#bookerkin

Throughout her years, even before her first death, she’s made a habit of cataloging the exact distance she was from her hometown of Chicago. It was her little ritual, pulling up either her phone or a map, spanning the distance with her fingers. 6,987 miles, and then 4,130 miles, 3,879 miles, 5,148 miles, on and on and on.

It hurts, but it's good too, seeing how lives kept moving, kept growing and changing. The world turned and Nile and her new family walked through it. Time like water. You’d think one could get used to physical distance.

But nothing could have really prepared her for this.

A study of Nile through time

In which I compile my Nile week ficlets in an order that makes sense to me

on nile’s sixth birthday, her aunt and uncle from detroit drove the four hours to come to her party. they’d brought her cousins and food, and best of all, water guns, and they’d spent a breathless afternoon spritzing each other, the sun turning their shots to rainbow mist in the summer air. when she and her cousins had all tired each other out, they’d lain in a big heap on the floor, the ceiling fan wheeling lazily above. her father couldn’t make it home to kiss her on the forehead and squeeze her cheeks, “happy birthday baby, you’re getting big!” but right now that didn’t weigh too heavily on her young mind. when she’d had enough of waiting, she started ripping into her presents. books, some toys in shades of blue and green, and dismally, socks, though as she glared around the giggling circle of her family, her little brother’s toothy smile was happy enough to make the retaliatory punch to the shoulder not too hard.

she thanked everyone very politely for their presents and waved hard enough to make her arms hurt as one by one her relatives pulled out of the street, back to their respective homes. now, she remembers the shine of the setting sun on her aunt’s windshield and their wide, bright smiles, the grit of the pavement on her bare feet. now, she wonders if they’d had any inkling of the incoming significance of their gift to her, that day. she thinks about it a lot, even decades later. how would her life have changed, been different?

their gift to her had been a heavy book, huge to her little hands. the pictures on the cover had drawn her in first. she’d known of the pyramids, somehow, but as she went through the pages, her small mind sucking in all the new information like a sponge, this ancient civilisation entranced her. the large font and brightly coloured diagrams weren’t that detailed, and much later when she learnt more about her old phase, some of the facts presented in the children’s book were entirely inaccurate. but at the time it didn’t matter. here was a world straight from a fantasy, except it had been real.

some parts were too complicated for her to understand and for that she curled up in the crook of her mother’s arms, let her voice lull her to sleep. the nile river is the longest waterway in the world at 6650 km. throughout the history of egypt, the river has been the lifeblood of civilisations. a kiss to the side of her head and she giggles, in this golden memory of the child she used to be.

not too long later, her hands shake as she woodenly recites to her mother the words she’d spent months working on. logically, she knows she’s got nothing to be afraid of, and her mother does not disappoint as she sweeps her up into a big hug, holding her while she cries from the sheer relief of being able to be honest, finally. the next time her father comes home, she tells him with a lot more confidence and he swings her over his head, kisses her on the forehead like he’s always done. says, i always wanted a daughter, and everything is perfect, almost too good to be true.

time keeps her on her toes, keeps her moving forwards. it takes her father, then it takes her away from her mother and brother, but she finds her way back only to lose them again. it washes over her like a rock in a river, and she grieves, and she cries and some days it feels like her heart is going to split clean in two. but there are good days, always, when she feels like she’s doing some good. when she is good, and she lies awake in the morning and watches a ceiling fan go round, and thinks, everything is going to be fine.