Stormbringer (excerpt)
What happens when a human descendant of the orisha manifests powers? #RandomFicThursdays
Hello to the new eyeballs, and welcome back to the older ones. 🤓
For this installment of #RandomFicThursdays , I’m posting an excerpt from my first speculative fiction novel, Stormbringer,. THis novel is about a woman who is a direct descendant of Changó and Oya and manifests her powers in her late thirties.
As always, this and anything else I write is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidences are the products of my imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Consider becoming a free subscriber to read a longer excerpt, or a paid subscriber to read the entire excerpt plus any archived stuff.
Also: if you feel some kind of way about giving Substack money, you can either make a love donation or buy me a coffee (if you choose to use these links to pay for subscriptions, then please email or DM me and let me know!). Whatever you do, thanks for your support and thanks for stopping by. Come back to see what I post from the archives every week on #RandomFicThursdays.
Now, on to the good stuff! Enjoy, and thanks for stopping by.
STORMBRINGER
by Tiffany M. Davis (writing as Tai Daniels)
© 2015 Tiffany M. Davis
⋇⋇PROLOGUE⋇⋇
Once upon a time, the orisha, the African deities, ruled. Olodumare, The Supreme Creator, wept her tears and created a world in which the orisha loved, fought, and lived. Their pleasures were great, as were their appetites; their pain, relatively little. They faithfully tended the domains and dominions for which they bore gifts, and their world flourished. Life was good.
Then Olodumare created humans. The orisha were curious about these fragile beings with finite life spans. Curiosity gave way to amusement as they saw how awed the humans were by their powers. Amusement soon gave way to arrogance, for who does not enjoy being worshipped and adored? Adulation gave way to communion of a more intimate nature between the orisha and the humans; the orisha were pleased to discover beings who weren’t used to their unbridled lust, and the humans couldn’t get enough of the pleasure bestowed by the orisha. Soon, the first wave of human children borne of the orisha came.
Not all were pleased at these unions. It was the opinion of some orisha that these demigod children were little more than abominations. Even worse, what if they manifested powers? The world of the orisha was cutthroat enough; why add more competition? The defenders of these children countered that they were conceived in love (or as close to it as an orisha could get) and deserved the chance to live; after all, didn’t the orisha, as a whole, revere life and the process that created it?
The debates raged until Olodumare, in her guise as Olorun, the wise father (the second of her three manifestations), came to compromise. The lives of these children would be spared, but they would be sent to Earth to live their lives as regular humans, separate from the deities. As for the manifestation of powers, well...no one really knew for sure if that would occur--not even Orunmila the Great Diviner could see their future in his cowrie shells--so that issue would be addressed if and when it came to pass.
The solution barely appeased both sides, but they deferred to Olorun’s judgment. The children were sent to earth as infants and were placed under the protection of those who served their parents. These children became known as the omo sọnu olorun, the Lost Children of the Gods.
As time passed, the orisha noticed that the Lost Children were like other humans, except that they had longer lives; some even had a bit of a boost to their usual talents., but nothing that would land them on the covers of the silly tabloids that humans loved so much. They relaxed their monitoring of the Lost Children and decided that they were no longer a threat to the orisha and their omniverse.
The descendants of the Lost Children, however, were another matter...
⋇⋇ONE⋇⋇
My footsteps became heavy as I entered the last mile of my usual weekend hike through the forest. I liked the solo outings; they not only kept me close to nature but allowed me to get in some much-needed thinking time. My day job in the Development Department of a local museum (the place where we generate all those give-us-money missives) sucked all of the energy out of me; it was only when I got outside that I felt unfettered and free.
I looked up at the tops of the pine trees that surrounded me and inhaled their astringent scent. I was so busy admiring the view above that I failed to pay attention to the path in front of me. My foot came down upon a large rock and my ankle rolled...as did the rest of me, right down a hill into the deeper floor of the forest. I finally tumbled into the base of one of the trees I so liked to look at; my head cracked against the rough bark hard enough to make me see stars. I lay there to get my bearings, then sat up slowly. A quick sweep of my hand around my aching head didn’t yield any blood, so I hadn’t cracked my hard head open; a possible concussion, however, was another matter. The shift to a sitting position sparked a new round of pain in my already throbbing ankle, and I worked my right hiking boot and sock off to assess the damage. My ankle, which was rather slim for my six-foot height, was now roughly the size of one of those value rolls of ground beef sold in grocery stores. I still had a mile to go to get back to my car; what would have been about a half-hour walk might now take two to three times that.
“Damn it,” I hissed to myself as I balled my fists in angry frustration. Had I been paying more attention, I wouldn’t be in this predicament. As if in agreement, the sky rumbled, and I looked up to see thunderclouds rolling in. Funny, the day had been clear and sunny, and there was no forecast for rain through the end of the week. A sharp crack rent the air, and lightning zigzagged through one of the larger clouds. On top of everything else, I was going to get rain-soaked if I didn’t hurry up and get back to my car. My day was just getting better and better.