Rimi's Point Of View

Those final days with my father were painted in gold – each moment precious, each shared smile a treasure I hoarded in my heart. He seemed to glow from within, as if finding me had somehow pushed back the poison's shadow. His cough remained, but his laughter came easier, fuller, like a stream finally breaking through a rock.

I learned him piece by piece: the way he touched each yam plant with reverence during our morning inspections, how his eyes crinkled at the corners when he told stories of his youth, the gentle strength in his hands as he taught me to select the best seedlings. In those moments, I saw what had captured my mother's heart – a man whose loyalty ran as deep as tree roots, whose love could weather three decades of silence and still bloom.

The pain of their separation took on new depth as I watched him. My mother, bound to her throne in the north, her heart tethered to this quiet farm at the edge of Obiako. My father, keeping his promise through years of solitude, tending his crops and his memories with equal care. Their love story was written in the language of sacrifice and distance, of duties upheld and dreams deferred.

When he finally left us, it was during the harvest moon. He asked to sit outside, to feel the evening breeze one last time. I held his hand as he watched the sun set, his breathing growing shallower with each passing moment. His last words were of my mother, a smile touching his lips as the poison finally claimed its victory.

I buried him beside the first Rimi, my namesake, the woman who had saved his life so that I might one day exist. The whole of Obiako mourned – not just the loss of their finest farmer, but the end of a love story that had become legend.

For ten years, I lived in his world. I learned every corner of his farms, every trick he had taught Ikem for coaxing the best yields from the soil. But the pull of my mother's grief called me north, and when I finally returned to her, I carried all of him with me in stories.

She listened with tears streaming down her face as I told her everything – how he had taken in a thieving girl without question, how he had loved me before he knew I was his, how he had spoken of her with undiminished devotion until his last breath. For moons, she wore her grief like a second skin, until my brother was ready to take the throne.

Then, finally freed from duty's chains, she made the journey she had waited thirty years to make. We traveled together, mother and daughter, back to Obiako. Ikem welcomed us with open arms and tears in his eyes, having become the son my father had chosen even before he found his daughter.

When my mother's time came, her passing was peaceful. She had lived long enough to walk the paths she and my father had once shared, to touch the walls of the compound where their love had first bloomed, to sit on the hill where they had made their promises. I laid her to rest beside him and Rimi, completing a circle that had taken a lifetime to close.

The north held nothing for me after that. My brother ruled wisely, and my heart had found its home in Obiako's red earth. I remained in my father's compound, tending his legacy, growing the finest yams in the region just as he had taught me. Sometimes, in the quiet of evening, when the sunset painted the sky in shades of gold and purple, I would sit where he used to sit and feel them all around me – my father with his quiet strength, my mother with her enduring love, and the first Rimi with her sacrifice that made it all possible.

They say love stories end with death, but I learned differently. Their love lived on in the crops we grew, in the stories people told, in the way Obiako remembered the man who kept his promise and the queen who finally came home. It lived on in me – their daughter, named for a hero, born of a love strong enough to span decades and kingdoms.

And so I stayed, becoming as much a part of Obiako as the red earth itself. In time, people forgot I had ever been from anywhere else. I became simply Rimi of Obiako, keeper of farms and stories, guardian of a love that proved stronger than poison, distance, or time itself.

T. H. E. E. N. D.

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