Graves Library of Vul

Long ago, days before the first farms were made, there lived many different Hominids at the basis of Lake Turkana. This was long before the lake ever got the nickname Jade Sea and longer before fishing became taboo. It was a time when Mammoths, Saber Tooth Tigers, and Auroch roamed the world with the nameless progenitors of the Giraffe, Camel, and Dogs.

At this time, a homo sapiens couple with a third on the way traversed down a steep hill of big dark brown stones. The stones acted like cliffsides to a waterfall of bright, hot, baish sand. The man’s dark chest was bare aside from a knife of smelted copper that was sheathed on the strap of his quiver. On the wrap that covered his waist existed a portable stool that the people of this land would later call an ekisholong.

As he walked down from the hot, scalding sand to one of the rocks below, he set his stool on the ground. He opened his arms towards his wife to help her down from the slightly cooler rocks that she was resting upon. As she was gently placed down by her husband, the small dreads of her soil-colored hair flopped onto her face. Her husband lovingly moved the beaded hair back as he kissed her forehead. The woman chuckled as her skin glowed like the life in her fluorite green eyes.

The two pause and stare at each other long enough for the tide of rolling hot sand to cover the man’s feet and half-bury the stool his wife was elevated upon. A clink is heard, and the man breaks away from the moment to see a small bead from some unnamed ancestor. He bent down, picked up the bead, and showed it to his wife.

“ This would go great for another necklace,” the man said.

The woman tilted her head as her eyes looked up to tell the man, “Really?” as he had no choice but to look down at the tower of necklaces on his spoiled wife.

“ I guess I don’t have to make another one. If I keep making them, I’ll cover up your smile,” the man said as he gave a goofy smirk.

The woman rolled her eyes at his smile and gave him a slight push. The sand that buried his feet luckily kept him anchored and prevented the woman he loved from tripping. She caught herself and stepped off the stool. She tried to grab it, but the baby prevented her from doing anything besides touching the ekisholong with her fingertips. She stubbornly struggled as she asked, “Are we ready to go now, Abidemi? The Auroch is going to get away at this rate.”

“ We scared it pretty good; It’s probably trying to catch his breath. The trail is still in the sand. We can still find it and chase it till it collapses or bleeds out from the arrow wound,“ Abidemi said.

“ I still don’t understand why we’re going this slow. Is this why it takes you and the other men days to come back?” the woman asked.

“ Yes dear, the animals are so much faster than us, yet they can’t walk as far. You think you’re taking too many breaks, you haven’t seen how many breaks a pregnant atlas bear has to take,” Abidemi reassured.

“ Please tell me you didn’t hunt a bear and her cub,” the woman said with sadness in her voice as their unborn baby kicked in sympathy.

“ Enitan, It’s just nature. We need food just as much as they do. It’s nothing personal. If it makes you feel better we give our respects soon after. We let nothing go to waste,” Abidemi said as he held his teary-eyed wife close.

“ Maybe that’s why that bear attacked the tribe. Maybe it wanted revenge?” Enitan said as she tried not to sob. Trying to save water for her and the baby who isn’t doing her any favors. It kicked blindly and with fury. Abidemi rubbed her back.

“ It could be, either way, we promised the tribe that if something were to happen, we would meet them at the lake. There should be a cave nearby. Let’s take you two there and I’ll come back with the Auroch okay?” Abidemi said as he wiped her tears as his grizzly brown eyes told her that it was going to be okay.

“ Alright, I don’t want to slow you down too much now. Just… be careful, “said Enitan as she pulled Abidemi close.

“ I will, now let’s get going, my Spinosa,” said Abidemi as he carried her and the baby bridal style to the cave down the hill. The sand graciously helped them slide down to it as they descended downwind to the safe haven.

In the cave resided a girl with a receded forehead and reaching jaw. The girl was a few inches shorter than the couple. Her right leg shriveled, crippling her to a leaning slope. The girl saw the strangers, and her primal screech alerted the couple of her presence. Instinctively, due to the feral screams and the aggravating uncanniness of the Neanderthal before them; Abidemi pulls out his knife and pushes Enitan back. Abidemi’s body is ready to move forward and strike at the unfamiliarity in front of him as Enitan holds him back frozen by the familiarity between the two species.

Before drastic actions could be taken, three other Neanderthals arrived deep from the cave. The oldest man with muscles big and strong as boulders lifted a spear up at the homo sapien couple. The oldest woman, who was slimmer than Enitan and most homo sapien women at the time, surprised Abidemi by slapping his hand and knocking the knife out of it. The two struggled as the boy a few years younger than Abidemi reached over to his screeching sister. He gently rocked the girl, humming sweetly as she calmed down. Once calm, the boy cuts a slice of fruit with his flint knife. The girl happily exclaims the word “Fruit!” over and over again. Her chants cause everyone else to calm down. As the boy’s smile calmed the girl down, the mother sighed in relief and let go to look forward to the couple.

“ I’m sorry about Abeni; she’s very timid. I’m Alemayehu. Aamadu is her father. Inyene is her brother. We’re looking for our son Kayode. Inyene said he lost them in the cave, and we were trying to find him. We’re very worried that our baby boy is hurt. Can you help us find him?” Alemayehu pleaded desperately to the strangers.

Abidemi and Enitan looked at each other sympathetically. Abidemi then spoke, “ I am sorry about your son. We lost our tribe recently, so we understand your pain. We are currently chasing an Auroch, and we haven’t eaten in two days. I was hoping it would feed us.”

“ We have fruit, if you help find son, we give you fruit,” said Aamadu.

“ Father, we don’t have enough fruit to last three days. You can’t give any to them,” Inyene said, stroking his sister’s hair.

“ If you don’t have enough food, my husband can provide meat if he gets to the Auroch. I can help you look for your son,” said Enitan.

Abidemi went to pick up his knife for his quest as Inyene walked in his way. “You could hurt Abeni with this weird knife. Take mine to skin and cut the Auroch,” Inyene said in a hushed tone as he handed his used flint knife to Abidemi.

Abidemi sighed with frustration at the kid’s insistence. He looked over at Enitan and his unborn child and smiled. When he looked back, he saw the same face on Inyene as his sister. Abidemi, assured he headed out to find the beast.

Inyene soon followed his father, who had already gone to search for his lost son deeper in the cave. Alemayehu smiled at Enitan and helped her into the cave. She then asked the expecting woman, “ So how long are you? It must be any day now.”

“ It’s been 18 months; We’ve been expecting for a while. Some of the women in our tribe have had children and are about to have them again. I don’t know if the baby is ever going to come,” said Enitan, who rubbed her belly patiently.

“ So you hope for a miracle? That’s how we were with our oldest. My first two were stillborn, so when Abeni was born, we didn’t care about how she was. She was perfect to us. Our tribe began to talk about her as well. She was always different, so we were seen as outsiders. We finally left after Inyene had a hunting accident with our chief,” Alemayehu reminisced.

“ I’m sorry; it must have been tough to leave. It was hard for us as well,” said Enitan.

“ No, not really, We never got along with the chief. He wanted us to get rid of our daughter as she couldn’t provide for the tribe, and he thought she wasted food. Our sons disagreed with him. Kayode always joked that he would be a better leader than him, though I think he was jealous of his horde of food. I remember when the boys would feed wolves to try and get them to serve him like us to the chief. It was a shame when they passed. Inyene said they were attacked by a bear, but when we found the carcasses, they had knife wounds. Someone must have tried to skin them before we got there,” Alemayehu said as nostalgia rushed over her. She looked over at Enitan, who was lost in thought of what her own child would be like.

“ Why did you two leave your tribe?” Alemayehu asked Enitan.

“ Hm? Oh… Akuj gave me a vision of a bear attacking our tribe. I tried to warn everyone, but they started to think I was a liar and a thief due to my long pregnancy. They thought I lied about it to get more food and stopped believing I was his Emuron,” Enitan explained.

“It must have been hard to see,” said Alemayehu as she hugged and comforted Enitan.

“ We found him!” Shouted Inyene.

As the women followed the sound, they went down a path next to a large cavernous cliff. The hominids see a flattened corpse of Kayode at the bottom. On the corpse laid the first knife wound on a human. Alemayehu grieved as her fallen son laid before her. She picked up the boy as her tears fell like rain. Aamadu used to the bodies of the fallen from hunts gone wrong and sickness, gets curious and puts his long flint knife against the wound on his son’s back. Comparing them and sizing the two. The cuts are rough like flint, but his knife is too big to do this.

“ Inyene, give me knife,” Aamadu said.

The boy handed the borrowed knife to his father, who compared it to the knife marks on the corpse. The copper cuts too smoothly compared to his flint knife, as its entry marks are slimmer. Left with no clear answers as to who could have done this, he threw the knife back, enraged. For once, the pain of loss had afflicted him; something unnatural had taken his son.

Uncomfortable with the sight in front of her and an unborn baby that kicked like a beating drum, Enitan leaned against a wall. Alemayehu sees this and takes her out of the cave, trying to escape the reality that her son was taken away from her. As they left, the stoic Aamadu cried and grieved while Inyene put a quiet hand on his father’s shoulder. No expression to speak of.

Once at the mouth of the cave, Enitan yawned as the kicking baby had worn her down. Her body was ordered to rest as Alemayehu, with too many other thoughts in mind, grabbed the ekisholong that Abidemi had left and set it down for Enitan to rest her head upon. The mother-to-be dreamed of herself in a grassy field full of life and with humans of different skins resting in tranquility with bountiful food. Children played in the grass without a care in the world as the parents had nothing else to do but watch.

Enitan felt the baby kick, which caused the sky to bruise red as the clay orange clouds began to cry tears of blood. The people began to run away in fear as the planet Mars haunted the sky as their new morning star. A cult of 300 soldiers appeared beyond time and space. Some were foot soldiers clad in bronze armor with spears. Some were marines with M27s, trench guns, and muskets with diverse uniforms and emblems to show their impressive rank despite the fact that they meant nothing to the mother of their god-to-be.

One of the blood drops fell onto Enitan’s forehead and began to march under her breast, where she began to feel pain as her child kicked like a battering ram. She fell on her knees as the soldiers began to plunder the bountiful food, which they transmuted into MREs that they then stacked as an altar. Next, they grabbed the scared civilians and dragged them to the center. Lighting struck and ignited the MREs as the civilians quickly starved. Their weak moans leaked mustard gas that poisoned the grass and burned Enitan’s eyes. The suffering brought a gun-black crow to Enitan’s right shoulder and a red/green hummingbird to Enitan’s left.

As the child’s birth became imminent, a battle began to take place in the heavens. Sirens screamed as the sky hailed shrapnel and rain black blood from the navy of planes that flew above. They are then brushed away like leaves in the wind when atomic bombs begin to go off. The mushroom clouds melted off the skin of the 300 soldiers, leaving them as an army of nationless skeletons.

The cult didn’t have time to take care of their physical and mental scars as Enitan’s water broke. This caused a metal axe to crack open the sky, and the wraiths Phobos and Deimos fell down from heaven with an army of Hipag. They possessed and stirred the minds of these unknown soldiers, instructing them like the officers who trained them. Bullets pierced through armor passed down by generations, and swords cut through kevlar made by nations and ideals, all of which they were willing to die for.

Once the battle died down, two men were left: a knight from the west and a ronin from the east. The two lost without masters and codes got ready to engage in combat as they snapped back to reality from their adrenaline high by the sounds of Enitan’s delivery. The two pawns of opposing sides walked to her, ready to usurp their king for the stolen honor they only had in their war stories.

The woman curled up, instinctively using her body as a shield as the two prepared to end things. With no choice, the baby burst from his mother’s head, fully grown with a bronze demon mask and an iron mace in his right hand to make up for his missing left hand that was covered by his Atlas bear pelt cape. At the same time, a fiery red horse with a white mane burst from Enitan’s stomach. The horse covered Enitan with a jade-green robe of a former human. The horse then carried her mother’s wounded body on her back as her brother got on her. Enitan held on to him as his dark skin felt like cold iron. He raised his mace hand as his fallen soldiers rose again with new falcon wings.

The child rallied his valkyries as they charged forward. Forced to hold on, Enitan looked to her side and saw a stampede of tanks led by 18-year-old bandits and mercenaries who destroyed farming villages for no other reason than their own convenience. Leaving only the children to bond with them in their further atrocities as they forget about their dying fathers and raped mothers who sacrificed their lives for their homes. In the next 3 months, the children would become savages and play games with the soon-to-be corpses of their victims, all while they catch the raining blood with their tongues like the children they used to be.

The platoon continued to ride as Enitan saw countless wars. Each time she blinked, the technology advanced more and more. To the point where the wars were fought on computers and raced far beyond her or anyone’s sight. Her vision blurred from the blood lost as her son jumped into an evaporated moat that had become a trench for the enemy soldiers. His army slaughtered the trench men without mercy as the exploding mines and grenades did nothing but keep Enitan awake.

From the trenches, they made their way to a castle that tied the sky to the earth, where a nameless king resided. With a single swing from his mace, the child beheaded the king. Light is brought into this world as the men rejoice in victory. The valkyries handed their new king money, food, and power while he handed them new technology, medicine, and half-truths. It bonded the soldiers together like the strongest adhesive but distanced them from the people who served him more like a hero than a king.

Enitan is set down as a woman with the face of a lion healed her. Once she is brought back to life, she is given the right to walk around unburdened by the boiling conflict that was inside her. She saw the child trenched in his bear pelt, sharpening a copper knife. His face looked just like Inyene’s.

“ What did you do? What did I just see? I-It was horrible,” Enitan asked as she shrunk back.

“ I lived, I did my duty, and cleansed the weak from the world. I redistributed resources and solved conflicts while laying seeds for more. My conquest raised a crop of comradery. Those burdened by the exploits of their strategist and scientist enlighten heroes of true valor and honor. More so than politicians who hide behind empty words and use my name for their greed and ego to oppress and enslave their fellow man. I gave the common folk a new puzzle for priests to solve. As the people work together to establish bills and rights that should have always been. Even if my service is not appreciated, I served my planet well by my oath to the laws of natural selection. I have removed the weak and mended the overgrowth. In this sacrifice, I only ask this from you, Mother: When I am gone, when humanity finally learns its lessons, you will give me the same name as my sister. As without me, the world can’t appreciate her, and she’ll never climb higher to reach her throne in Utopia,” said the man before her with a mechanical voice that boomed with fervor.

She looked confused and nodded, trembling. Her son leaned over and whispered his sister’s name. She said the new name as the horse walked towards her and picked up her mother. She leads her mother down the castle as they see people rebuilding. Some are old, with scars and haunting questions about the battle, and others are young, with only stories and answers for the events. The children are strong, smart, and kind like their parents before them, but in a different light, one that shines like iron instead of copper. The children wave to Enitan as she makes it to the ocean. The horse then turned herself into a canoe and drifted away from Valhalla into the primordial sea of the veterans and casualties’ collective unconscious.

They drifted further still as Enitan woke up to see two species of ants fighting right next to her, with violence and brutality no different from the men in her dreams. Some even collected the opposing ants to serve as slaves for their larva colony. She then heard arguing. She looked up and saw Inyene trying to grab a satchel of fruit from Abidemi.

“ You didn’t bring us any meat! This isn’t for you! Let it go!” Inyene said.

“ Inyene! Let them go! They need it just as much as us! Well just have to cut back on Abeni’s rations. It’s what your brother would have wanted,” Pleaded Alemayehu.

Upon hearing his mother’s solution, he pulled out the copper knife and slashed it at Abidemi’s chest. Abidemi dropped the food and stepped back, grabbing the flint knife that Inyene had given him earlier. Aamadu saw the flint knife and pulled up his spear as Alemayehu went to protect Abeni.

Abeni pointed to the flint knife and exclaimed, “Fruit!”. Her words, this time, solved the puzzle of the knife wounds as Aamadu reflexively pulled out his flint knife and cut Inyene’s hand like he was about to put down an animal. With the tables turned, he looks over to his sister, who is horrified at her brother’s snarl. She hid behind her mother, who didn’t recognize her son. Inyene reaches his hand out to them, but it is stopped by his father, who pushes him back. He turns to see Abidemi ready to put him down. Inyene shoves him out of his way as he flees the cave.

“ I can track him down for you,” Abidemi said, trying to help in any way.

“ Just… take the fruit and leave… Your charity was enough,” Alemayehu said, trying to hold back tears.

Forced to be powerless, Abidemi nods his head and takes Enitan. They go to the lake, and Abidemi helps his wife walk.

“ Was that just nature?” Enitan asked somberly.

“ No, I don’t know what that was. Killing your own kind for more food when you still had enough… his own brother no less… that was just… evil,” said Abidemi, distraught.

“ What if they had no food? Would killing his brother be evil?” Enitan asked.

“Not unless he kills two birds with one stone,” Said Abidemi.

Enitan gave him a disappointed look, her hands were on her hips, judging him for his suggestion.

“ Sometimes animals have to do it; it’s just how nature is,” Abidemi stated.

Enitan groaned as her water broke. She tried to shuffle near the shore of the lake. Abidemi helped her sit down and get ready to help with the delivery.

“ I don’t think my comeback was that bad,” Abidemi said as Enitan crushed his hand in part to get him to shut up.

“ Akuj gave me a dream of our kids. Our boy… he’s going to be just like Inyene; he’ll be a killer and a thief, but he’ll be like you, a hunter and a romantic. He’ll care just like the two of you, even when you come in conflict. His sister is so beautiful I can’t wait for you to meet her. She’s just as smart as you,” Enitan said with tears in her eyes.

As she saw her tribe coming down from the hill in the distance. She waved at them as Abidemi got up before a swish was heard. Enitan vision went red from the fallen blood of her husband. She was about to scream but lost her words to the copper knife that slid against her throat.

The tribe sees this and goes down there to get revenge on Inyene. They throw spears and arrows that kill him. In their ignorance and fury, they kept destroying and eventually made casualties out of the innocent lives of Aamadu, Abeni, and Alemayehu. Who were killed swiftly and painlessly with new copper spearheads.

Despite the death, life was born that day. Enitan and Abidemi’s son was born in the puddles of blood. Then, in the soon-to-be Turkana tradition, he was named after his circumstances, which was the new concept of War. As his people do, he was given a second name once the dust settled, and by the request of the survivors, he was given the name Peace, just like his sister.