The City of Listening
They had expected riot.
They had prepared for panic.
They got rhythm.
The Procession
Rerẹ́ led.
Not alone.
At her sides: Ẹ̀nítàn and Ẹ̀jìrẹ́, flanking her like shadow and flame.
Behind her, the people of Obade.
Behind them, more.
From village paths, winding delta towns, riverfronts long disconnected from truth—they came.
The displaced.
The silenced.
The forgotten.
They did not come armed.
They came bearing names.
The Archive Shakes
Inside the Ministry of Cultural Continuity, alarms screamed.
But the main servers—those that held the official myth index—refused to respond.
Instead, the ancient terminal in the basement—a machine built during the First Myth Treaty—lit up with text in a forgotten script.
One sentence repeated:
"Do not fear the river when it speaks.
Fear the day it listens back."
Streets Become Altars
As Rerẹ́ stepped into the city center, something shifted.
Pavement cracked—not violently, but gently, like skin drying after baptism.
From those cracks, water flowed.
Not flooding.
Tracing.
Spirals.
Glyphs.
The patterns of Ẹ̀nítàn's sacred path, once erased.
Children dipped their fingers into the rivulets and began to draw on the walls—faces, eyes, drums, names.
Elders stood in silent reverence.
The city was not falling.
It was transforming.
The Drumless Join
Some had not drummed in years.
Some had never been taught.
But as Obade's drums echoed between skyscrapers, others picked up the rhythm.
They clapped.
Tapped.
Hummed.
One market woman pulled down her woven head wrap and struck it like a drum.
A child repeated a lullaby long banned in the national schools.
The city—rigid, coded, surveilled—began to hum.
The Officials React
From glass towers, the Archive's remaining stewards looked down in silence.
Minister Àlàké, once a champion of cultural purification, stood transfixed.
She watched as her own granddaughter ran barefoot into the crowd, chanting a river song.
She opened her mouth to issue an order.
But nothing came.
Because she too heard the rhythm.
And it stirred something she hadn't felt since childhood.
Something her mother once called "ancestor-breath."
The Listening Grounds
In the plaza where the first Archive building had been constructed—a place once guarded by statues of silence—the crowd formed a circle.
No one commanded it.
It simply formed.
And within that circle, story began.
Not fiction.
Not performance.
Truth.
An elder from Íwó stepped forward.
Her voice cracked.
But the city was quiet.
And she said:
"My sister's name was Adúrà.
She was taken when we were girls.
The river knew her.
But the Archive erased her.
Today, I return her to the story."
One by One
They came forward.
Each with a name.
A moment.
A scar.
No guards blocked them.
No laws silenced them.
The city was now a listening body.
And Rerẹ́, standing in the center, heard everything.
She let the stories pass through her—not to claim them, but to carry them.
The Queens Step Forward
When the stories paused, Ẹ̀nítàn stepped to the edge of the circle.
"You feared my rage," she said.
"But what I carried was reminder."
Then Ẹ̀jìrẹ́ raised her palm.
"You feared my return," she said.
"But what I bring is balance."
"We do not come to punish."
"We come to re-thread the world."
Iyagbẹ́kọ's Gesture
Iyagbẹ́kọ walked slowly into the circle.
She knelt and placed her staff flat on the ground.
"Let the staff of memory rest," she said.
"So the voice of the people may rise."
She bowed.
And then turned to Rerẹ́.
"You carry two rivers inside you now.
And one question."
"How will we live with what we've remembered?"
Final Lines
No one clapped.
There was no cheering.
Only breath.
Only presence.
The capital no longer ruled.
It listened.
And in the stillness that followed, Rerẹ́ opened her mouth to speak—
But what emerged was not a command.
It was a name.
The name of a child lost and returned.
A name that became a ripple.
That became a rhythm.
That became the city's new heartbeat.