The tint in the room began to shift as if making space for something new. Around us, dust particles hung suspended mid-air like tiny amber stones, and the echoes of distant mining sounds stretched into long, hollow notes that seemed to vibrate through the cavern walls. As the light refracted and bent in impossible ways, a larger-than-life Black woman materialized in the caves.
Her afro cascaded in waves of different brown shades clearly dyed and re-dyed over time, each layer telling its own story. Her dark skin gleamed like polished obsidian in the refracted mine light, smooth and flawless as if untouched by the harsh underground environment. She towered above the frozen scene, her presence filling every corner of the cavern with an inexplicable warmth that radiated from her body without effort.
She stood there in simple shorts and a t-shirt, looking impossibly comfortable in the treacherous mines of Howl. Her eyes swept over me with practiced indifference she wasn't surprised to find herself here among the time-frozen figures scattered throughout the cavern. Instead, her expression held layers of emotion: anger simmering just beneath the surface, sadness that seemed bone-deep, and a frustration that made her jaw clench.
"Samori, how?" she asked, breaking her intense stare to examine her own hands and arms as if surprised to see her complete form materialized in this place.
"Take us out of here!" I yelled, my voice cracking with desperation. Refusal wasn't a possibility. I wouldn't accept it.
I will not die down here, I thought, even as my body betrayed me.
My legs trembled with the effort of staying upright. The gunshot wound in my side pulsed with each heartbeat, warm blood seeping through my fingers and soaking into my torn shirt. Exhaustion pulled at my consciousness like a riptide, and for a moment all I wanted was to collapse onto the cold cave floor and surrender. But I forced myself to focus on convincing this woman to help me.
I locked eyes with Nzingha, whose discomfort in this frozen plane was written across her face in sharp lines of tension. Some of the texture and tint around us began to shift and move, like watercolors bleeding back into motion. The world slowly resumed its natural rhythm, sounds gradually returning from their stretched, hollow echoes to normal volume and pitch.
The panic in Nzingha's dark brown eyes seemed to grow louder and more urgent as reality reasserted itself around us. The frozen figures began to stir, their suspended movements continuing in slow, dreamlike sequences.
I began moving toward her, using all the momentum and energy that was returning to everything else around me. Something, a hand, maybe one of the awakening miners grabbed onto my shoulder, but nothing could stop me from racing toward my target. Nzingha stood about four feet away, her eyes wide with an emotion I couldn't quite read. Fear, maybe, or recognition.
I just needed to touch her. That was all. Just make contact with this mysterious woman who could bend time and space.
She looked genuinely scared now, her eyes widening as I lunged toward her with the desperation of a drowning person reaching for shore. My body collided with hers, and for a moment I felt the solid warmth of another human being, her skin radiating that same inexplicable heat I'd sensed from across the cavern.
"Take me out of here," I gasped against her shoulder, each word feeling absolute and necessary. "I can't be alone."
Everything went dark.