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Change was constant. Change was my destiny. Growth.

I felt the pain and the glory of growth, was straining and shuddering with it.

There was always so much I didn’t know, but not knowing was part of it all.

When you face your deepest fears, when you are ready,” she’d said. “Don’t turn away. Stand tall, endure, face them. If you get through it, they will never harm you again.

Having curiosity is the only way to learn.

How different my life would have been if my parents had just let me dance.

Feet away, Professor Dema stood, carrying a large gunlike weapon with both her hands and a snarl on her lips. This was not the way final exams were supposed to go.

Nothing is wrong with me? I thought. Not unclean? It’s just . . . a new part of me I need to learn to control? I’d come all this way to go on my pilgrimage because I’d thought my body was trying to tell me something was wrong with it. I hadn’t wanted to admit it to myself, but I’d thought I’d broken myself because of the choices I’d made, because of my actions, because I’d left my home to go to Oomza Uni. Because of guilt. The relief I felt was so all encompassing that I wanted to lie down on the rug and just sleep. Ariya

childbirth was only one of thousands of things the body could do without the spirit.

Why don’t I ever want to do what I’m supposed to do?

How had I not been able to guess this? Not that it was due to alien technology, but that they were working with a platform. They were manipulating a virtual platform like the ones astrolabes could project! One that only the Enyi Zinariya could see and access. I felt a sting of shame as I realized why I hadn’t understood something so obvious. My own prejudice. I had been raised to view the Desert People, the Enyi Zinariya, as a primitive, savage people plagued by a genetic neurological disorder. So that’s what I saw.

You Himba are so inward-looking,” she said. “Cocooned around that pink lake, growing your technology from knowledge harvested from deep within your genius, you girls and women dig up your red clay and hide beneath it. You’re an interesting people who have been on those lands for generations. But you’re a young people. The Enyi Zinariya are old old Africans. “And contrary to what you all believe, we have technology that puts yours to shame and we’ve had it for centuries

I saw how you looked at us,” he said. “Just like every Himba I have ever encountered, like we’re savages. You call us the ‘Desert People,’ mysterious uncivilized dark people of the sand.” I wanted to deny my prejudice, but he was right. “Despite the fact that you’re darker like us, have the crown like us, have our blood,” he said. “I wonder how surprised you were when you saw that we could speak your language as well as our three languages. ‘Desert People.’ Do you even know the actual name of our tribe?” I shook my head, slowly. “We’re the Enyi Zinariya,” he said. “No, I won’t translate that for you.

Whenever my father allowed me to buy a new book, I spent hours in my room with my eyes closed as I listened to it on my astrolabe. In many of those stories, a curious person would find a secret or magical object that would change her or his life. I’d always wanted that to happen to me. And now I was sure this was it.

Nothing was asked of Okwu and Okwu was pleased, preferring to menacingly loom in the background behind me. Okwu was happiest around human beings when it was menacingly looming.

When I was five, I had asked my mother what it was like to give birth. She smiled and said that giving birth was the act of stepping back and letting your body take over. That childbirth was only one of thousands of things the body could do without the spirit.

I will wash this off soon,” it said. “It’s not good to feel this pleased with life.

The three days passed, as time always does when you are alive, whether happy or tortured.

Sometimes, the obvious is too obvious,

The spirits and ghosts of the dead don’t stay where they’re freed.

No fear, Master Harmonizer, you belong in space!

Do you want to do this?” she asked. “Do I need to?” “Hmm. You’re still ashamed of what you are.

I’d come all this way to go on my pilgrimage because I’d thought my body was trying to tell me something was wrong with it.