Copenhagen was cold in the way that crept into a man's bones. The sky hung low like a sheet of wet ash, and the wind carried no scent of home, no aroma of pepper stew simmering over coal, no incense from the shrine room, no dust curling off red earth.
Akin adjusted his coat collar and stepped onto the university quad. Around him, students hurried between buildings, their laughter rising like white breath into the gray air. He passed beneath a maple tree shedding its gold, and paused not for the tree, but for the sound that drifted beneath it.
A voice full, rich, and musical speaking a language that rang with ancestral echoes. He turned.
A small group of international students had gathered on the stone benches, drawn into the orbit of a woman who seemed to command the wind itself. Her scarf was wrapped in vibrant swirls of Kente cloth, and her laughter rose above the silence of the city like a talking drum.
"She told the spider," she said, hands moving as if weaving the tale, "if you bring me the stories of the world, I'll give you the wisdom of the gods. So Ananse tricked the leopard, the python, and even the hornet... But in the end?" She grinned. "He kept the stories to himself."
The group laughed. Akin didn't. He stared, stunned. He hadn't heard that story since his grandmother died. The sound of her voice in the courtyard was a ripple through time, a reminder of everything he'd left behind.
When the story ended and the students clapped, she caught him staring.
She walked toward him, not shy but curious and completely unafraid.
"You're Yoruba, aren't you?" she asked, eyes bright with confidence.
He hesitated, then nodded. "Yes."
"I thought so. I could hear it in the silence behind your eyes. That look of someone who remembers home, even when he tries not to."
Akin laughed, more surprised than anything. "You're perceptive."
"I'm Zina," she said, offering her hand. "Dakira."
That name. His father would have spit on the ground. Dakira, the enemy kingdom. The golden one. The proud one. The rival.
He should have turned away. But her hand was warm. Her voice, even warmer.
"Akin," he said. "From Oremi."
She blinked just for a second but said nothing of the ancient feud. Instead, her hand lingered a little longer than it needed to.
"We should hate each other, you know," she said, smiling slightly.
"Not today," he replied. "Today, we're just names. Students. Strangers."
She tilted her head. "Strangers don't know each other's ancestral languages."
"No," Akin said. "But maybe they want to."
That evening, they met again this time in the shared kitchen of their dormitory. The smell of fried plantain and grilled fish filled the hallway, and Akin followed it like a man under a spell.
He found her barefoot, dancing quietly to a song from her phone, Efya crooning soft Twi lyrics about longing and return. Her scarf was tied up, and she stirred a pot with a wooden spoon like she had been born to it.
She looked up. "Hungry?"
He tried not to stare. "Always."
She handed him a plate without asking. Rice, pepper sauce, fried fish. He tasted it and closed his eyes.
"Spicy enough?" she asked.
He opened his eyes, grinning. "Tastes like trouble."
"Good," she said. "That's my specialty."
Over the following weeks, they became inseparable. They argued over music, she preferred highlife, he swore by Fuji. They debated over books, cooked each other's dishes, and swapped proverbs in Twi and Yoruba.
One night, they sat beneath the same maple tree where they had first met. She handed him a small wooden carving, a miniature stool with tiny carvings around its rim.
"A gift," she said softly. "In my culture, a stool represents the soul. No king can be crowned without one."
He turned it over in his palm, moved.
"You're giving me your soul?" he asked, half-joking.
"No," she said, serious now. "I'm trusting you with it."
He looked at her then, and for the first time, he realized what was beginning. Not a fling. Not a friendship. Something older. Something that might one day shatter the fragile balance between their two worlds