GUARDIANS OF THE WATERS

Chapter 3

T'Challa was fourteen years old when Shuri was born. He never mentioned the siblings (born and unborn) who were lost in the interim years or how the hope for another child weighed heavier and heavier on their mother each year that progressed. When a second (and final) child joined the royal family, all Wakanda rejoiced. She was more than the sister to the prince, the daughter to the king. She was more than a princess of Wakanda.

She was the embodiment of years of relentless, painful, long-deferred hope.

The years between T'Challa's birth and Shuri's were conflicted, troubled years for Wakanda. The end of the Cold War flooded Africa with cheap Soviet weaponry and acted as kerosene on the long-simmering conflicts harbored by the jaded nation-states. On one side, the LRA and SPLA plagued northern Uganda and southern Sudan. On the next, Rwanda exploded into unceasing cycles of violence that left over a million dead and toppled Mobutu's fraught Zaire (and the surrounding regions) into a bloodbath. The Derg fell in Ethiopia and Somalia descended into civil war. Wakanda was an isolated island in an ocean of blood, or perhaps, not so isolated after all. In the midst of all this, T'Chaka assassinated his own brother for leaking Wakanda's secrets, adding their own blood to the waters around them. Fears were as thick as mangoes ripe on the branch, heavy and ready to fall.

It was just as Mobutu's regime fell that Shuri was born. Wakanda took a deep breath. Perhaps, Kabila's regime would be an improvement. Perhaps, there would be an end in sight. Perhaps, Wakanda could stay afloat. Perhaps, there was hope for the future.

She wailed into the dark, humid night of Birnin Zana, her young lungs soaking in the scent of Wakanda for the first time. Her tiny brown body was washed with the waters of her people. She blinked up into the eyes of the King and Queen, entirely oblivious to the role she was born to fill or the fragility of the world she found herself in. She knew nothing of wars or famines or kingdoms or conquests. She grasped her mother's fingers and suckled at her breast and fell asleep.

T'Challa was thin as a coconut palm and his face hadn't yet grown to incorporate his lips. He was all unwieldy limbs and unproportioned features, yet the warmth of his manner guaranteed he was beloved by all Wakanda from the moment they met him. In those days, he spent all his free time hunting omusu (edible rats) in the forests and trying to convince W'Kabi to let him ride the war rhinos. T'Chaka made sure he spent most of his days in his studies, but the moment he was released, he burst from the palace to tumble through the red earth and chase vervet monkeys through the banana trees with all the enthusiasm of the young boy he still was.

Her mother always told her that she took to her brother like a hippo to water. On that first day, she was wrapped in a fresh kitenge placed in the arms of her older brother. It was the place she decided she most belonged. Whenever she was unsettled, her mother called for T'Challa. She loved her parents and her yaya (nanny) but it was her brother that she loved most of all, even as a baby.

He took his job as older brother more seriously than any expected. Rather than ignoring her for the excitement of the field and forest, he couldn't get enough of his mtoto (baby). He doted on her, delighting in her antics and spending hours chasing her through the gardens around the palace.

It was not so, so long before he grew into his gangly limbs and filled out like a lion cub grown into his mane. He grew more solemn as he aged and the weight of Wakanda fell more heavily on his broad shoulders. To Shuri, he was always so old, so mature, so self-assured. He always knew the answers and never balked at his role as prince.

She admired him because he was so unlike herself.

Shuri was two years old when she first discovered a broken vacuum cleaner in a rubbish bin of the palace. She had escaped from her yaya's care (again) and managed to lock herself in one of the closets belonging to the wasafi (house cleaners). After pouring all the cleaning solutions on the floor, she discovered the rubbish bin and she set to work dissecting the vacuum cleaner into pieces.

Her mother was torn between weeping, laughing, and shouting when Shuri was finally discovered. Her kimoyo beads were recalibrated, along with every single camera in the palace, so that her whereabouts could be tracked at all times. They never had to resort to such methods with T'Challa. He had never vanished or so much as overturned a cart of mandazi. However, Shuri was not her brother. When her yaya lost her again a week later, this time in the kitchens, T'Chaka decided they needed a new solution.

"She spent nearly an half hour taking apart the cooking stove and then she set to work on the tea kettle before we found her," her father explained to her mother. "I think we are approaching this from the wrong direction. If the girl wishes to fiddle with this and that, let her. Rather than disturb her yaya, we will send her another mwalimu to teach her. Call for Mzee Mpote. Let the elder sit with her for an hour or so each day and he can supervise her while she plays. This will keep her out of so much mischief and keep her mind and fingers busy."

Mzee Mpote was well-known throughout the palace as a fundi wa kila kitu. The old man could fix everything from computers to lights to appliances to broken wooden toys. He had been such a technological genius that when his hair grew too, too white and his back too fragile to crawl underneath panels and through walls anymore, the palace kept him on staff just for his expertise. He was surprised, and more than entertained, when he was presented with his next (and most daunting) assignment.

"Eh, eh, eh, mfalme wangu. My King! You are not serious! I am to take on a position as yaya?"

"Consider this a new challenge and you are more her teacher than her caretaker."

"This small, small girl is hardly old enough to walk and can barely speak two words together. Yet, you wish me to give her real tools and old taka taka from the rubbish heap and let her put them together and take them apart?"

T'Chaka nodded, an amused smile on his face as he considered the old fundi. "You are the most knowledgeable mwalimu we have. I cannot think of a better teacher."

"Eeeee. I cannot refuse my king. Sawa, sawa, bwana," the old man agreed with a respectful nod of his head and a salute to his monarch.

Shuri found the old man as slow as a tortoise but just as patient. He perpetually smelled of coffee beans and cardamon and he wore kitenge shirts made only by his wife. His quivering hands still managed the delicate work on circuit boards even if he could no longer lift the heavier engines and mainframes around the lab. Because of this, T'Chaka ordered her yaya stay close by, just in case strong, quick arms were required to keep her from escaping. However, her yaya did not often need to intervene. She was far too enthralled to consider running away.

Mzee Mpote, once he discovered his young charge would not simply eat screws or throw glass vials on the floor, began to carry in baskets full of old, discarded parts from the nearby lab. Then, he showed her how various wires could connect, how tools could be used, and how to bring life into previously inanimate parts. There, in a back room of the lab in the far reaches of the world under the palace, the princess, also, came alive.

By the time she was three, she could reassemble the tea kettle without assistance. By the time she was four, she had built her first simple machine – a little battery-powered robot which would chirp like a cheetah and roll across the floor on old roller skate wheels at her command.

Her yaya was delighted by her charge's ability to focus for long hours on her tasks, however she was less impressed by the fact that her charge now refused to leave the confines of the underground lab. Her tantrums, when forced out into the sunlight and fresh air, were so explosive that the entire palace knew of them. Shuri paced the gardens like a caged lion until she was allowed to return to her tools in the lab.

"When she fixates on something, that is the only thing that exists," her mother mused. "Trying to change her focus is like trying to stop a stampede of wildebeests."

T'Chaka smiled fondly at his daughter. "She is gifted. While I agree she must be forced to bathe and play outside and tend to her studies, I do not see the harm in letting her pursue her passion. As they say, 'akili ni mali.' 'Intelligence is an asset' and I believe we should feed her gift."

Shuri always knew she was a little bit different from the other children. Her position in the royal family would have been enough to set her apart but it ran deeper than her social standing. Sometimes she felt like her mind was a tangle of wires and if she didn't fill her hands with wire cutters, then her mind would never get its circuits straight. Thus, whenever she felt overwhelmed or like the world around her was too, too much for her to handle, she took refuge in her lab. When she was there, for a few hours, everything made sense.

She could control the mighty forces around her. Water and electricity, physics and chemistry, forces and movement – they all made sense in her lab and could be understood and managed properly.

People, well, they were harder. She could never predict what they would do or how they would react. Whatever floated through her heart in a given moment is what poured out of her, no matter how her mother chided her to be more self-controlled. Sometimes she made people laugh and sometimes she made them cringe. She struggled to reign in her emotions and filter her words or know how to make others feel at ease around her. She knew they did not understand her and she could not be bothered to try to understand them.

It was another way she was not like her brother.

"Shuri, your mouth is like a charging rhinoceros. Think before you speak, child. Think before you act. There are consequences for impulsive actions and some which are not easily fixed," her mother chided her, often.

Ramonda tried again and again to force Shuri to tend to her training in diplomacy, etiquette, linguistics, and cultural norms. Her mother wished for her to act more like the princess she was supposed to be. Her role, someday, would be to support her brother on the throne. In a country where most kings took multiple wives, the wives themselves held very little power other than what could be gained through their children. It was the role of the king's mother and king's sister to tend to the affairs of state and politics and maintain order in the palace. It fell to the king's sister to see to palace etiquette, host visitors, and see to the needs of her brother.

Shuri "knew" all this, but she chafed against it. Sometimes, she begrudgingly attended to her lessons. Other times, she simply disappeared in a heated tantrum to her lab. Ramonda threw up her hands in exasperation and then was her father who intervened.

"Shuri…," he said, when he found her there after a particularly explosive argument.

"Yes, Baba," she said. She did not look up from her soldering iron or take her mask from her face. She stared at the flame and watched as it melted the piece of metal in her tongs.

"Shuri, did you know I once trained as a school teacher?"

She started and glanced up. She knew her father was not expected to become king, but she had never heard this story.

T'Chaka was the fifth born of twenty children. His father, the previous king, took six wives, as was expected from a man of his status and position. T'Chaka was the only child born to his father's fourth wife. His mother died in childbirth, leaving him without an ally in the den of vipers that was the royal family. His stepmothers fought like feral cats over which blew the wind that swayed the reeds of the King's opinions and each wished their own child to wear the crown. After the two eldest children died of unexplained illnesses, his father feared T'Chaka would be poisoned or have a spell placed upon him to make him sicken and die as well. To preserve the young boy, he was sent to live with his mother's family, upcountry. He grew up there, far from the mires of jealousy that threatened to swallow up the farthest reaches of the royal family.

T'Chaka found himself next in-line for the throne after his remaining elder brothers killed each other in their ritual combat over the next King's coronation. The third born determined he was more worthy than the fourth and so both went to join their ancestors. T'Chaka did not want to be the next in line to meet his ancestors so instead of seeking to consolidate his rule using his fists, he met with all the other brothers and sisters and sought their loyalty. Through promises of high positions throughout Wakanda, he bought their promises that they would support his rule and not fight against him. When his coronation day came, none challenged him and he was crowned.

When T'Chaka caught Shuri's movement and knew she was listening, he told his story.

"When I was sent upcountry to stay with my jaja (grandmother) in the village, it was assumed I might never return to the palace. I was old enough to study a trade. At first, I thought I would go to the Merchant tribe and open up a shop along the borders. Then, I thought I would take up a position as a lawyer in town. Then, well, I discovered my true passion was teaching.

"Our village, you have been so you know, it is too, too small and so far outside of Birnin Zana that it does not receive all the attention the villages closer to the capital receive. Our small, small school only had four teachers and somedays the electricity would go out for days when the rains came. It was there, with my younger cousins, that I learned how much I loved to help them study. I decided then that I would teach in the villages, those most neglected and ignored by the rest of Wakanda and focus on the children most ignored."

"But then your brothers died…," Shuri surmised.

"Yes. You know the tale. I had just taken my first post in the village when I received the news and was summoned to Birnin Zana to take my place in the palace. Shuri, I wept like a small child who has cut his finger that day and not even my jaja could comfort me. I nearly fled to what was then called Zaire, just to avoid the role I found myself called to fill."

"Why did you agree to come?" she asked.

"Shuri, there are days when it is not easy to face our Names. There are days Okoye does not wish to battle. There are days I do not wish to be a husband or a king. There are days when your brother would rather ignore his panther habit and avoid his future crown. I will tell you, Shuri, your character and your strength is determined by what you do on those days.

"You remember the baobabs? We are too wet to grow them well here, but you saw them in Tanzania and Kenya, yes?"

She nodded. "Those funny, fat trees that look like their branches are too small for their heads."

"Yes. In some places, those trees are called 'trees of life' because they are so very useful. They give fruit, shelter, material for rope, and even water. Entire ecosystems survive around their trunks. They can prove the difference between life and death in the dry season of the savanna.

"I tell you, daughter, if a baobab only grows during the rainy season, then all the animals and people that depend on their fruit would die. It is because the baobab faces the dry season and still provides fruit, water, and shelter to those under their protection that they keep their dependents alive. You are like that baobab. Your heart is grown during the dry season, daughter, and it is in the times that your heart longs to turn away from your Name that you show who you are and other can find life in your shade."

Shuri had long since turned off her soldering iron and pulled the mask from her face. Her father gave her a soft, earnest smile and reached over the squeeze her arm.

"I may never become a school teacher, but as king, I could ensure funding and skilled teachers are sent to even the most distant of villages. I may despise long-winded meetings with the elders but I must face my Name. I am born to be T'Chaka and so I will hold my head high, clasp onto the king's drum, and stand firm."

Shuri stared at her father, part of her wishing his words were different, easier to bear. Another part of her knew he was right and saying the words she most needed to hear.

"Mother wishes for me to learn to be a princess. I am not good at being a princess."

"Perhaps not. However, you are the only one who can be Shuri and Shuri was born a princess. Perhaps you are not as the daughters of kings of the past, but you are what Wakanda needs in this generation. Your brother needs you. Wakanda needs you. Stand firm and face your Name."

"What if I wish I had a different Name?" She pleaded, knowing it was in vain.

T'Chaka laughed. "Who doesn't wish that, during the dry season? No, daughter, who receives such a choice? It is chosen for us on our births and we no more choose our Names than we choose the day and location of our first cries. Do not fear it. The Creator is never mistaken and you are different from all the others because you are what is needed for the days yet to come. Our days are not the same as our forefathers and our children will face their own Names in their turn."

T'Chaka approached her and took the mask out of her hands. Then his gaze turned stern. "You know you are not where you were told to be. You owe your mother an apology and I expect you to stay by her side for the next three days. If I find you in this lab again, I will bar your access for a month."

She reluctantly nodded. "Yes, Baba."

She did as her father asked… and then as her mother demanded… but her heart was not fully engaged. She did not care about the appropriate way to kneel before the Kabaka or Nkore or Omukama. She did not wish to impress dignitaries from France or Brazil with her grasp of their languages. All she wanted to do was create new things, fix problems, redeem broken things and make them into something new, something with life in them again.

T'Challa warmly tolerated her idiosyncrasies and supported her passions in his own way. He could not fully understand what drew her to her lab, but he allowed her to recalibrate his suits and weaponry and use him as a live test subject for whatever outlandish idea struck her next. To have his support meant she was more likely to have Wakanda's and that meant the world to her.

Yet, he did not struggle to accept his role as prince. He took to it as a cheetah to running and never once stopped to bemoan his spots.

They could not have been more different from each other.

It was a longstanding joke between them. Shuri long gave up ever reaching his shoulders with her head and it became her turn to stand as willowy as a coconut palm. Yet, she still relied on her brother, just as she had done when she was a baby in his arms.

"You are the mgunga tree and I am your army of ants," Shuri teased.

"It is true. You are as tiny as an ant and just as irritating," T'Challa answered, his familiar dimpled smile crossing his face.

"And you are just as dense and prickly as the mgunga thorns!" She retorted.

"Yet, still, we need each other."

The sparse, prickly whistling thorn acacia had developed a symbiotic relationship with its little army of ants. The tree provided shelter and food for the ants. In return, the ants protected the trees and chased off animals even as large as giraffes and elephants. Despite the disparity in size and strength, each relied on the other to survive and made the other stronger.

Now she was the ant without her mgunga tree, exposed and purposeless.

No one had been prepared for T'Challa's death. T'Challa stood so tall, so strong, so handsome. His smiles was as bright as the sun shining off Nyanza (Lake Victoria) and all Wakanda expected to see their new king grow old and toothless before he met his Ancestors.

It was not to be.

Some said it was due to the curses placed on T'Chaka by his father's jealous fifth wife. Others said it was due to T'Chaka's failure to attend to the spirits or that the ghost of his brother haunted him, casting curses on his offspring in vengeance for his brother's death.

"He died of heart failure, Mother," Shuri had argued vehemently, after hearing these rumors abound.

"That was the cause of his physical death, but why did his heart die? Not everyone's heart dies and there is a cause that cannot be seen which stops the heart from beating," her mother responded. "There are causes that cannot be measured in your lab or by your technology. You must use a different set of tools to understand them and they can only be measured by the heart and the spirit."

Shuri didn't dare argue. After all, her beloved mother had watched her only son die - not once but three times. Whether by the hand of N'Jadaka, Thanos, or his own failed heart, T'Challa had faced death and spoken with his Ancestors more than most people would in a lifetime and Ramonda now knew grief more intimately than she had known her own long-lost mother.

Yet, despite her mother's grief, Shuri had refused to speak of it.

Her mother had tried to tell her. Her mother had tried to force her to face her grief. It wasn't just T'Challa's funeral shroud she was going to burn. It was her own anger, her own guilt, her own denial. She needed to accept that he was gone and he wasn't coming back. She also needed to accept that life would go one without him. That his presence remained and lingered, despite his loss, and she needed to see that not all the world needed to burn, just because he was gone.

Shuri refused. She pushed her mother away whenever she tried to speak of T'Challa and would not hear her mother's pleas to face her own grief.

She was determined to conquer her mourning in the same way she overcame everything else: in her lab. With her mind of full figures and theories, her fingers full of wires and machinery, and her lab table strewn with computers and tools, she thought she could heal the gaping ache in her heart. No matter how little she slept or how fatigued she grew, her great mind and creative powers failed to invent a balm for her bereaved soul.

As if death was something that could be controlled or loss something that could be measured and understood.

Now she regretted it. She had pushed so hard against her mother, against the role she was expected to fill. She felt as torn now as she did then, caught somewhere between the land and the water. In one 'world' she could breathe and find life. In another, she was holding her breath and waiting for the next gasp of fresh hair.

The light from the world of the Land People poured into the cave twelve hours each day. For twelve hours, Shuri stared at the flickering reflections and wished she could see a tree and feel dry earth beneath her feet. She wished she could escape the constant smell of salt water. She missed fresh water baths and the smooth feel of her washed skin, oiled deeply with shea butter. Now, her arms and legs constantly felt sticky from her salt water baths and she could not escape the residue of sand.

She laughed at herself when she remembered how she used to fight her yaya on her baths. She ran away, screamed, kicked, and refused her every single night… until the moment her little body was submerged in the warm water. Then she fought and kicked and screamed just as vehemently over getting out of the water again. Her yaya cried out in exasperation every time and chided her for her contradiction.

Now, she wished she could have fresh baths each night before bed.

She even missed the chance for someone else to organize her hair.

Every five days, she stared at her reflection in the water and tended her hair. It fell in long coils, carefully wrapped, and oiled with coconut oil.

She missed her mother the most on those days. Ever since she was old enough to sit for braids, Shuri and her mother sat together for their servants to organize their hair. Her mother's warm face, brown as millet flour, so full of laughter and affection, did not resemble her own chocolate dimples and slight features. Her mother was so beautiful, so proud. She did not understand Shuri's love for experimentation and creation, but she did understand Shuri's love for laughter. For however many hours it took for their hair to be braided or twisted or rolled, they told stories together. Shuri's lab table stayed vacant. The many duties of the Queen Mother stayed undone. T'Chaka and T'Challa did not dare intrude. Those days were set aside only for Shuri and her mother.

She thought of her mother often now. How great her grief must be! While T'Chaka's death had been a tragedy, his hair had long been as white as an egret's feathers and his cheeks as wrinkled as an elephant's ear. His death, while untimely, was not unexpected and they all had known to prepare the burial bark cloth and funeral shrouds, even before they received the news of the bombing.

Losing T'Challa three times was more than any of them could bear.

It was now that Shuri was separated from her mother by continents and oceans that she felt her mother's loss fully. How would her mother cope with the loss of her daughter for the second time? Shuri's heart broke at how much worry and additional grief her mother must now bear. She doubted her letter had granted her mother any but the most minimal of comforts.

When the Talokil delivered Riri Williams to Wakanda, they permitted her to carry a letter from Shuri. She labored for days over how to word it, what to say, and what would happen when her mother received it. This letter was not only an assurance of her well-being but it was the means to prevent open war-fare between Wakanda and Talokan.

She wrote:

My dear mother,

I am well. I am treated humanely and my needs are met. Do not fear for my well-being. I am in Talokan according to my own will. I requested to speak with Namor myself and chose to stay in Talokan in place of Riri Williams. She is to remain in Wakanda and I am to remain in Talokan. If she leaves Wakanda, then Talokan will invade Wakanda. If I leave Talokan, then Talokan will invade Wakanda. Wakanda has suffered too, too much already. We cannot face another open conflict so soon.

Namor wishes for Wakanda and Talokan to join together to overthrow all the known human kingdoms of the world. He has a dream to establish a new world order – one where Wakanda rules on land and Talokan in water.

I have refused. It is not our way. It does not hold up our sacred Pillars.

Namor will not release me until I agree and so I will never agree.

The greedy eyes of the world look upon us. Our secret is unveiled and we are an injured water buffalo, surrounded by lions. Do not spill more blood for my freedom. I am free where I am. This is my choice and I choose to preserve Wakanda.

Forever.

Your daughter,

Shuri

As days morphed into months and then into years, Shuri began to wonder if she had made the right decision. Was the life of the princess of Wakanda to be valued the same as an American civilian? Riri had no ties to Wakanda and no investment in its well-being. In fact, her research and invention of the Vibranium detector had placed Wakanda in great danger.

Shuri hadn't thought about the fragility of Wakanda or how dangerous it would be if Ramonda died while Shuri remained in captivity. Ramonda had only ever served in the roles of queen consort and queen mother, up until the extinguishment of half the universe. Then she had been forced to fill the gap and step in to mediate the chaos as a queen in her own right.

Those spared by the conflict with N'Jadaka soon found themselves fighting an intergalactic war against the universe's Mad Titan. All of Wakanda's technology, all their armies, all their resources had not been enough to hold back the tidal wave of alien invaders. Wakandan soils soaked up the blood spilled to maintain the freedom of the universe and still the grass was trampled and mottled with the burial mounds.

There had been so much loss, so much chaos. As the site of the battle against Thanos, Wakanda's loss of life and infrastructure nearly crippled the tiny country. As if that wasn't enough, both the prince and princess were gone. The General was gone. Half the tribal elders were gone. Their political structure was in shambles. The only way they kept order was Ramonda's efforts to fill the gaps of leadership, supported by M'Baku and the remaining council elders.

None of the World Councils or United Nations saw this. When they saw Wakanda, all they saw was what their hungry eyes and greedy hearts wished to see. Whether weakness or strength, might or devastation, danger or safety, it didn't matter. They were the canvas on which the rest of the world could paint their own desires, justify their own morality, and seek to establish themselves as the next benevolent "rescuer" of (or from) Wakanda.

"Where were our allies after the battle?" Ramonda complained. "Which of the great countries of the world helped Wakanda rebuild or sent funds to assist our widows and orphans? I will tell you where our allies were – casting their greedy eyes on Wakanda and plotting to steal our vibranium now that our defenses were down.

"Our Pillars were created for a reason. Only while Wakanda is secret and stays out of the affairs of our neighbors that we are safe. T'Challa, may the Ancestors keep him, broke our Pillars. Now it is left to me to handle the exposure. My son felt the preservation of the universe was worth the sacrifice of Wakanda and so he set our own country on fire. I am left to shovel through the ashes and determine how we will keep on living."

They survived after the Snap. Somehow.

Ramonda was not the only mother who wept, but her tears were felt by the entire kingdom.

Ramonda didn't like talking about those days and Shuri didn't like asking about them. After Shuri "unsnapped" and found herself five years behind the rest of the universe, nothing had been the same. Her mother carried a weight on her shoulders that hadn't been there before and a new grief had settled into the corners of her eyes and the spaces between her fingers and made her a different woman than she had been before.

She had grown to become Wakanda's queen.

Now, Ramonda faced remaining queen indefinitely. And she faced it alone. Her family was gone and all Wakanda looked to her to navigate the torrents that sought to drown them.

In the midst of all this, Shuri chose to sacrifice the remaining heir of Wakanda, Ramonda's sole surviving child, for Riri Williams. Was it a worthy sacrifice? Had she done as she ought or was it all a grave mistake – one Wakanda would pay for generations? Perhaps, Riri would refuse to stay in Wakanda and the Talokan would use that as an excuse to invade. Perhaps, she would create another vibranium detector and develop the very tools necessary to overthrow both Wakanda and Talokan. Perhaps Shuri was as much an optimistic fool as her brother had been and she failed to put the needs of Wakanda ahead of her own short-sighted desire to play the hero.

She didn't know. She didn't know much of anything anymore.

She could not control much of anything and she had no lab to run to. She could not fix this.

She used to chafe against Wakanda. The elders, they chastised her father for letting her run so free. They did not think she behaved as a princess of Wakanda ought. Her inventions brokered change and there was little Wakanda feared so much as change. Yet Shuri embodied change. It was in her nature, written into her bones.

"She is a hurricane with dimples," her mother used to say, her exasperation as clear as her affection. "She cannot leave any room the same as it was when she first entered it. She doesn't even do it intentionally. She just come in and begins to tinker, tinker. Her hands are always, always busy. Too, too busy. I cannot get her to sit still or to sit quiet or to rest. She is always up and down, here and there. Always moving."

That was then. These days, she could do little other than sit quietly. Sometimes, she jumped up and down and did push ups and jogged in place, simply to keep her strength up. However, she could not tinker with anything except shells and crustaceans. Rather than dwelling on circuitry and programming, her mind was forced to sift through old memories, since very little new stimuli encroached on her solitude.

She realized, only now that she was so far away, how much she loved Wakanda.

It was like how she never appreciated running water until she visited that village which lacked it. Or how she never appreciated electricity until that storm knocked it out across the city. She could not fully appreciate her home until she was too, too far away from it and only now could she taste the fragrance and feel the rhythm of what made Wakanda come alive. They danced to their own drum beat, with their own steps, and it was beautiful.

Not perfect. Never perfect.

But still beautiful.

And it was hers.

So, she would spend the rest of her life locked away in a cave, if it meant Wakanda would live.

She would spend the rest of her life serving chai to foreign dignitaries, playing at politics, and kneeling into the mud in her fine dresses if it would mean Wakanda thrived.

She was Shuri and she was born a princess of Wakanda.

And someday, if she ever found a way out of Talokan, she would become Wakanda's queen.

Author's Notes: Well, first off, I continue to be absolutely floored by the response this has gotten so far. I have been so very surprised. Thanks for letting me play in this sandbox and for all your encouragement.

Secondly, you get an update today in honor of Morocco. During last World Cup, we decided the only way Africa would get a team into the finals was to have Wakanda send a team. In absence of a Wakandan presence, we figure the odds were slim. It was a beautiful moment today. Morocco got into the semi-finals. History was made. Tears were shed. Thus, you get another update.