Thank you to everyone checking this out. It's a draft of a prologue that I may include in the Inyanga's Star novella, after it has undergone some revision. All of your thoughts will contribute to that process, and all of the comments left on the novella led to the writing of this new piece! I can't say how grateful I am for that!

Inyanga's Star Prologue

Two little girls run hand in hand across campus, so small they may as well be ants on the purple lawns. The place is devoid of big girls for the summer break. Without students for scale, these little ones dreaming of all the magic hidden beyond the walls of the lecture halls, many of which float overhead, could almost be mistaken for the pupils who actually go here.

The two run together as if running to their favorite ice cream place, a relay and not a race, the whole team needing to get to the finish line together.

The shorter one, Amafu, lets out squealing laughs as if they're out of her control, each laugh pushed out by the stomp of each running foot. Every stitch she wears dances with magic animations; on her hairband clouds billow and turn gray to blue, shooting stars arc across her black slippers and wink out, and a rainbow spreads over her lace blouse.

Amafu's plaits, braided with a spell to make them perfect in seconds, contrast with her taller friend's. Inyanga's were done with hands and love by her Grandmama Amandla, sans magic. Little curls break loose, imperfectly perfect; what some might call frizz, Inyanga calls her baby curls. Both girls' indigo eyes burn with the flame of immortality, an eternal animus revealing itself like an electric fire in their pupils. Only those who will live forever have such an animus, an eternal soul, marked by the infinite brilliance behind their eyes, flamed with potential like the joy of a million possibilities.

It's easy to see they're friends and not sisters as they run, from the way they hold hands; it's easy to see they chose each other, and theirs is not an enforced bond but one they opt into; holding hands, they run from their umamas, Star and Kyuma, who traverse the grass toward campus with more patient steps.

A combination of trotting and sprinting steps bring them to the courtyard outside and below the most sublime magic school building, the one they always race to see, and now that they're close they drop hands, stop, and stare. It's a spherical levitating lecture hall, and in its core, the girls know, the library has no gravity, so if you want to brave the stacks, you have no choice but to fly.

As Star and Kyuma catch up, eyes on Al-Maysan Hall the whole time walking, those eyes, purple starfire filled as well, get glassy with tears as they think of the day their daughters might step into a link and teleport inside the hall named after the Orion Constellation. Al-Maysan means 'the shining one.'

By the time they reach the courtyard outside their favorite magic school building, the time for handholding was done. Amafu tagged Inyanga and dashed straight into an azaleawood bush, orange petals glaring like coal fires or firefly butts lighting up in a bioluminescent flare.

It didn't take Inyanga long to tag her back, because her short friend may be a ball of infinite energy but Inyanga was all legs, even at eight and a half, and soon the chase reversed, with little Amafu coming after her friend, feet pounding with the same rhythm as her laughs. The quieter one, Inyanga kept her mouth shut and focused on getting away, but when she got close to the hedges bordering the entrance to the lecture hall, a call from her umama drew her back.

"Come back around, you're not going in that hedgemaze today and getting lost!" Kyuma shouted.

And as she skirted long to obey Umama's directions, Amafu darted in and tagged her, reversing the game again.

Yet now when Inyanga uncurled her long limbs into a sprint not even a cheetah would be able to outrun it wasn't so much to tag Amafu as to capture her and hug her and chant, "Magic school, magic school, here we come! We're here! One day we're going to go here and I'm going to levitate you into the highest floralwood," and Amafu said, "Promise?" and Inyanga went on, "I promise. I'll levitate you to the very top. Then you do me!"

Drawing a purple twig she had hidden up her sleeve, Amafu said, "Evitately otay optay oftay illywoodlay eetray anchbray ighesthay!" As if blasted away, Inyanga retreated backways and just for fun or to see if she would catch air, she jumped backwards as she ran back and both girls laughed and screamed.

Seeing that her feet were still planted on solid purple grass and not on the branch of a tree, Inyanga said, "Was the spell wrong or did you run out of magic? Forget to pay your bill, Ama?"

"You know my spell casting is on point and you know I always forget things, so why are you even asking?

All afternoon they played with sapphire and amethyst floralwood twigs and pretended they could cast spells, and every summer when primary let out they would beg to come back.

Only one rule was given the girls by their umamas: stay in sight. Their umamas watched them play. And that meant no hedge maze today, not unless the four of them went for a walk through it — a slow paced, civilized walk — together. Sitting down to a game of weiqi stones, Kyuma and Star watched and fretted. Star gently tapped down one of her matte black stones and said, "Your daughter is getting my daughter's hopes up."

Kyuma kept her eyes on the board and shifted her weight to one side, tempted to put one hand on her hip to reply, "That so? Huh, I see. Inyanga is getting your daughter's hopes up." She nodded as if thinking about it and deciding that makes sense, all right, let us go with that.

"That's what I see," said Star, placing three more black pebbles down and frowning at the white pebbles Kyuma had placed. "Are you saying I can't see and hear, my eyes and ears do not work?"

"That is not quite what I am saying. I am saying that your daughter has every advantage. I am saying that we have worked every minute of every day since our girls were born to foster their knowledge. It may border on child abuse, the way we forced books down their throats. And now you say Inyanga is getting her hopes up, as if she and Amafu should not expect to go here one day."

Kyuma stopped and shook her head and refused to place another stone as she became a bit overwhelmed and a bit stubborn, perhaps more so than she expected when she began to speak.

Much went unsaid between them, but Star could as good as read Kyuma's mind. Every advantage? That's what Kyuma was thinking. Amafu would get in because Amafu has connections. How many of her progenitors have attended magicians college? How many of Star's family, and how many of her esposo's? How many Lizulus and how many Satiris? Dale Satiri and Star Lizulu's little girl came from a long, long line of mahias.

When the admissions board looks at Amafu Lizulu, they will see a network, a whole web, of productive, accomplished, professional mahias. If Kyuma had said that out loud, her voice would have dripped equal parts honey and venom. Praise and cynicism. Letters of reference? The girls wouldn't apply for eleven more grades, yet Star had her pick already, unless she can cosy up to anyone more esteemed in the coming decade. Perhaps the Magician General or the President of Constellation herself? Though surely, Kyuma would have said if she had to say it out loud, Star has had a drink with President Julia Mars before. The only question was whether that would be enough of a foot in the door to ask the President herself for a recommendation.

Kyuma was spitting fire now and it was because of the fuel simmering underneath the coals. "Inyanga's hopes may be the one thing that will get her in here. Crush those and there is no chance. Without the passion, without the dreaming, without hoping against hope, they will certainly never make it."

"I merely think we should temper their expectations," said Star. "Do you not think we should prepare them — both of them — for the possibility that they may never get a chance to study magic?"

"Well," said Kyuma, throwing her next stones down on the board, "I happen to disagree, and if that is how you plan to guide your child's course going forward, I may have to restrict my child's interactions with her. Don't you dare starve the motivation, that drive, that is my daughter's only shot. If you do that you will seal her fate. Without a dream, a yearning, a burning hope, she will undoubtedly never be good enough. I have my doubts but I will never pass them to my daughter. She will need to believe in herself above all else."

A hand reached out and tackled Kyuma's, and the eyes Kyuma looked up into were warm, forceful, and just as stubborn. But full of support. "That will not be necessary. They are still young, let us let them dream."

The two umamas watched their little girls play and for years they would wonder, like every parent in the history of being, whether they were making the right choices.

Thank you for reading this new attempt at a prologue. Your comments help fuel the revision and your stars help fuel this book's potential! I am grateful for all of you. Be well.