Part II Chapter 7 Bamako, Mali River of Music The city is chaos—market cries, motorbike horns, spices sharp as jealousy. We duck into a courtyard where three men with koras pluck the dusk like strings of silk. One pauses mid-note, eyes twinkling. “You look lost, sister. Or maybe just looking for the right story to…
Tag: Romance
The Holographer’s Atlas – Rafael
This time the reasons I weren’t were simple: get away from the one I was trying to leave, get back the one I had left for him. Benidorm was where he would be, which wasn’t coincidence — it was the only reason that mattered. Rafael I had met the summer before. Dark, androgynous, the kind…
The COMC files Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 6 Agueda and Baran I open my eyes — and I am no longer by the water. Warmth. Leather. Incense and old papyrus. Asdar stands before me, arms open, gaze pitched somewhere between hope and awe. “You found the crossing,” he says. “Or it found me.” He gathers me close, the universe…
Author’s Note
Guido and Iliya were not an interlude. They were the bridge — the one the reader needs to cross to understand what happens when Elena the anthropologist finally stops moving and the writer who invented her steps into the light. That bridge has a name now. The Holographer’s Atlas. It stands between Alkebulan and the…
The COMC files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 5 Song-Bearer Dakar flickers past — taxis, market smoke, griots with their lutes. I send Mrs H her update and keep moving. Saint-Louis at night is velvet and brass. A thin man with a battered trumpet sizes me up and tells me the real stories live where women dance barefoot on the…
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 4 Where the Python Coils Karim is waiting at the compound’s edge, boots dusty, bag already on his shoulder. We don’t discuss Tarmo. We don’t need to. “South or east?” he asks. “Whichever way gets us to the next myth.” He grins — rare, infectious — and we walk out into Africa….
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 3 Gold Sandi is gone before I’m out of the shower. I take my time. The bra is a problem — leaking again, that slow persistent gold that has no respect for schedules or dignity. I rifle through my bag for something absorbent, find nothing, stand there dripping and furious. A throat-clearing…
The COMC Files-Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 2 Sandi “I’ll help you,” Sandi murmurs. She does — her hands soft, kindness in the way she peels my dress away. The moment my breasts are free I hear her breath change. I close my eyes, breathing in the steamy hush, pulse still thrumming with gold and fear and the old…
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 1 Convergence Mikael Sahel dust still on my boots. Iron tang of gunmetal, old blood — layered beneath my skin by now, permanent. Isaa and his men, gone. Spent shells in the sand. Justice. Never clean, never simple. No victory. Just necessity. Elena. The bright line. The only clarity in this landscape…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Iliya piece concludes in three parts — March 13, 14, and 15 at 11 AM — on Ream. https://reamstories.com/creator-hub/story/content/mm5evjtfb32335/ebook Some stories ask to be finished in a quieter room. This is one of them. — I.Ph. de Lange
The C.O.M.C. Files 