Their features are faint shadows, wisps that disappear if you stare too hard or too long. Even their clothes glisten so bright, you wouldn’t know the sun was hiding on the other side of the world. I sit up blinking, trying to make sense of what I’m seeing. Luscious cloaks wrap around their frames, jewels hug their knuckles, and sculpted metal rests on their nests of coiled hair. Golden stripes run down their arms, across their cheeks, and are dotted around their temples.

I reach for words, for breath, but I have neither. I’m frozen, facing my Ancestors in their full robed majesty.

“Who calls upon the Ancient Ones?” The earth trembles and the voice booms overhead like it’s coming from the clouds. I try to say something, but it comes out like a squeak.

One of the robed Ancestors steps forward, sweeping her hand in an upward motion, and somehow I am standing. Dust swirls around us, a backdrop of chaos, but in the center, I, the Ancestors, the Ghizoni, stand in an eye of calm.

“Rise, Jelani.”

My name.

They know my name.

Of course they know your name!

“A storm wars within this one,” one of the other Ancestors says, and the one closest to me steps closer.

“Do not be afraid, Jelani.”

I’m not, I want to say. But again, words escape me. Maybe I am? Maybe I’m terrified. She holds out her hand and I take it. Her skin is dust on my fingers, but grows warm the longer I hold it, skin materializing out of nothing. Where there was just the silhouette of a woman written in swirls of dusty golden haze, now is a woman in fully human form, holding my hand. Her skin is richer than the lushest valleys on the earth. Her eyes hang like jewels beneath long lashes. Her nose curves and slopes widely, like the journey of the moon around the sun. She is perfection. A bed of jewels dot a tangle of metal resting on her head. Her hair is tightly coiled, braided with gold into a high bun. I smile, thinking of Moi Ike Yakanna and just how glorious she, too, must have been.

These are my people.

This is who I come from.

I am part of them.

The truth of it is a weight on my chest, but in the best way.

“I do not have much time in this form, dear one,” she says, her skin is deep ebony so radiant, I’m sure she gives the stars their light. “What is it you have called upon us for? Make it known.”