Love, Spirit Ink, And the arrival of the first elder

"EHH! Transform keh. How did that one happen?"

My mother wasn’t really taking things easy as I tried explaining the past few days to her over the phone. And honestly, I didn’t blame her. I still had difficulties understanding things myself. Heck, I couldn’t even remember parts of what happened.

"Mama, I told you," I said while I paced around our bedroom. Sakuya was lying on the bed, looking cute as hell with limited clothing under her robes.

"After I removed the ring," I said into the phone, "I felt my body begin to change. And according to Sakuya and her sisters, I turned into Ogun, with his powers and abilities and everything."

I waited for my mother to reply, but I only got silence in response.

"Hello? Mama? Are you still there?"

Still silence.

"Mama?"

"Mama?..."

"Shey you have not gone and started smoking something in that Japan?" suddenly came Mama’s response.

Sakuya, who had been overhearing the conversation, quietly laughed at that.

I frowned.

"Mama," I said, forcing my tone to remain humble, "you are not hearing what I’m saying. I said—"

"Abeg, abeg, abeg, abeg, abeg," Mama said in quick succession, cutting me off. "Jumo, my son. Bia, bia, bia, bia ooo, come back to Nigeria."

I slapped my forehead in frustration.

Sakuya was still getting her chuckles’ worth on the bed.

"Mama, I told you. I am fine."

"Nooo," she responded. "You are not fine-o. This one you say you have started to turn into spirits... Are you a witch? Or is it wizard they used to call it, ma-sef?"

Sakuya was hysterical. She was losing herself to laughter.

"Come back so we can go to that medicine man, and he can explain what is happening to you. You hear?" Mama demanded.

I needed to end the call. She needed to cool down.

"Jumo. Shey you hear me?"

"Umm, Mama, sorry, the network is breaking," I began to make fake network-breaking sounds. "Oh, I can’t hear you. It is breaking so much."

"Jumo!"

"Sorry, Mama. I will call you later. It’s breaking. I love you. Bye-bye."

***

I collapsed onto the bed beside Sakuya a second later, exhausted from the call I just had with my mother. Still giggling, Sakuya slowly crawled onto my body, kissed me, then lay down. She had her twin softness pressing against my chest, and I did not hesitate to reach down over her back to rest my hand on a cheek. Though, I made sure to occasionally move my hand upwards to give her back a little rub.

"I told you she was going to panic and ask me to come home," I said.

"It’s still better you told her," Sakuya replied. "I don’t want us to keep her in the dark, like I kept you in the dark about my life."

I rubbed her back to comfort her. Everything just felt right in that moment with her in my arms. No spirits, no nightmares, no itching, no nothing. Just the two of us. Sakuya and Jumo. My dream girl and I.

"Hey, I have an idea," Sakuya said, getting up from my chest, only to then fling her leg across and slowly, but firmly, sit on top of me.

Holy mother of creation, thank you for everything that is soft and squishy in this world.

"Umm, Kuya," I said, fighting back a nervous sweat. "What are you doing?"

"What does it look like I’m doing?"

Sakuya moved her butt around as she adjusted her sitting on my waist.

Mother of God, this woman was going to kill me.

"Umm—"

I couldn’t even think straight anymore. I was starting to breathe heavily.

Sakuya leaned in closer to my face to whisper something.

"Need I remind you, both of my sisters are at school, Ash is probably sleeping after her morning patrol, and Aunt Kanna is in the shower." She adjusted her butt once more. Her pupils seemed dilated, and she was smiling. "So, I will ask you again. What does it look like I’m doing?"

"Straddling me like a horse?" I replied, joking to try and keep my level of excitement down. It wasn’t working, and I was certain she could feel it.

"Correct. And what, pray tell, do people do on horses, Jumo-san?"

Sakuya was so close to my face, our noses were practically touching. And when I couldn’t contain myself anymore, I grabbed her, flipped her over on the bed, and kissed her. On her very, very soft lips.

Just because I didn’t think it was the right time didn’t mean we couldn’t still enjoy each other’s company. And so, for the next twenty minutes, that was what we did.

***

After Sakuya left with Aunt Kanna to the market, I showered and changed into a pair of tracksuit pants and a short-sleeve shirt. I didn’t have to hide my tattoos while around Sakuya and her family, and I was relieved for that.

Sakuya had also brought all of my clothes and a few of my things from the apartment over to the temple. She still wasn’t entirely sure about the origins of the spirit that had saved my life from the Ogun nightmare, so she decided I was going to be staying at the temple until further notice.

Also, she wasn’t a fan of the fact that I said the spirit looked like her. She thought it might be some kind of mimic or shapeshifter, or something that was borrowing her face. I guess I wasn’t entirely sure myself. I was in a lot of pain back then, so maybe I had just simply been seeing things.

I stepped out of the room and into the quiet hallway. I was the only one at home. Well, not exactly.

Outside, I found Ash in a corner under the shade. She wasn’t dressed for battle, she wasn’t covered in blood. She just wore a simple blue top and bottom while she painted on a canvas.

Wait.

Was that really painting?

"Ah, hey," I called out to the white-haired girl as I approached. She turned, observed me with that deadpan expression of hers, then gave a quick nod before returning to her drawing. Now that I was much closer, I could make out details in what she was sketching. And I didn’t understand jack shit. It just resembled very complicated Japanese letters.

"Cool drawing," I said, trying to break the ice.

"This is not drawing," she replied, but didn’t elaborate. Instead, she continued dipping her brush into a small cup on a table beside her, filled with what looked like sparkling black ink. That caught my attention.

"Whoa, what is that?" I asked, moving for a closer look.

The girl quickly stretched her hand out to stop me.

"No," she said, shaking her head. "Spirit ink. Dangerous. Very hot."

I took one quick glance back at the cup. Strange. It wasn’t steaming. Just sparkling.

I straightened up, and she went back to drawing on the canvas. I desperately wanted to ask more questions, but she didn’t strike me as a person who talked much. Luckily, she might have somehow been reading my mind.

"It’s a barrier," she said. "Just like the ones around the temple walls."

Hearing that, I initially thought she was talking about the sparkling ink. I was like, How is a liquid a barrier? But then I took a quick glance at my surroundings. There were indeed giant white posters with symbols drawn on them, hung along the inner parts of the temple walls. That made so much sense. It was also what she was drawing.

"So, they, like, keep bad spirits out?" I asked.

"They do many things. But in this case, yes."

"So they are versatile in their use case, is what you're saying?" I asked, genuinely invested in learning how the spirit ink worked.

Ash nodded.

"Well, if you don't mind, could you please show me an example?"

***

"We mainly put them on our obi," Ash said as she went to bring some of their spirit-fighting gear and equipment. She dumped all of them on the ground—swords, arrows, a staff, smaller blades, shields. I couldn't believe she went all out. I probably should have clarified that it didn't have to be an elaborate example.

She bent down and picked up the staff.

"Look. What do you see?" She held up the staff vertically for me to identify something.

"Ah," I said, not really sure what I should have been looking for. "I obviously see a stick. I mean, a staff."

Ash wrinkled her forehead in annoyance.

"Look closely," she said. "At the designs and patterns."

I did.

I gasped.

There were intricate, tiny symbols drawn on the body of the staff with black ink. Spirit ink?

"This belongs to Sakuya," Ash said. "The symbols you see on the body were designed using spirit ink, which helps the weapon become lethal against spirits. It gives it weight behind every blow." She brought the staff closer for my observation as she continued to explain.

"These are mostly symbols for rocks," she said. "So every swing and smack with the staff will carry enough deadly weight behind it."

"Whoa," I simply said in response while I ogled at the weapon. I couldn't believe my girlfriend carried a stick into battle. I mean, the symbols on the body made it a thousand times more powerful, but a stick still looked like a stick—especially on the cover of Weekly Shonen Magazine.

I wanted to touch it, but Ash quickly pulled it away and picked up something else.

"And these arrows are one-time use. The symbols on them are for fire."

She positioned herself to show me a demonstration. She picked up the bow and knocked an arrow. She steadied herself. She aimed at the opposite side of the temple. Then she released.

The arrow zipped forward, and the moment it connected with the opposite wall, it exploded in a brief flash of fire.

"Whoa!" I said, barely containing my astonishment and excitement. "Okay, that has to be the coolest thing I have seen all year."

Ash smiled at my comment.

She was about to demonstrate another set of weapons to me when we were suddenly interrupted.

There was a sizzling sound coming from somewhere behind us.

Shhhhhhh.

I turned around in the direction of the noise, and found the recently completed spirit barrier Ash had drawn on the canvas was starting to...

It was starting to glow. Red. Almost as if it was heating up.

"Umm," I said, drawing Ash's attention. "Is it supposed to do that?"

I had barely finished asking the question when something else happened.

The shadow of a massive bird or winged creature, suddenly flew over the temple. A chill ran down my spine, and my breath suddenly caught in my throat.

What the hell was happening now?

But then I heard Ash whisper while looking upwards—

"Elder Safina."

And almost as if on cue, a demon appeared.

DROP.

A creature suddenly landed in front of us, causing me to nearly jump out of my skin—and for even Ash to flinch. Safina, a being Ash had identified as an elder, was not human.

She stood at the average height of a person but was completely covered in deep black feathers. Her face was a solid white mask with a frozen, annoyed expression—tinged with a little bit of anger in her hollowed-out eye sockets. When she spoke, her lips did not move, but I could hear every echoing word deep within the insides of my skull.

"Where is the guardian?" she demanded, looking down at Ash.

Then she snapped her gaze in my direction.

"And just who might you be?"