#SKIN DEEP ORG SKIN#

Over her right arm, the mist snaked over her dark skin, condensing into white lines that coiled into symbols before becoming part of the skin itself. The flame in the middle of the summoning circle flared, and like lightning, the dibia swept down, bottling the flame into the empty vial. “Then, Kamsi, your bond with arcana is formed.” He unscrewed the cap and a soft mist enveloped the room. I saw truth swirl within the glass’s frosted walls. “I’ll name you Ifenekuuke.” Kamsi took me in her hands, stroking my shell ever so softly. As they caught the light, the colours caught alight, swirling with phasing rays of green and gold. Brilliant marks of yellow and red lines radiated from the centre of each plate of my dark shell. I was not much smaller than a baby turtle, and my legs still wobbled as I tried to get used to this new world. “This is you!” Kamsi’s eyes twinkled with the declaration.

It had to be so, because even if the arcana in this world was born of the mirror world, its reflection during the summoning ritual would only weaken the interstices between worlds. A small chipped mirror lay on its surface, facedown. Her small hands trembled with excitement as she placed me on the table top that served as the altar. The summoning circle was constructed of white chalk, with a single miscoloured flame flickering at its centre. “Kamsi, take the mmụọ to the mirror to establish its self-awareness.” “How curious,” he said again, and I heard his decades of experience in the depths of his baritone. The Ichie cap on his head fell to his shoulder - the only coloured item on his person. He was a wizened thing, but his back was straight and the seams of his suit fit his thin bones like a second skin. “A tortoise.” It was the dibia who performed this ritual who’d spoken on their behalf. They had not expected the ritual to work at all, and now that it had, they did not expect the mmụọ to be so.

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Their expressions had frozen over their faces, like they had forgotten how to speak.

They stood beside the summoning altar, unmoving. Rather, it was joy lit in the pits of my gut. Her hands - they were so small then, yet so calloused - reached under my forelimbs and she lifted me into the sky with an ebullition of glee so intoxicating, it reverberates through my bones till this day. Her smile was warm milk, her laughter the essence of happiness. I remember the way the light from the incandescent bulb fell on her face, outlining her dark skin in paint strokes of shimmering gold that twinkled right into her large doe eyes. Her round eyes that swelled in curious wonder and innocent inquisition. My first memory of the Light is her face.

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Skin deep org