Stormforge: When The Gods Awaken

Plenty Rice, No Questions

The campus recovered faster than Ayo expected.

Within twenty minutes the generators were coughing back to life, and a lecturer had stepped onto the steps of the faculty building to announce, in the tired voice of a man who had made this announcement many times before, that the power line had tripped again. A few students groaned. Somebody laughed. A boy near the fountain was already holding up his phone to complain about it online, and two girls were arguing over whether the lights had gone out at 2:14 or 2:16, as though the exact minute mattered. By the time Ayo and Ola reached the main gate, the courtyard sounded like any other afternoon, loud and careless and alive.

That was the part Ayo couldn't swallow. Ten minutes ago a stranger had stood across the grass and killed every light on the campus with a look, and already the whole place was smoothing itself over, the way water closes over a dropped stone.

"So na transformer," Ola said.

"That's what they're saying."

"Mm." Ola walked a few steps in silence, which for Ola was a very long time. A keke swerved past them, its driver shouting at nobody in particular, and Ola waited until the noise had thinned before he spoke again. "Funny thing about transformer. E no dey usually smile at person."

Ayo's feet slowed. "What?"

"The guy." Ola kept his eyes fixed on the road ahead, as if looking at Ayo might make the question too real. "Dark hoodie, by the far building. I asked Chidi, and I asked two girls from my department. Nobody saw anybody. One of them looked at me like say I dey craze, and Chidi asked if I'd been eating the roadside suya again." He rubbed the back of his neck. "But I saw him, Ayo. I saw how he looked at you. So why be say na only me remember am?"

Ayo didn't answer. He wished he had one.

He had noticed it too, in the last twenty minutes: the way people were already filling the gap with transformers and bad luck and the usual complaints about the government. He just hadn't expected Ola to be left standing on the outside of that gap, alone, holding a memory nobody else would admit to.

"You don't have to say anything," Ola said, and for once there was no joke anywhere in it. "I'm not stupid, abeg. I know say you no ready. But I no go pretend I no see wetin I see."

"Ola—"

"Come." Ola clapped his hands once, loudly, and the moment broke like a plate. "Food."

Mama Nkechi's buka sat behind the faculty building, a zinc-roofed shed with plastic chairs that never matched and a pot of jollof rice big enough to bathe a child. A small television bolted to a pole in the corner was showing a football replay with the sound turned off, and a generator rattled behind the shed, filling the air with a smell of petrol and frying pepper. At that hour the place was half empty. Ola ordered for both of them without asking, which was how he had ordered for both of them since first year.

"Mama, two plates. Plenty rice, small meat, and give this one extra plantain. He look like person wey never chop since yesterday."

Mama Nkechi gave Ayo a long, appraising look over the rim of her ladle, grunted, and piled his plate so high it leaned.

"Rule one," Ola said, dropping into a chair and dragging another out for Ayo with his foot. "I no go ask you question when rice dey your front."

"That's a bad rule."

"E be rule for peace." He pointed a spoon at him. "Eat."

Ayo ate. The rice was hot and slightly too salty, the plantain sweet and burnt at the edges, and for the first time in two days his shoulders came down from around his ears. Ola talked the way he always talked, in long looping stories that wandered off and returned with something unexpected. He told Ayo about a lecturer who had mispronounced his name for a full semester and refused to be corrected, about his cousin who swore he could fix any phone with a toothpick and a prayer, and about a girl in his department who had rejected him so politely that he had thanked her afterwards and walked into a door. Ayo caught himself nodding along, and then caught himself almost laughing. He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked down at his plate to hide it.

That was when the spoon started to hum.

He felt it first in his fingers, a thin, high vibration that climbed up the handle and settled in his wrist like a trapped insect. He looked down. The steel was shivering against his palm. A faint orange thread of light ran along the neck of the spoon and vanished, and for one second the television in the corner flickered, and the generator behind the shed stuttered as if it had lost its place.

Ayo set the spoon down very carefully and put his hand under the table.

Ola had stopped chewing. His eyes went to the spoon, then to Ayo's face, then to the spoon again. Ayo watched him decide. It took about two seconds, and in those two seconds he saw a dozen things cross Ola's face: fear, confusion, a stubborn flash of something that looked like hurt, and then something steadier that settled over all of it.

"This rice dey sweet o," Ola said loudly, and picked up his own spoon. "Eat before e cold."

Something tightened in Ayo's throat, and it had nothing to do with fear.

He waited until the plates were nearly empty and Mama Nkechi had drifted to the far end of the shed to scold a boy about his bill. Then he said, quietly, "Something is happening to me."

Ola didn't look up. "Mm-hm."

"I don't understand it yet. I don't know what it is, or why it's happening, or if..." He stopped. He couldn't say or if it's dangerous, because a metal gate was still lying in the road outside his house, and he didn't know what he would break next. "When I understand it, I'll tell you. All of it."

It wasn't the whole truth. Ola didn't know about the gate, or the street, or the way the whole block had lit up and screamed under his hands. Ayo felt that gap as clearly as he felt the table beneath his palm. But it was the most he could give without handing Ola something that might hurt him.

"That one na promise?" Ola asked.

"It's a promise."

"Okay." Ola nodded slowly, like a man signing a contract. "Then I go hold you to am. And if you turn Spider-Man, I get first photo."

"I'm not going to turn into Spider-Man."

"Iron Man, then."

Ayo laughed. A real one, short and surprised, and it startled both of them.

Ola grinned at him. "See? There you are."

They stayed until the sun went orange over the zinc roof and the shadows of the plastic chairs stretched long across the dirt floor. Somewhere in the middle of it Ola told him, offhand, as if it were nothing, that in first year he had almost dropped out. His mum had been struggling to pay his fees, and he had spent a whole week pretending he had lost his appetite so she wouldn't have to worry about feeding him. He said it lightly, turning his spoon over in his fingers, and Ayo understood that this was the real reason he had never made fun of anyone who couldn't afford lunch.

"That was the week you started sharing yours," Ola said, scraping the last grains off his plate. "You never said anything. You just dey put am for my side like say na accident."

"It was extra."

"It was not extra, Ayo." Ola smiled, and it was a small, crooked thing. "I never said thank you."

"You didn't have to."

"Exactly. So that's how I know you're my guy." He stood and stretched until his back cracked. "Which is why I go keep dey see you, even if you act like zombie."

His phone buzzed against the table. He glanced at it and groaned. "My mum. I should have been home since two hours ago." He paused halfway out of his chair, and a sly look crept across his face. "Oh, abi I forgot. That girl from your Thursday tutorial, Iyewunmi? She stopped me by the faculty today and asked if you were alive."

Ayo frowned. "Why?"

"She said you disappeared in the middle of the group meeting this morning, and nobody could tell her where you went." Ola's grin returned in full. "Mr. Mystery Boy has fans."

"She's in my tutorial group. That's all."

"Of course. That's all." Ola backed away with his hands raised, still grinning. "Go and apologise to her, abeg. She no look like person wey dey forget."

He was gone before Ayo could reply, swallowed by the evening crowd, his laughter trailing behind him until the generator drowned it.

Ayo sat there as the buka emptied around him. The spoon lay where he'd left it, quiet and ordinary, a cheap piece of steel with a bent handle. He turned it over once with one finger, just to be sure. Then he paid for both plates, because Ola never did, and Mama Nkechi pressed an extra piece of plantain into his hand without a word.

He walked home the long way, past the market stalls with their rattling metal pots and sagging wires. Every pot he passed shivered a little, as though it knew him, and he kept his hands buried deep in the pockets of his hoodie and his eyes on the ground until the noise fell away behind him.

Ola was the only normal thing left in his life, and Ayo knew exactly what he owed that. Whatever was coming, whatever was watching from the edges of the dark, it would not touch him.

He just didn't know yet how he was going to keep that promise.