The Song Unwritten

Evening fell over Obade like soft cloth.

The sun had dipped low, spilling gold into the folds of the sky like dye soaking into cotton. The trees whispered in low tones, their leaves heavy with the wisdom of dusk. Along the banks of the river, shadows stretched—long and deliberate, as if reaching backward in time. The air held a familiar charge, the kind that stirred old bones and made children pause mid-play. Something sacred stirred.

The river hummed with recent memory. Not loud, not boastful, but insistent. Its currents bore not only water but the weight of songs half-sung, names half-remembered, and sorrows that had learned to dance. The Drowned One no longer wept beneath the surface. Ẹ̀nítàn's spirit, freed in ritual and love, now moved like warm breath across still water.

Children returned from the far hills, their shirts damp with sweat, feet caked in red dust. Their laughter was softer tonight, as if in reverence. They carried more than firewood or fruit; their eyes shimmered with something harder to name. Truth, perhaps. Or memory awakening.

And in the heart of the village, in the Flame Archive, something rare and old was happening.

The Drums Rest

The walls of the Archive, once echoing with rhythm, now stood silent. The scent of roasted yam and oil soap clung faintly to the air. Scrolls—some centuries old—had been rolled and stored. The stones, which once shimmered with flame-scribed accounts of myth and miracle, now stood unlit.

Tonight, they would not record.

Tonight, they would receive.

Instead of shaping fire into narrative, the keepers of memory gathered around silence. And in that silence: a circle. Intentional. Living.

The Circle Forms

At the center of the Archive, the flame pit sat cold—untouched by kindling. Around it, elders gathered cross-legged. Their robes were varied in hue—mud earth, deep indigo, sun-dried ochre—but they bore the same sigil on their left breast: a spiral flanked by two open hands.

Facing them sat Ayọ̀bùkúnmí, her face lined with fatigue and fire. Next to her: Echo, tall and unreadable. Ola, younger but marked with old insight. And scattered between them: a dozen children—curious, alert, reverent.

None held writing boards. None cradled drums or chant books. No ink-stained fingers. No device glowed in their hands.

Only palms open. Eyes steady. Breath held between story and silence.

At last, Iyagbẹ́kọ, the eldest flamekeeper, lifted her chin.

Her voice, dry as bark yet full of current, broke the hush.

"We've remembered her name.

We've carried the songs.

But there is a deeper memory still."

Her words floated, unhurried.

"One that cannot be written. Only passed."

The Teaching of Mouth-to-Mouth

Echo rose.

Her movements were unhurried, her body like a reed in the wind—yielding but deliberate. She walked the circle slowly, barefoot. The hush was thick, almost touchable. Each step she took echoed not in sound but in meaning.

To the first child, she leaned close and whispered something. The child's eyes widened—not in fear, but recognition.

To the second, she touched the center of the chest, right above the heart. The child exhaled sharply, as though something had stirred inside them.

To the third, she hummed a note so low it vibrated in the teeth. The child tilted their head, eyes fluttering closed.

One by one, she offered something to each. Not information. Not command. An invitation.

A rhythm began to stir. One child tapped their fingers on their knees. Another began a low vocal trill. A third mimicked the river's ebb with breath alone.

Fragmented. Pulled from different wells. Yet alive.

Ola's smile bloomed, quiet and proud.

"It's not repetition," he said.

"It's transformation. That's how memory lives."

A Ritual Begins

Iyagbẹ́kọ, who had not moved in an hour, finally lifted her staff. She did not strike the ground. Instead, she drew a shape in the air—an arc, then a spiral, then a breaking wave.

"We begin the Song Unwritten."

The lights were dimmed. The last lamp was covered with a red cloth. The room darkened.

Outside, the river's song grew louder, as if sensing the need for accompaniment. The Archive walls, built with memory stones and flame ash, absorbed the silence like soil taking rain.

And then—one voice.

Clear. Rooted.

"Ẹ̀nítàn walked beneath the sky with songs in her feet…"

The cadence was ancient but the tone was fresh.

Another joined:

"She sang not to be heard,

but to remind the ground it could bloom again…"

A third voice:

"The wind carried her grief,

and the trees bent their backs to hold it…"

No script. No prompt. Just memory transmuted.

A fourth child added:

"She asked the thunder:

Will you carry me?

And it answered: Only if you break too."

More joined. A tapestry began to form—not of sameness, but of expansion.

Each voice did not repeat the one before. Each voice wove a new thread. Some offered metaphor. Others gave names. Some sang. Others wept. All contributed.

The Song Unwritten was not a story. It was a remembering in motion.

The Flame Without Fire

When the voices quieted, the room did not feel empty.

It felt full.

A silence so dense, so alive, it pressed on the skin like heat.

Ola reached into his bag—a simple leather satchel he'd carried since boyhood. He pulled out a scroll. Handmade. Charred at the edges. He unrolled it.

Blank.

He stared at it for a long time, then exhaled.

"We've outgrown this," he whispered.

Not with resentment. With reverence.

Echo, still standing, nodded.

"Let the next Archive be made of mouths.

Of breath.

Of courage."

Iyagbẹ́kọ added:

"Let memory leap the fire.

Let it find bone and child, wind and ancestor.

Let it not be stored.

Let it be lived."

The elders bowed their heads.

A Gift to the Future

Ayọ̀bùkúnmí, the keeper of the River's Rebirth, stood. Her knees creaked, but her stance was steady. She turned to the youngest child in the room—a girl no older than five, eyes round and glowing with curiosity.

Ayọ̀bùkúnmí leaned in.

She did not instruct. She did not recite.

She whispered.

A single phrase.

A smile broke the child's lips.

The child turned to the one beside her. Whispered again.

On and on the phrase traveled—mouth to ear, breath to breath.

Each whisper changed, slightly. A cadence shifted. A syllable stretched. A metaphor emerged where once there was only sound.

By the time it returned to Iyagbẹ́kọ, it was a different phrase entirely.

She raised her brow, amused.

"That is not what I said," she laughed, warm as morning.

The final child grinned.

"No. But it's better."

The circle erupted into soft laughter. Relief. Release.

The moment was complete.

Final Lines

They did not record that night.

No fire was lit.

No scroll was inscribed.

But something eternal had passed through them.

Something older than the Archive.

Something older than the river.

A song that would never be written—because it could not be.

It would live in mouths. In steps. In breath.

Passed by lovers in quiet moments. By elders at bedtime. By children beneath moonlight.

A song reborn every time it was remembered differently.

Words fade.

Scrolls burn.

Drums break.

But breath—

When passed with love, with courage, with rhythm—

Remains.