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In fair weather, an adventurer prepares for his climb. The blacksmith stays up till midnight and sweats over a sword for him. She hammers out the shield and marks it with a sickle for the village and adorns it with silver for their child hero. This is her best work yet. She is sure of it.

First, there was Ànyasi; the darkness; an endless void of nothingness. And then there was Àghará; Chaos; atoms spontaneously bursting into being; an existence with no progenitor. And then there was Ndú; life; the single cell; one corpuscle multiplying. The mother. And then there was Us. - Children of the Netherplaces If Nnedi tells this… Continue reading Home is Where the Heart Rests, by Chidera Anikpe

When the latest batch arrives, Dale is waiting for them. He watches through the cracked and filthy window of the station as the sedan crunches onto the battered pavement and squeaks to a halt in front of the pumps. There’s movement and muffled conversation among the passengers. Then the driver rolls down the window, pokes out his perfect blond head and calls, “Hey! Can we get some service?”

Every winter, right after the sun sets, the pitha seller of Qismat Square arrives at her spot. Nobody knows her name or age. She is “khala” or “nani” to those who like her, and “hag” or “old bat” to those who don’t. She doesn’t mind either. She’s nobody’s aunt, nobody’s granny. She’s just a gaunt… Continue reading The Pitha Seller of Qismat Square, by Maria Hossain

Hello, weary travellers ... Change is in the air behind the scenes at TTL. You may have noticed our stone-cold dead social media feeds and slower recent response times; it turns out that the one-two punch of some personal life changes and good old fashioned burnout hit me (Aimee) hard over the last year. After… Continue reading Change is in the air (and it smells kind of like barbecue)