Awèlèwà by oyizafauziyyahali at Inkitt

CHAPTER ONE: THE DREAM THAT LEFT A MARK

It was one of those evenings, where the sky, heavy with gold, stretches low over the land like it’s trying to whisper a secret.

She had stepped into the sacred quiet of a courtyard, barefoot on sun-warmed stones, dressed in a beautiful buba and iro, her gele styled in an elegant way, and the ipele on her shoulder made her stand out, she had her wrists, legs and neck adorned with beautiful coral beads that radiated royalty, Around her the sound of drums echoed faintly, as if the ancestors were humming.

She didn’t come here for anything in particular. She was simply following something unseen, like a thread in the wind.

And there he was.

Standing still in the orange haze of the setting sun.

A man tall, still, as if carved from silence.

In his indigo agbada, adorned with coral beads, he looked as though he had stepped through time, through fire, through something sacred.

His eyes met hers like he already knew her, Not a flicker of surprise, only recognition.

Not the kind born from sight, but from soul.

“You’ve come,” he said softly, as if the wait was over.

She tilted her head, curious but unafraid.

“Do I know you?”

He smiled slow, the kind of smile that doesn’t ask to be understood, only felt, you’ve known me in your dreaming. I just hadn’t arrived yet. A wind passed between them, not cold, not warm, just….full.

Time slowed, the drums quieted, the air held its breath.

He stepped closer, not too near, only enough that she could see the quiet reverence in his face like he wasn’t meeting a woman, but a memory.

A prophecy, A promise.

“You carry the light,” he said.

“The kind that makes even warriors kneel.”

She didn’t need to reply.

She just stood there, in the fading light, knowing somehow, she’d been found.

Home…

He offered her his hand,not like a stranger asking for trust, but like someone finally receiving something long waited for.

She hesitated for half a breath, not out of fear, but awe. When their fingers touched, it felt like the world exhaled.

“What’s your name?” She asked.

“They call me Adélọlá,” he said.

“But for you, it will always be more than that.”

His voice was deep, and calm at the same time, you could hear the wisdom in it.

They both walked slowly through the courtyard garden, feet silent on the stone. Around them, the petals of yellow alamanda vines curled toward twilight. A small brass lamp lit the corner where shadows waited.

“You feel familiar,” she whispered.

“Like music I forgot I once danced to.”

“That’s because we’ve met where names don’t exist.

In the quiet places…

In dreams…

In the spaces between prayers.”

Her gaze softened.

“And why now? Why this moment?”

He smiled gently, his thumb brushing the edge of her wrist not possessively, but like he was reading something sacred from her pulse.

“Because you were ready to see.

And I was ready to be seen.”

Silence again…Comfortable…Whole.

And then he asked:

“Awelewa, what do you fear most?”

She blinked. No one had ever spoken her name like that, like a verse.

“That this is a dream,” she admitted. “And I’ll wake up and forget how this felt.”

Adélọlá leaned in, voice quiet:

“Then let me leave you with something that even dreams can’t take.”

He pulled a small carved pendant from beneath his beads, obsidian and moonstone woven together. He placed it in her palm.

“This holds no magic,” he said, “except the memory of this night. And the promise: I will always find you in every version of this world.” He said, helping her wear it around her neck.

And in that moment, it wasn’t about love yet.

It was about recognition.

The kind that exists before words, before lifetimes, before even the stars were hung in the sky.

She didn’t need to ask what would happen next.

She just stood there the night curling gently around her shoulders knowing that something true had begun.

The golden light was gone...

In its place was early sun, pale and shy, slipping through the cracks in her roof. Her fingers curled around empty air.

No pendant…

She sat up slowly, still half inside the dream.

But this was no ordinary dream.

It was clearer than the others…Sharper…Whole.

The drums still whispered in her chest.

She reached up, brushing her neck where the pendant had lain. Her skin tingled faintly, just beneath the moon-star birthmark under her ear.

Her grandmother’s voice floated from outside the hut singing a low oríkì as she ground herbs. The scent of crushed lemongrass and ashanti pepper filled the morning air.

Awelewa rose, dressed herself, wrapped her iro, and tied her gele loosely and then stepped out of the hut.

Her grandmother was seated on a small stool beside a worn grinding stone, ìyọ̀ and ewe ewuro spread before her in calabashes.

Awelewa knelt beside her and touched the earth with one hand in greeting.

“Ẹ kú àárọ̀, Ìyá mi.” (Good morning, my mother.)

The old woman looked at her, smile soft but eyes sharp with knowing.

“Káárọ̀, ọmọ mi.” (Morning, child of mine.)

She paused, watching her granddaughter for a breath longer than usual.

“Your eyes are holding dreams again.”

Awelewa looked down, fingers brushing invisible dust from her wrapper.

“Not dreams, Ìyá… something heavier than dreams.”

Her grandmother nodded as if knowing, hurry up now with your chores before the sun becomes hot in the sky, and then she returned back to humming and grinding.

But this time, her oríkì changed tune.

She moved through her morning as usual…bathing, sweeping, greeting the elders, but her mind echoed with indigo and gold, and words spoken between breaths.

Later, she joined several girls her age(more of acquaintances than friends) they walked together to the stream, pots balanced on the side of their waists. They laughed and gossiped about suitors, wrappers, and the price of yams.

Awelewa smiled faintly, saying little.

The dream still lived inside her bones.

She reached the stream first, knelt in the shallows, clear water flowed over smooth stones, she bent low to dip her pot.

And there where the light kissed the current, something caught her eye, her eyes widen in surprise, the pendant, obsidian dark and glimmering.Her breath caught.

She reached out slowly and lifted it from the water, it was cool on her palm, real and heavy with something deeper than explanation. She held it to her chest, heart hammering.

If it was a dream, then why had it left something behind?

The wind stirred the trees gently.

The air whispered not in sound, but knowing.

“I will always find you in every version of this world.”

The world around her blurred for a moment just her, the stream, and the knowing hush of something ancient. The air felt thick, as if the ancestors were watching.

“Awelewa,” a voice said behind her, sharp but not unkind. “Are you alright?”

She turned quickly, startled.

It was Adunni, the girl with too many suitors and not enough patience. Her head wrap was pale brown, her coral earrings glistened when she moved, and her wide eyes narrowed with suspicion.

“You look like you just saw iwin,” Adunni said, tilting her head. “A ghost.”

Awelewa swallowed and forced a soft smile. “Mo wà dáadáa, Adunni. Kò sí nǹkan.”

I’m fine, Adunni. It’s nothing.

She tucked the pendant quickly into the fold of her wrapper, pressing it flat against her side like a secret too sacred for air.

Adunni gave her a sideways look but shrugged. “Hmm. Maybe the sun is too hot for you this morning. Or maybe you’ve finally started thinking about your future husband.”

Awelewa only smiled faintly and turned back to the stream.

She filled her pot with cool, rippling water and lifted it gracefully onto her head. They stepped out of the streambank together, the path dusty under their bare feet.

The girls chatted lightly as they walked, the rhythm of their steps matching the music of their gossip.

“Do you know Aróyé’s daughter is getting married next moon?” one said.

Adunni scoffed. “To that lazy hunter? Ọlọ́run májẹ̀! If my father ever tried to give me to such a man, I would run into the forest and marry a tree spirit.”

They all laughed except Awelewa.

She walked in silence, her heart still humming with Adélọlá’s voice, the weight of the pendant a quiet echo against her skin.

She had touched something no one else could see.

And though she walked among them,

she was no longer fully with them.

The sun had long slipped behind the trees, and the night air carried the scent of wood smoke, palm oil, and earth. Crickets sang softly in the dark, their rhythm steady, like old spirits humming lullabies.

Inside their small compound hut, lit by the gentle glow of a clay oil lamp, Awelewa and her grandmother sat cross-legged on raffia mats, sharing a quiet meal.

Between them sat a shallow wooden tray holding a steaming bowl of ẹ̀bà beside thick, deep-red ẹ̀fọ́ riro, rich with locust beans, palm oil, and dried fish. A gourd of cool water rested nearby.

They ate without hurry, using their right hands to pinch and scoop, the kind of silence they shared wasn’t heavy, it was the silence of familiarity, of long companionship.

Her grandmother, Ìyá Ọlá, was a thin woman wrapped in a faded brown wrapper, her face lined with time, her eyes sharp as ever, her headscarf was tied simply, but with grace.

After a while, Awelewa swallowed slowly and said, “Ìyá mi… mo lá álá ní òru ànà.”

I had a dream last night.

Ìyá Ọlá did not look up immediately she reached for a piece of dried fish, tore it carefully, then placed it in her mouth. She chewed, swallowed, and only then did she speak.

“Hmm. The kind that leaves you quiet all day?”

Awelewa nodded.

“I met someone. A man. It felt like I’ve seen him before…

He spoke to me.

Called me by name, gave me something.”

She reached into the fold of her wrapper and brought out the pendant, slowly opening her palm.

The obsidian and moonstone caught the firelight, glinting softly like it remembered the stars.

Ìyá Ọlá paused. Her eyes narrowed not in fear, but in observation.

She leaned closer, not touching the pendant, only looking.

“So… it followed you out of the dream,” she said quietly.

“Ala tí a ṣọ̀tẹ́lẹ̀ kìí tètè kúro l’ókàn”

A dream that is prophetic does not fade quickly from the mind.

She leaned back with a sigh, washing her hand in the calabash of water and wiping her hand on her wrapper.

“I knew this day would come,” she muttered. “You’ve always been different. Even before you could speak, your eyes would follow shadows no one else could see. And the dreams…”

Awelewa lowered her gaze.

“I never hid them from you.”

“You never did,” her grandmother agreed gently. “But I tried to hide them from others. Me and the oníṣègùn, we gave you herbs, baths, chants, prayed at the shrine. All to quiet the dreams.”

“They never stopped,” Awelewa whispered. “They only became louder. Clearer.”

“I know, ọmọ mi,” her grandmother said, voice softening further. “But people do not understand what they fear. It is why the girls do not come close to you, it is why mothers whisper behind your back.”

“Because I dream?”

“Because you see. And because something old walks with you. That mark on your neck… it is not just from the womb. It is a symbol of the ancestors.”

They sat in silence again, only the sound of crickets and the occasional pop from the oil lamp filling the space between them.

Ìyá Ọlá finally said, “We will go and see Bàbá Adétomi in the morning.”

Awelewa blinked. “The divine healer?”

Her grandmother nodded.

“If the dream is no longer just a dream… if it begins to take shape in the waking world… then the old ways must answer.”

She turned to her, eyes both stern and soft.

“Àlá tó bá ti pé á máawá sí ìmú se”

When a dream lingers too long, it may become reality.

Later that night, after the lantern had been snuffed and the village settled into the hush of stars, Awelewa lay on her woven mat, the gentle creak of crickets outside weaving through the night air.

The moonlight slipped in through the thatched roof, casting faint lines across her skin like ancestral fingerprints.

In her palm rested the pendant.

She turned it gently between her fingers, the way a child might study a fallen feather or a secret stone. The obsidian felt heavier now, and the moonstone shimmered faintly, as though still holding the breath of Adélọlá’s voice.

Across the room, her grandmother sat on her own mat, watching.

“Ó tó, Omo mí mu kúrò”

That’s enough, my child…put it away…

Awelewa looked up, reluctant.

“I keep thinking… if I just hold it long enough, maybe it will carry me back to him.”

Ìyá Ọlá’s voice was calm, but firm. “Ojó alé á máa șàánú, sùgbán á kò gbọ́dọ̀ ș’àfojúdi rè”

The night is merciful, but it must not be taken for granted.

She adjusted the edge of her wrapper and added, “Sleep. We rise early. The path to Bàbá Adétomi’s compound is not short.”

Awelewa nodded slowly. “Yes, Ìyá.”

She wrapped the pendant in a small piece of cloth and tucked it beside her head. She closed her eyes, willing the weight of the day to fall away.

But sleep did not come.

She turned once, twice, listened to the rhythm of her grandmother’s breath, already even and deep.