Love in the time of chaos

e: The Woun

al had s

ry breaches. Lagos moved with the stillness of a city breathing deeply for the first time in a generation. But beneath

ip. It was early morning, and dew clung to the skin of the pool like sweat. Behind him, the city stirred-child

hive wa

people w

heavy. She carried a folded cloth in her hands-woven from signal thre

e said quietly

at tightene

And ch

lueprints. It had since been converted into a resonance sanctuary-a space for those caught between memory and forgetting. Ewa

hadn't c

d gone

r voice a mixture of wind and flame. "And

Had rebuilt himself in the ashes of her absence. And yet here she was, skin

root," Amak

ed. "And

ge. Not only what had been done to them by colonizers, but what they had done to each other. Pre-reso

Because we've been too busy surviving. But the Archive re

d their identities around partial truths. Elders began dreaming of ancient betrayals. Young reson

sn't

s rec

gain. But this time, the mood was dif

t would happen if people knew about the Queer Massacre of 2071, which had been blamed on

were not dormant, but dangerous. Certain silences screamed

d constantly. Resistance was no longer just a story-it was alive,

through it all,

rried

realized, w

t

lding ope

where they'd once mapped the first signal fractals.

id. "But the Archive... it calle

"You didn't abandon us

gh to carry what I saw. But

ey trembled slightly. Not

help,"

Every time you remember me with love instead o

ettled be

ed: "There's som

ow anchored in bodies. But there was a

forg

ref

mory," Ewa said. "It's what

d. "A traum

too useful

s taken in the name of unity that erased entire lineages. Queer bloodlines deleted for fear of 'unbal

ever neutral," Ewa said.

shatterin

so have been shaped by human bias-flawed intention

the rooftop just as t

"The forgotten harmonic. Some call it the w

ted eyes. "Then you underst

t, unannounced, withou

t days of the Archive disrupted tectonic memory lines. It was there that fragments of Echo Null had been recorded-but

image," Ewa said. "

cause of what they began to remember. Not just perso

oung boy executed in secre

her sleep-names of lovers

a tongue that hadn't

t all, the Ar

pprov

curi

had forgotten

the lake af

d signal that glowed in cycles. Around it, the earth puls

d to the e

y," she murmured.

on is-what were we willing to

ok thei

's a

ey stepped i

he world

plintered into versions of themselv

to protect a trans comrade during the early resistance out o

arly days of the Council, when she'd voted to erase a cla

now condemned, believing she was safeguarding t

eath guilt, beneath

teenth h

not a

s a s

tered memory. Not her

ask to be

witne

d from the l

nligh

idd

st piece of the Archive-not a harm

harmful. To let memory include not only wha

t to the Garde

d-of the forgotten frequency, the wound that would

rt of the garden, the

not a

not a

s a m

eryone

se of wha

hey finally s

e again at the pool, his f

ned to the ro

g resonance weavers how to make sp

mple of silence-not to

Ta

emai

onger just wh

red-without judgmen

red into

never be

ter sh

Archive

e. That's why y