Tom's Study, Vauquelin House
“It flows better in Mugrobi,” Nkemi said after a moment, wrinkling her nose. She looked at Anetol. “May I teach you?” She asked. If Anetol accepted, Nkemi would recite the phrase in Mugrobi, slow and patient; it tumbled soft like the pattering of a river or the whistling wind of a sandstorm, and washed over and around the consonants as if they were not there. Again, careful, not correcting so much as showing him the way to navigate the xs and ks.
They were familiar words; they were words offered in habit, in ritual. No Mugrobi prayed that there would be no storms; the Gods could not but shun such a foolish desire. Storms of all sorts came, whether of rains or sands or mankind. There was no choosing them, nor where they might strike; there was only the hope of sheltering in place until they passed, and, afterward, rebuilding that which could be rebuilt.
“Thank you,” Nkemi lifted her cup and saucer, and let Anetol fill it once more. Steam drifted and wound up into the cool air of the study, and she breathed it in deep, grateful for all the warmth which surrounded them.
She thought that Anetol was thinking the question over; the little deepening frown between his eyebrows said as much, the slow joining of the bright red slashes of hair. Whatever he thought did not please him; his hands were never quite still, but he managed them delicately, most of the time. They shuddered, a little more than usual; the cup overflowed, dark kofi lapping onto the saucer.
“It is a good omen,” Nkemi said with a little grin. “So long as one says the words. May your cup, too, overflow with the blessings of Roa.”
Nkemi did not feel a drift of cold, but Anetol shivered when he began to speak again, as if a breeze had crept in through the tight sealed glass and wood of his windows. She glanced over at the frost crawling against the glass, the slow white spreading, and back at the pink-cheeked incumbent before her
“No,” Nkemi shook her head a little at the question about Anaxi phasmonia. Not colorful places, Anetol said, and it was the Dives Nkemi thought of, mired in the gray fog of the river and the factories, all clinging together so there was little respite from it. She thought she could picture a phasmonia of houses made of gray smog, half-blurred in the distance, and she wondered who would wish for remembrance in such a place.
“I do not know that I have found...” Nkemi was quiet, choosing her words carefully once more, “the border,” she said, in a little more time, “between mourning the dead and celebrating the passing.” She curled up a little more; she took another sip of the too-thin, overbrewed kofi, and marveled at the wonder of it. “But I think your fingers have found the beating pulse of it. Why focus on the death rather than the life?”
Nkemi had heard the question posed the other way around by visitors to Thul Ka; she could not understand those who found Mugrobi funerals distasteful. We are sad, she had found herself telling one of them, careful and patient. But the sands of the time stand still for no one. Who that you love would wish you to dash the vessel of your life against the ground, and waste grains which you cannot recapture?
When Anetol had grinned, Nkemi had grinned too, easy and comfortable. He looked very well in the bright yellow scarf. She knew it inappropriate to say so, but she wished to tell him how lively he looked, so wreathed. Better than the grays which cast such deepness into skin, whether pale or dark. Better to celebrate, Nkemi knew, with a certainty too deep for words.