Somali Tales

“Great, see you soon, then.”

***

Her mission came to her overnight, and Rune did not have the time to fully research this Maa community. Turning on the radio, she tried to catch the news and some additional details about this forsaken parade. She thought Mehreen was the only region where they remember something like the rumored “religions”, but the parade told a deeper story.

Her mission came to her overnight, and Rune did not have the time to fully research this Maa community. Turning on the radio, she tried to catch the news and some additional details about this forsaken parade. She thought Mehreen was the only region where they remember something like the rumored “religions”, but the parade told a deeper story.

Driving for hours, all she heard were hymns in a dying language. Something called Arabic, as taught in her ancient history class. She did make some judicious choices in her class selection, but not judicious enough to properly learn something. Only a couple of words were discernable, and no true meaning. The letters were all guttural, and she couldn’t catch them all to understand the full sentence.

Were the songs mourning the lost ones, or were they celebrating the end of ancient times? It was such a controversial subject. Her own country used to be called Somalia, and almost a thousand years ago, it had seen more than 40% of its population disappeared in one night, along with the content of their meager libraries.

And the same happened in many African countries, including half of Algeria, 25% or Morocco and entire cities in Egypt. There were empty countries in West or central Asia, some European cities also lost members of their community in many boroughs, where more than half of the people did not wake up from an intense sleep.

Rune remembered her history lessons well, having even taken archeology as a minor. A disappearance like that one still had effect socially, politically, and most of all, culturally. The strangest aspect was that no one could remember the cultural practices of the dead.

Her teachers always described deserted land, markets, malls, to signify an immense loss. Who were these neighbors? These family members? No one knew what happened to them and why even their artefacts and knowledge gently disappeared. There were entire houses and buildings who used to be of use for cultural practices which no one remembers. Were they buildings to bury the dead? To celebrate unions? That’s what most of her teachers believed. They were places for the community to gather, but any inscription had been erased.  

After the event, sometimes called a natural holocaust, huge burials were done. Rune saw the one in Hamar, the now capital of Malia. They were even lucky to have a place to rest. In some lands, the bodies were left to rot, eaten by scavengers. It was not rare to find human remains anyplace you went hiking for hundreds of years after the “event.”

Rune learned the countries who lost the most population accused others to have orchestrated these killings. Indeed, while 5% at least of the wolrd population died, many other people remained alive; and powerful as well as weak countries took the occasion to invade the regions where only few people survived.

But here was Mehreen, the resistant. It had not fallen under the weight of the giant nor accepted any defeat. The population fought hundreds of years of war, keeping its secret to itself.

Well. Her organization did not exist back then, nor did someone like Rune existed. The whole affair would have taken a week, if she they been, she thought to herself. Hundreds of years of fighting for what?

Looking outside her window, Rune got an idea about the reason they fought so ardently. The land was beautiful, with a refine architecture. Nothing of the spatial look all the world cities had.

“Cut the head, and they will all walk back, with their tail down,” asked her teacher. But the streets were empty. There were no heads to cut, and not a single tail on sight. Only fruit trees and luxurious houses with huge gardens.

The world never recovered from the millions of dead, leaving the living with innumerable space.

Anyway, she was not here to revisit her history class. She was here, alive and well-trained to bring the city of Hades to its knees. She will reveal the secret to their strength and hopefully counter it.

Despite her gentle appearance, Rune was ruthless when it came to her missions, and as the highest-ranking soldier in her team, she will bring an end to the Mehreen reign, one way or another.

 Part 3 upcoming