Niki’s POV

When I fell, I hit my head and as I lay on the tiled kitchen floor, I was thinking about how my head hurt so bad, along with the rest of my face. I closed my eyes, thinking it was the end.

I woke up in a barren land. Everything was brown. Shades and hues and tints of it. The ground was loose clay that I could grab easily without breaking my fingernails. The land stretched off for miles without anything to be seen. No buildings, no animals no people, just me alone in this place. Even the sky was brown, it was like an overhead stretch of brown that was so light it looked a little pink.

Two things terrified me; first was there was no sun. No celestial body at all graced the sky, it was completely empty. The second thing was there was no wind. It was both eerie and sensible. This whole place was filled with loose sand, if there was wind it would just enter people’s eyes, in this case my eyes.

I walked around for a while, hoping to see something, but there was nothing. I sat down, a bit exhausted, sand coating my sandals and feet and since I was sitting on the ground, my bottom. I thought of screaming for help but that would be stupid. I was sweating but I couldn’t use my hands to wipe the sweat because I would just be spreading clay all over my body. I lifted my shirt to wipe my face then realized I wasn’t wearing any of the clothes I own. I turned it over in my fingers, wondering what the heck this was. This wasn’t even Mike’s. It was a single off-white smock that was inches away from my toes and left my arms bare. It was like a sun dress, but without the sun.

As I was debating the fashion choices of the people who gave me these clothes, I heard a sucking sound. I looked up and there in front of me was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen without makeup. Her body was the color of mahogany tree bark but smooth and gleaming like the stones at the sea side. She was tall and very masculine, not a drop of fragility in her. She was covered with beads and white chalk markings of symbols I did not recognize, except the Gye Nyame symbol that I remembered from history lessons, that was on her chest. She had on brightly colored kente cloth draped on her like how the men at church did during traditional wear day and funerals and it was gleaming so bright I had to squint. She had a proud face and a prominent jaw and cheek bones that would make a grown man envious. Her lips were big and plum and her eyes were big and prodding, as though she could see through your soul.

Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

The most interesting thing about her was her hair, it was put into her bun high on her head and it was continuously bunned with beads until it was like a tower on top of her head. Whenever she moved, her beads jingled about her in mesmerizing chimes.

So, this is what a goddess looked like.

“Are you Nikita Asante?” when she spoke, it was loud and proud and coupled with her very strong accent, she sounded every bit like a war general.

“Yes” my voice cracked, woefully inadequate as compared to hers.

“Do you know who I am?”

“No”

She lifted her chin and raised her eyebrows, as though surprised at my answer. How would I know her? She’s a goddess. The only goddesses I knew of were the Greek goddesses not African ones. I then realized how uneducated I was in African culture, I didn’t know any Ghanaian goddesses, to even talk of African ones. I would not blame her if she banished me from her presence immediately.

“I suppose it is expected” she turned away from me, looking out into the horizon and giving me a look of her legs. They were muscled and huge but with the way her motions were fluid, it seemed impossible that she could move the way she did.

I noticed something quite odd about her, at first, I thought that since she was a goddess, it would be odd but now that I saw her side profile, I knew exactly what was different about her – she had masculine and feminine attributes. She walked so gracefully, like a leaf in a weak wind, but her physique and mannerisms, even her voice, were uncharacteristically male. Her hair, and her face were those of a female, but yet her features were bold and proud, like a males’. I had never seen anything like her; it was like she was two, but one.

“Nikita,” I whipped from looking at her legs to looking at her face, hoping that she did not notice what I was thinking “In this realm, there are no secrets, no hidden thoughts. Nothing is hidden, all one must do is to ask” I nodded, too embarrassed to speak “Do you know who you are?”

“I am a witch” I said immediately.

Well, I am, aren’t I? It didn’t matter what context that my witchcraft was taken, whether as a form to oppress me, understand me or empower me, I was a witch. The goddess however scoffed at the idea.

“In the days of old, we ruled” she said longingly, in a singsong manner “We were not called witches…” she said the word with disgust “We were medicine men, forces of good. We were heroes, saviors, divinators. We were masters, teachers, rulers, descendants of the sun, the moon the stars. The commanders of wind, fire, water and air” she turned her gaze to me and looked at me with such passion that made me weep “We are not just witches Nikita, any one stupid enough to understand words can be one. We are gods”