If The Soil Could Talk| A Behlo Story by LamontPounds at Inkitt

Summary

Inspired by African Mythology Logline: In a mythic world, unseen hands warp morality, enforce conformity, and erode a people's identity, while a hidden enemy, unable to bear the sun, seeks to steal their skin and walk beneath its rays. Series Overview: If the Solid Could Talk is a five-part epic, envisioned as either an animated or live-action series. Over five seasons, the story follows Behlo's lineage, uncovering his ancestral roots, forgotten gods, and the mythic forces threatening to erase everything his people hold sacred. This first installment sets the stage, introducing the ancestral stakes, the emergence of faceless adversaries, and the early signs of a coming war-- not just for territory, but for the soul of a people. Core Questions What must be sacrificed to keep a history, a culture, and a people from vanishing? How do you fight erasure when your identity, integrity, and traditions are under siege? In Development Storyboards are actively underway for both an animated feature adaptation and a serialized webcomic format.

Genre: Fantasy

Author: LamontPounds

Status: Ongoing

Chapters: 3

Rating: n/a

Age Rating: 13+

Note From Author

If The Soil Could Talk | a Behlo Story

Created by: Lamont Pound | Prince Smith

Note from Author:

This is a surreal story grounded in Black identity, enriched with fantasy, myth, and elements unbound by anything but emotion and thought.

It began with questions. The biggest one was: How can a people hold onto and reclaim their identity when powerful forces work to erase, distort, or control it, bending it to serve their own ends?

This story doesn’t fit neatly into a single category. Some may fixate on one element, the African myths, the folklore, the surrealism, but the heart of it lies in Black identity, shaped by a specific culture, perspective, and lived experience.

It’s a reflection of me, a Black kid raised with a fragmented history, who sought healing through story and an understanding of our importance in the world that so often tries to erase or distort it.

This project has been an exploration of self, an attempt to tap into something deeper and divine, a reflection on who I am, how I see the world, how the world sees us, and how those reflections shape who we become.

Along the way, I’ve read, researched, and asked questions to better understand African culture, driven by a desire to incorporate its mythologies and folktales. But I’m not claiming to tell the story of an entire continent I only know in fragments. I’m not here to speak for its history, traditions, or way of life, only to convey the deep feelings these stories have stirred in me, and the gift of wanting to honor and weave them into the narratives I create today.

This is my journey: a personal process of learning, feeling, and healing. A return to why I started writing, sitting amongst mirrors, finding the joy, sitting with the pain, and seeing the beauty within it all. To explore and create the stories I longed to see as a child. Stories that reflect our complexity, our spirit, our beauty, and our place in the world.

Let the story be what it is. Let it be felt, not just understood, not confined, but flowing. A free expression of identity, memory, and imagination all told through a fantastical setting.

I am writing a feeling. I hope you feel it too. Thank you. With love.

-Lamont Pound