Late that night I sit cross-legged by a charcoal brazier of oudh incense, the fragrant smoke weaving into the desert star-scape. Earth between my fingers, I listen for the quiet voices of those who came before. My heart drum beats in time with distant thunder, and soon I close my eyes.
In sleep, I wander. Dressed in the white cloth of elders, I stand beneath a baobab as old as time. The branches above are carved with adinkra symbols that glow with living starlight: Sankofa, wisdom of birds; Aya, endurance in storms. From the branches descend ghosts of my kin. My grandfather in flowing agbada speaks first. His voice is gravel and honey: "Obasi...you carry the sky in your arms. Remember the story of the scorpion and the songbird."
Then my grandmother, from a lineage of rainmakers, presses her warm hand to my heart. "Our blood is the earth and the night," she whispers. "Don't lose the weight of that sky on your shoulders. Keep your spirit rooted." She gestures to the constellations, and they swirl into shapes of ancestors I have only heard of in tales.
A giant leopard appears, its fur patterned with glinting stars. It yawns and turns into a lion that speaks in Adinkra, though I hear it in my mind. "Balance," it says. "Be the dawn that keeps the dark at bay, but let the night also live."
When I wake, pre-dawn light is kissing the dunes. My body tingles with quiet power. The voice of the leopard echoes: a reminder that even a guardian must rest; that even power needs humility.
Outside, I whisper a prayer in Twi, thanking the spirits of earth and sky. My palms still warm with desert sand, I watch the first star of dawn fade. I carry with me the quiet confidence of that dream, and the promise of ancestral guidance as I step into the day.