?”

Holy Fire chokes and cries. “Which ones?”

‘So um… “Corrective rape” is a term coined by LESBIANS. It’s incredibly inappropriate for you to use the term if you’re not SGA.’

“It was so great. And now it isn’t. And that’s the worst part. It feels like I built this thing up - this wonderful pyramid - only now I’m trapped inside, in the dark, and the air is running out.” He giggles. “Weird thing to say about hentai drawings, but…”

“It’s easy to say something awful to someone else. It’s so easy. It’s easy to be brave until it’s you on the chopping block. And the messages. And the comments. And the calls keep coming. And you wish… sometimes you wish you could take it all back. That you’d never started at all. And you hate yourself. For hating this big, stupid thing you let become a part of you. And people laugh at you… when you try to explain.”

‘Um… look, dude, I’m on your side but if you’re seriously contemplating suicide over f*cking rape kink and incest art… maybe the internet ain’t for you lol’

She puts down her phone. He puts down his.

“Maybe that kid was right. We should go offline.”

“At least for the moment. Let the haters burn themselves out.”

And the Holy Fire Burns. And the Sacred Fire burns. And they burn out together. One by one and side by side.

“A large, destructive fire that spreads quickly over woodland or brush. Webb’s Dictionary. 2010. But, um… there’s another one too.”

The Wildfire is the smallest and sweetest. Golden glitter and puffy hair. Curls and swirls of lace and paint. Fifteen years old, she still carries the stuffed animal she holds in the picture of herself at twelve. A dog maybe. Under one arm.

“Historical.” She clears her throat. “A combustible liquid such as Greek fire that was readily ignited and difficult to extinguish, used especially in warfare.”

Instead of a spotlight, a movie fragment; the Wildfire as a tiny child, drawing and painting and sewing and modeling in clay, golden glitter on her skin in a messier way than her makeup will be later. The Hearthfire wipes her face, smiling, and embraces her.

“Mama couldn’t make it here today. She’s… she got hurt not too long ago. She sleeps a lot right now, but she’s gonna get better, I know. Now I can take care of myself so she’s not running around after me so much, and she’s not being hurt again.”

Kirinyaga. Kenya. She’s born in 2010. The shiny new generation. To a young mother. With no father around. She asks about him sometimes. Of course she does. And her mother Hearthfire comforts her with headpats and forehead kisses. And sometimes pretty lies.

“She told me he was dead. And I believed her. I had no reason not to.”

She's younger than Spitfire by a significant margin. And unlike him, her eyes are brown and her hair is brown and her skin has no hint of white to it. She never suspects. Never.

“It’s like with your mama, right, Manzo? People coming here from Europe. British soldiers. They weren’t rich but they were still British, and not long after it they left the country, so even if someone had wanted to do something no one could find them. So Mama didn’t try. And when she was sad about it, she told me she wasn’t, and pretty early on I knew she was lying but I didn’t know how to help her.”

She’s just a kid. The oldest in her generation. But that isn’t saying much. But she makes her mama happy… and that’s enough for now.

“And then I grew up.”

Not quite. Not entirely. The Wildfire is twelve years old.

“Mama used to work all the time. When I was little I’d just color in front of the TV. Or play with my dolls. Kid stuff. But I was getting older. Old enough to start taking classes online. And old enough to use the computer for other stuff…” She cringes, passing over Holy and Sacred with a glance.

The internet is weird and wonderful. She's too young to be seeing this, most of this, to search and play without restriction. But she’s not that young. And her mother isn’t home to check.

CocaKole
Kenya? I live in Lagos. Mainland. Police here aren’t very good. But I hear Kirinyaga is *full* full of soldiers. British ones.

“I didn’t know exactly what happened that time. Mama never told me. I just knew it must have been really, really bad. And, well, I started looking into the English people here. Especially the soldiers…”

Hearthfire comes home, tired from work as usual. Wildfire, clutching the half-made beginnings of her little toy dog, sidles up to her. Uh, Mama…? I found some stuff online which scared me. About soldiers…

Hearthfire comforts, holds her close. That’s why I don’t want you going outside alone, Enkai. It’s true. I’m sorry.

About that… Did my dad really die?

“She got mad about that, really mad. She didn’t hit me but she lifted her hand like she was going to. And I think that scared her, because she ran out and didn’t come back for a couple days. There was food in the house and everything, but… She got down on her knees and apologised when she got back, and I could tell she’d been hurt while she was out, and I didn’t wanna upset her again so I said nothing.”

And she says nothing when the Hearthfire locks herself in the bathroom and showers until even the dishwasher runs cold. That night she sleeps with the Wildfire curled up around her. And whimpers in her sleep. And the Wildfire says nothing. Even then.

“And then, um, I saw the video. I don’t think the people who showed me wanted to hurt me. They were kids like me, at least they said they were, and they said ‘hey, wanna see something really scary?’ and I thought they meant like a movie or something. Maybe they thought it was just from a movie. But I recognised my mama. And the video was dated - that time she ran out on me. I must have made her too mad to be careful…”

Wildfire runs to her mother, crying enough saltwater to damp both their sparks. Hearthfire weeps too, and tells her everything about the first time, and the latest, and every time for every woman she knows in between. The video shows faces. Hearthfire heard their names. Someone could have done something, and nobody did. Wildfire promises I will do something! She helps Hearthfire change her bandages and cooks for her, and Hearthfire thinks this is all of the something she meant.

“I knew where those men were stationed. Not all of them from the video were still there, but some…”

Where there’s smoke there’s fire. And there’s fire everywhere when Mama turns on the news. She doesn’t ask. She doesn’t look at the Wildfire even once. But that night, she sleeps all the way through.

“Mama said she wouldn’t hurt them. You said you couldn’t hurt that man. I’m not like her. I’m not like you. Maybe that makes me bad, but maybe I’m like Roho. Like a brushfire, taking out the bad growth when no one else will.”

And the Wildfire reignites the Hearthfire, and they burn.