It's one thing to scream and curse and cry.

It's something completely different to just walk forward, steady in the knowledge that no matter what- you are indeed going forward. To the door, to the future, to something possibly greater still.

To be making a familiar tune out of the clinking of your shackles, to be looking forward to this next chapter, a jail life one. To have the thoughts of hope and delight as the jail cell comes closer, of how many future friends await? Will ever a goal be scored and everyone will cheer? How soon until folding sheets and gossiping like a house wife await?

To be so much more than regret, it's something completely different to this guard's eyes. But what's not different is her appearance; he has seen her type far, far too much.

The power blankets over and the guard goes under.

She moves and her skin shimmers in the blasting fluorescent lights. A scar is embedded in her calf; it looks like it slowly corrodes deeper into her skin every night.

It is high and deep, black and white, tight and loose; the guard wonders as she walks and he follows behind, is it a sign of her suffering, or that of every tribes person born from the desert huts to the city apartments?

They reach a meshed window, one that he always has dark thoughts when looking out of; there are no stars outside in the expansive, mystic African ceiling of night. The prisoner lady, the one who deservers so much more yet here he is locking her away, she jolts and doubles over like something is ripping into her gut. The she splits and bleeds and breaks away.

He was never a religious or superstitious man, but from that moment on, when the black children scream in their street game about a vengeful Tokoloshe, he ducks.

…

"You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

…

He is working; hammering at the vast, meter tall pathways. Posts AJI- 800 to -850 are due to be replaced and some floor boards in section 7 splintered in the last king tide.

There is work and it needs to be done, it's not easy to do but you've got to do it, these are the war cries of his isolated, sand bar nation. No complaining, no grimacing, just finish your due and work your way through this harsh, infertile life of seaside existence. We all suffer, none more than most, we just have to shoulder the pain motionlessly together.

Working waste deep in salty, grimy water that is heated to nauseating point by the Sun, he yanks the rusty nails out with his hammer. There are no waves to body slam him down, the surface is flat enough to be mistaken for a marble dance floor. He reaches up where he left the rope, but he …can't…quite…reach …it.

A warm hand passes it to him, and the peppered grandfather looks up to see a smiling, blinding night god looking down at him from where she is up on the pathways. She mumbles an ancient god language to him; he takes the length of rope wordlessly as she peers down.

Wrapping it around the post and through the uniform slot he drilling in the post, he asks her why a mighty god likes herself as chosen to visit him. She does not reply and he takes it that he is not to address her and be so bold. Removing the nails from his rotten gums, he hands them up to her and sets them down on the planking by her bare and heat cracked feet.

He continues down the line until all fifty of the scheduled posts have had their nails removed and ropes put in. His job is cut in half and he gets time to sit and watch the art of the beach. He waits with the wordless night god until the tide recedes down to the yellow strips on the posts, the ones that mark where the water should be when pulling them up. She lowers herself into the water during this quite interval and proceeds to swim through the water like a shadow slipping over the rooftops.

Curling, diving, flipping, harassing the lone rock on the sea bed and attempting to chase schools of fish. She climbs out heaving and breathless but laughing with her eyes and loving life with her all.

…

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

…

Once the job is done, the old posts are piled into the canoe. Untying the floating, thin boat from where it has been hitched like a horse, he gathers the oars and starts off with the precious cargo. Wood for children's toys or patching walls and awestruck night god who is enjoying the sensation of floating.

The fresh legs of the pathways are standing and new nails imbedded. He watches her play like not even children dare to do, the mentality of his people that fun and rest are sins burns at the back of his mind.

Is she here because she disobeyed and was banished from the sky? To watch now as the shire of their night, the mother of women and protector of pregnancies, to see her acting so different from the stone faced way she is described in the legends.

She pocks at the oysters that encrust the once-pillars-of-strength which have weathered Mother Ocean's suffocating love and the Sun's inescapable fury. The Sun… in the story of the Crab Betrayal, even though Lady Night tried to kill him, the Sun forgave her instantly.

The Sun loves Lady Night, which is why he chases her across the sky; the Sun would not let Lady Night be thrown out of the kingdom. They would not, would they? Haven't they been working together in synch to turn the earth since the beginning of time?

As he rows he tries to see the shape of her stomach, maybe she carries a child to someone other than her admiring Sun? Maybe that finally awoke the Sun to the hopeless pursuit of courtship? He jumps as Lady Night gasps. She has cracked an old oyster and smashed it open on the side of the boat; she scoops up something and shows in in delight and her god language. It's a pearl, bended into in the same crescent shape the moon was last night and as sparkling white as Lady Night's stars… it cannot be… but it makes sense…surly.

The man swings his oars and diverts his eyes as the goddess looks up to him, all of her is alive with finding the treasure, something which would be considered imperfect by many because it is not perfectly round. She rubs it and giggles into the afternoon breeze. There is a fire in this lady god, a burning intensity that makes you hurt when you walk away from her shinning, shimmering, forgiving, soothing, commanding presence.

A new tale emerges amongst the next generation, one of how Mother Ocean and Lady Night fell into love with each other, of how the rest could not stand the forbidden relationship of two women and cast Lady Night to the human world and now walks amongst them. Of how pearls are Mother Ocean's way of sending her eternal love to the Lady Night who suffers alone. Of how the Night is now ruled by an abandoned and empty household, of how the Sun went crazy with sorrow and continues to chase even through his Lady is gone.

She never realises the hollow eyed, strange, strange people in this new crazy, new, new place. She has found a utopia of excitement and colour. The seven ships in the harbour creak like her muscles when she stretches after a midday nap. Nobody stops her from climbing aboard, eager eyed to see the rest of this never-never land.

They set out, the sails billow, the wind reunites with her robust hair and she teaches herself how to flip and jump like an acrobat from the hanging ropes of the hard working ship. The men laugh at her and she shouts about "give me food, chef man, me need meat!" in their language and "you pathetic men, you stink like a fucking zoo!" in hers.

…

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

…