CHAPTER 2: HUNGER HAS A VOICE
465 Words
Hunger is not quiet.
It doesn’t whisper.
It speaks.
Sometimes, it growls like an angry animal. Other times, it sits silently in your stomach, heavy and patient, waiting for you to notice it.
For Amara, hunger had a voice she knew too well.
It woke her up before the sun.
It followed her through the day.
It stayed with her at night.
That morning, the rain had stopped, but the sky was still grey.
The ground outside was soft and messy, and the air smelled like wet earth. Amara stepped out carefully, holding an empty container.
“Where are you going?” her mother asked.
“To find something,” Amara replied.
Ada wanted to say something else—to stop her, maybe—but the words didn’t come. Instead, she just nodded.
“Don’t go too far.”
Amara nodded back.
But she didn’t promise.
⸻
She walked past the usual paths, past the houses she knew, past the places that no longer had anything to offer.
Her bare feet sank into the mud.
Her stomach tightened.
She ignored it.
At the edge of the village, she saw a group of children gathered under a tree. They were eating roasted cassava, laughing, talking loudly.
Amara slowed down.
She wasn’t jealous.
Not exactly.
But she couldn’t stop staring.
One of the boys noticed her.
“What are you looking at?” he asked.
Amara looked away quickly.
“Nothing.”
“Then go,” he said, turning back to his food.
She didn’t argue.
She walked on.
⸻
By midday, the sun had come out, harsh and unforgiving.
Amara hadn’t found anything.
No leftover food.
No kind stranger.
Nothing.
She sat by the roadside, her energy fading.
For the first time that day, she let herself feel it fully.
The hunger.
It wasn’t just in her stomach anymore.
It was in her chest.
In her throat.
In her thoughts.
This cannot be life, she thought.
And that was the moment something shifted.
Not outside.
Inside.
⸻
Later that evening, she returned home empty-handed.
Chike was asleep.
Ada sat quietly, her back against the wall.
“Did you find anything?” she asked.
Amara shook her head.
Silence.
Then Ada spoke again, her voice softer than usual.
“When you were born, I promised myself you would not suffer like this.”
Amara sat beside her.
“I’m not suffering,” she said.
Ada looked at her.
For a long moment, she said nothing.
Then she sighed.
“You are strong,” she said. “Too strong for your age.”
Amara didn’t respond.
Because strength wasn’t something she wanted.
It was something she had been given without choice.
⸻
That night, hunger didn’t just speak.
It shouted.
And for the first time—
Amara listened.
- Writer
