When the storm howls like a hungry beast, and the waves intertwine in a violent embrace with the sky, the wooden ship trembles at the heart of the fury, swaying as if a terrified dancer under the thunder's blows, and the lightning's flashes carve pale faces in the darkness.
Within her, shattered souls are shackled...
Exhausted bodies, stripped of their homelands, their names, and even their voices.
Africans, Arabs, Asians... Race has no name here anymore.
The differences have vanished, not out of mercy, but out of oppression.
Everyone is reduced to one thing.
Workforce.
They are all aboard this rusty wood, being driven to a land they do not know.
A land that does not wait for them, but only for their hands.
There, they will work until the flesh peels off the bone.
So that they forget where they came from... and who they were.
It's not a journey of crossing, but a slow burial.
And the ship?
A floating coffin...
He sings to the wind a hymn of chains.
And on the deck of that ship, cutting thru the sea like an open wound, amidst faces stripped of their features by rain, salt, and tears, sat a woman... She was not remarkable in appearance, with dark skin like a warm note in the heart of winter, curly hair growing as if resisting, and hazel eyes shining with remnants of a dream not yet taken away.
What made her different was not her beauty, but that small smile that dared to stay, a smile that stood out amidst the hymn of crying, hope, and fear.
Next to her, a young man with a stern face, as if the sea had passed over him a thousand times, leaving nothing but dullness.
He tilted his head toward her with impatience, his voice dripping with sarcastic annoyance.
"For your sake... stop smiling... you'll end up punishing yourself."
But she, like someone carrying a small fire in her chest, whispered with childlike enthusiasm.
"Gustav! In your opinion… to which land shall we send it this time?"
He let out a long sigh, more of exhaustion than an answer.
"And how am I supposed to know?"
She turned her face toward the sky, her eyes sparkling as if they couldn't see the bars around them, and she whispered within herself.
"I want to see it... that new country... I want to discover it, I'm almost choking with excitement!"
Gustav laughed quietly, a bitterly sarcastic laugh.
"And you might choke from your stubbornness, take care of yourself... If the guard sees you smiling like that, he won't hesitate to hit you."
She tilted her head toward him in a warm, playful manner.
"What's wrong with you?Are you worried about me?"
He muttered in a barely audible voice, his gaze still fixed on the gray horizon.
"I would have gently stroked your head... if my hands weren't bound."
After a not too long time, that ship stopped moving, meaning it finally reached its destination.
The soldier's scream echoed violently.
"Get off that ship!"
The caravan reached the sandy shore. This was not the shore of salvation, but the gateway to another hell... Behind the waves of the Atlantic, captivity begins anew, in a land that knows no mercy, called Chinguetti.
The caravan began to move with the sunrise, when the masters ordered their slaves to deboard from the ship.
The slaves descended one by one, their bare feet treading on the hot sand, while the masters rode the camels with absolute arrogance, raising their heads as if they were kings of an endless desert.
As for those poor souls, they followed their masters on foot, exhausted, with hunched backs, their gazes falling to the ground for fear that their dreams would be counted as rebellion.
In that moment...
Cersei caught sight of one of the slaves, with her eyes burning with worry, having fallen to the ground.
He was a young man with dark skin, his features groaning from pain, not fear, and his swollen foot barely supported his body.
Gustav whispered near her, his voice barely audible amidst the roar of the wind.
"It seems that his foot is broken..."
No one gave them a chance for mercy.
The man took out his leather whip without hesitation and struck him on the back with brutal ferocity, the young man's scream echoed in the distance, tearing thru the stillness of the sand.
The gentleman shouted in a dry tone.
"Move in front of me, there's no time to sleep in the open!"
Saoirse gasped softly, raising her trembling hands to cover her mouth, as if trying to hold everything in.
His body was leaning, his features groaning, but he suddenly turned toward her...
Their gazes met.
She saw a strange look in his eyes, something between defiance and contempt, as if he even rejected pity...
He furrowed his brows, ignored his pain, then lifted his aching body and continued walking with a stubbornness that was almost collapsing beneath him.
Gustav sighed with annoyance and said sarcastically.
"What's with his looks?" Does he think we are his masters?
Saoirse didn't respond; instead, she pinched him hard on the arm while whispering a tense warning.
"Shut up!" Don't say a word... If one of the gentlemen hears the way you speak, they will whip you.
He stepped back slightly, eyeing her with annoyance, then muttered in a tone of exasperation:
Whatever...
The desert stretched before them endlessly, a land the color of fire, reflecting the sun's cruelty above it mercilessly.
Scattered sharp rocks and thorny plants sprouted as if embodying desperate survival.
The air is heavy, saturated with salt and humidity lingering from the sea they left behind, and the place is enveloped in the smell of sun-baked skin and fearful sweat.
The masters were walking at the front on the backs of camels, raising their whips from time to time without speaking, waving them as if reminding every slave that their silence did not mean their salvation.
As for the caravan, it looked like a scene from hell.
Men chained together, some supporting each other so they don't fall.
Women in torn clothes, carrying children on their backs or dragging them with trembling arms.
Sounds of moaning, faint sighs, and crying stifled with force.
Each individual walked knowing
Any wrong step means a slap, a punch, or death in the sand.
Hours passed, and perhaps days. Time was not measured in hours but by the number of those who fell and died on the road.
They were buried, if buried at all, quickly in shallow graves, or left for the crows and hyenas.
At the end of the third day, the city of the slaves appeared on the horizon.
It was not a city as the mind imagines, but a constant nightmare in the heart of the desert.
Massive wooden gates stand in the open air, surrounded by high clay walls, as if they were an open prison.
From afar, columns of smoke rise from it, the sounds of whips, and intermittent crying.
Behind the walls, small stone houses stand for the market lords, and in the center, a massive courtyard is laid with red sand.
The new land was like a wound that had not yet healed... A home they were destined to inhabit not out of love, but because leaving was no longer an option. Their dwelling was not a home, but a shadow of pain and a refuge for the broken. Be generous. It was only moments before the morning sun mercilessly swallowed them, and the earth awakened them with its usual call...
To work.