[Author's Note: Yeah this is based on Anansi Steals Stories which is a part of a lot of African diaspora religions and folklore as well as the religion and folklore of the Akan people. I want to thank everyone who held on to that story and told it to the children in their lives. May the world be free one day. ]

It's one of those days where no one takes me seriously at all in any way and I don't know what to do. It's one of those days where the blood, the intestines, the bones of millions of people including children and babies are splayed out onto the hillside. It's one of those days where I know that even death is a mercy. Because I know my childhood and I know the venom and the disgust in peoples' voices when they talk about people they consider lesser beings. I know my childhood and I know how I was brought here to be useful, to create wealth for the masters.

I sit silently, trying desperately to hold back the tears and just barely managing.

I'm sitting on the cold ground, no furs or blankets under me because of course, they never are. The fire glow of the campfire burns yellow-orange and then red-orange against the darkness, thick, and hot, and burning. I am not heated by the fire. Only those who are sitting on polished-fur-strewn chairs are. I'm never near the fire. Always in the shadows. Always unseen.

I am here because it's colder inside and I'm bone-tired. But I wonder if I would be better off if I was indeed inside the cold damp basement with some of the other dirtpeople. Because the Towerpeople are sitting around this fire, munching on sweets, telling their stories.

Stories, stories, stories. I hate their stories. They're not looking at my shadow-smeared face, my ink-edged eyes. They never really do. They never really look at any of us dirtpeople. Whatever. I tell myself that I don't need them. I tell myself that I don't need anyone.

"And those violent, insane people crawled out of the dirt under our feet." Niamus's voice booms like thunder. He sits like a king on his fur-strewn oaken chair, legs splayed out, back straight, and nose pointing upwards. He towers, even among Towerpeople. "They were without purpose, without masters to direct them and their lives. They were without a heel to be under. And like every other being born to serve, without anyone to serve, they turned on each other, started fighting and screaming and eating each other alive."

All the other Towerpeople watch him with great interest in their hard, haughty eyes. They are lounging leisurely in their seats, lazy as a pride of lions, picking at the sweets on their plates. They like this story. Obviously they do. It's the story of my people - the dirtpeople - and how they were "organized" by the "wise and benevolent" Towerpeople. I know that it is not just what happened, not just history with artistic flourishes thrown in to make it entertaining. I tell myself not to be so hurt by it. But his words, the way he says them, the disdain in his voice very time he refers my people, it honestly makes me want to kneel over and die.

"But the great prince and ruler, the tall, clever, handsome Prince Audra, he knew that there was only one way to save these violence-inclined creatures from themselves. He ..."

I have had enough. I don't want his words, his expression, beating down on my soul, grating my insides, twisting and tearing at my mind until I don't even know how to hold on anymore.

I silently arise, the chill of the night air brushing the backs of my legs.

"Hey!" Oh shit. Rough, angry, needlessly aggressive tone of voice. Of course it's directed at me.

"Yes?" I ask meekly, keeping my face down. I want to storm off in a huff but survival means I need to hide my desires and show them what they want to see. The woman decked in an expensive silk nightgown and fur cloak stares me down like one would stare at a spider crawling across the floor.

"Go get us some more drinks. Hurry!" The amount of venom that's dripping through those words is unbelievable. I hate this. I hate her. I hate all of it. But of course I force my aching muscles onwards. I was already tired but I suppose work never really ends.

"I said hurry, /girl!/" I hate the way Towerpeople say the word girl when it's directed at dirtpeople. I hate the way they say the word boy. As always though I have no power. I force my pace to quicken.

——-
I feel like I'm drowning. Like poisoned water is filling up my lungs, like poison tears are welling up in my dry eyes.

I am too tired, too dead to even cry. I feel so much older than I am yet at the same time I feel so much younger than I am.

I'm twenty-four. Twenty-four and I feel like I'm forty, and I feel like I'm three. Because I never really got to be a kid, not when I was stuck in this universe where I had to work myself raw, let them call me less, and fade into the background like a ghost. I didn't get a childhood. And I didn't get a chance to give the children that came after me a childhood.

I am a Mother first and foremost somehow. I don't have any children of my own but motherhood is in my bones, in the space between my lungs and my ribs, in my veins.

Mafalia, Pavlin, Levi, Andronicha, they are the kids I'm able to be around most, being the children of the other people who work in the mansion. Of Anderei and Lilith. But they are my children too, undoubtedly, infinitely, one hundred percent. They are sweet, unimaginably, incredibly sweet. Young. Wide-eyed. Sensitive as all children are. Mischievous when they have the chance. They are sad. Forlorn. Weary. Terrified. Beyond imagination. Because they are dirtpeople. They are dirtpeople growing up in a world where the Towerpeople rule everything.

Mafalia is four and she has to work instead of being able to play and learn freely without restriction. Mafalia can't even say English words without her childish accent bleeding in. She is a sweet girl, who likes to play and cuddle and run around and play pretend. She likes spiderwebs in the corners of rooms, because they seem to be made for her, seem to be talking directly to her in a way that other people can't hear. In a world where not even she is her own, she has the spider webs.

Pavlin is six. They are a boy and a girl apparently, and shifts between being more of one or more of the other. They are full of questions. Questions that they usually have to repress, questions they cannot seek answers to. They have an incredible sense of balance for one so young as they are. They have a way of subtlety in their their words that means they often have a double meaning. The baby child works as a delivery child between the neighbouring estates and you could tell they are scared about having to walk out into world alone.

Levi is also six. He has a protective streak inside him. And a sneaky streak. He has something inside him that just wants to run, run, run until he can't anymore. It is a desire to get away. A desire to escape. But no matter how much he runs he knows that /they/ would always follow him like a shadow. I want him to be able to feel the wind in his hair and the pounding of his heart until everything else fades and there is only wild, wild freedom.

Andronicha is eight. The oldest. She is a deeply imaginative little girl and one who can hold onto anger better than most. She is the one who holds the rest of the kids together, even holds us together somehow. She is resolute in an absolutely broken way. She is far too young to be so broken, she is far too young to be crushing herself with the responsibility she is crushing herself with. She is far too young to be living in this world but alas here she is.

Right now the kids are asleep. In the dark damp of the basement, on the threadbare sheets folded carefully on the unyielding stone. My babies. They are curled up together, between their parents. I normally sleep in the middle, with my girlfriend Katapa so each child is next to the warmth and reassurance of an adult. But I was up late tonight - even though I'll have to be up early tomorrow - so the five of them ended up huddling for warmth and I understand it.

I settle down beside Anderei and let my exhaustion pull me to sleep despite the way the floor grinds into me.

——-
The sun isn't up yet. Exhaustion hasn't left me yet. But it's time to wake up. Desiree, who works in the mill, shakes me, gently, until the terror of what the Towerpeople will do to my loved ones if I don't get up washes over me and jolts me awake properly.

"Good morning, Desiree. Did you sleep well?"

"Of course not," she answers. "But none of us ever do. Can you wake the others? I have to go back to my work."

"Yeah, I can wake them. Thank you for waking me, you're a lifesaver."

"Thanks. See you later."

"Bye. Good luck, I hope the day isn't too harsh."

"You too." She vanishes out the door and back towards her station.

The four of us adults are up first. We smile at each other though it's obvious we all feel like crying, all feel like dying. But little comforts where we can get them are worth the world, and we can only really get them from each other. Katapa, tired, looks me in the eye, the warm brown-green of her eyes soothing mine, making them want to tear up just a little bit less than they'd been wanting to before.

The stone floor beneath me feet is cold in a dreary way.

"I hope you all slept well," Lilith says softly, her voice like the tiniest hint of campfire smoke in the air, both wistful and invigorating.

"I hope so too," Katapa replies, looking around the room sombrely.

"I didn't sleep well, fuck the tower bastards for not giving us beds." They expected me to say this. And they were all thinking it, if the conspirational, comforted glint in their eyes is anything to be believed.

"Yeah. Fuck the Towerpeople." Anderei's almost as rebellious as I am. Good.

"I guess we have to get the kids up." Lilith's voice is filled with defeat, her eyes almost as worn down as her dress.

"I wish we didn't have to, they're sleeping so peacefully." Katapa winces in sympathy. She's so fiercely protective of those four kids. But things are the way they are and there's no changing that. Unfortunately.

"Well if we don't they'll fucking die." You're right Anderei. Fuck.

We each make our way to one child. I scoop up little Pavlin in my arms, hold them for a second before I brush my fingers through their hair. They're so limp and small. So young. My little bird. They all are. My sweet birds and I wish they could fly away but they can't.

"Wake up. Pavlin, sweetheart, wake up. Wake up. I know you don't want to but baby baby you know you have to." They stir, moving their gangly limbs, muttering a little bit, sleepy and incoherent. It makes my heart melt.

"Aunt Nan. Hi." Consciousness is slowly returning to them.

"Hi Pavlin. Get up, get up."

In a few minutes three of the kids are up. I hug all of them, whisper good morning.

Mafalia's eyes are big and tired and she clutches her hands into my hair.

"Aunt Nan I want to go to sleep," she says.

"Well we can't always get what we want," I sigh as I kiss her.

Andronicha smiles at me as I kneel down to hug her. I can tell that there's so much she wants to say. So much she wants to scream. But she doesn't. Some words crack through though.

"Miss Siessia has a new doll, with a pink dress." She doesn't say how broken she is, but the words crack under the weight of themselves, and under the weight of all that's left unsaid.

"Levi. Levi. Wake up." Anderei's voice is soft. Haunted. I can tell that he's in pain. But his son is a soothing balm to the pain.

"I'm having a dream."

"I'm sorry. Tell me about your dream later. We have to work."

I give him a hug and whisper good morning.

We brush out the tangles in the kids' hair with our fingers, with the kids cuddling into us. All day we are not able to be there for them. Not able to give them affection. So in the darkness of the basement, we do what little we can to make them remember that they're worthy of love. I feel so small right now, the eight of us exchanging quiet words and meaningful silences, as we all silently hope that this entire place will burn to the ground.

"Sweethearts. Remember, no matter what they say or do we all love you." Katpa's voice is as soft as honey.