The Story That Remembered Itself

It was not written on paper, nor carved in stone. It lived in the mouths of elders, in the drumbeats of dancers, in the hush between firelight and sleep. It had no beginning, no end. Just memory. Just rhythm. Just truth.

But one day, the world grew noisy. The people stopped listening. The stories were traded for screens, for speed, for soundbites. And so, the story was forgotten.

Not erased only quiet. Buried deep beneath timelines and traffic, beneath accents not its own, beneath th

They wait. They shift. They become whispers in the wind, dreams in the mouths of children, questions that ache in the bones of wanderers.

And one day, this story stirred.

It wandered through villages where griots had gone mute. Through cities where kids knew Wakanda but not why the tortoise had a cracked shell. It hovered near schoolbooks where Africa was a footnote, and near jollof pots that simmered with tales no one told anymore.

It grew tired. Maybe, it thought, the world no longer wanted it. Maybe it had stayed too long.

But then…

It found them.

Not the old scribes in robes. Not the warriors or the queens of before. These ones wore jeans and spoke in memes. They coded like they breathed, wrote with slang, and had eyes full of hunger, not for food, but for self.

They didn’t just want to tell stories. They wanted to feel them, build them, live them. They knew the ancestors were not just behind, but within.

So the story entered their phones. Their pages. Their minds. And they gave it a name: Afritales.

Not because it had been told. But because it had found its people.

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