The Empty House

They sat around until late into the night, they did. Lounged they did. For hours. The pride’s elders sprawled out across the back deck of the house at the edge of the boma, in lamplight bathed. The village – empty.

They mused and mauled over the time gone past. They had been there from eternity. Somewhere. Seen it all, they had. The emptiness, the fullness, then filling full emptiness with them – the people – only to one day be emptied out again…

Once upon this boma, there had been nothing but dense vegetation. It was full – ripe with vegetal life – and the creatures crawling, climbing. And not one of the lions could remember when – after all – they hadn’t been there. But one day the people had come – had appeared, had settled – and changed the face of this green hammock. Not for worse really – nor really for better – but changed it, no less.

Nestled into the nape of the lush forest, their bomas built up and filled the lively hillside. To each house belonged a core group – and everyone else belonged to it too. Evenings were spent bathed in the lamplight of the back porch. The people lounged. Sat around they did. And talked and laughed. And sat in silence. And sat in stillness. And the children darted in and around the house and across the porch – and landed for brief moments on Aunties’ laps and in Uncles’ faces – before they were off again. In and around the house and across the porch they flitted like fireflies around the porch light – sometimes settling, other times off again – in and out, and around.

Every evening they were there – inhabiting the porch. They were the life. They were the peace. They were the people.

Every day when darkness had fallen, they would begin to gather in the lamplight of the back porch. Slowly – two by three by one they came out of the darkness – out of the shadows of the spilling porch lamplight. Aunties and Uncle, and Ma and Pops, her brother and their sisters, and then him and her and them. And all filled the space, the silence, the stillness. They’d appear like a trickle and a flood.

They’d settle there and stay, whiling away the evening until it was decidedly night – fallen deep, deep – and it was dark except for the porch light. And no one knew who was last to leave – or who even stayed – because no one ever seemed to be the last. When you left, two someones were always still there.

But one evening, when rhythm ruptured, there was a last – he was the last. The very, very last. And the evening too, it was the last. The very, very last.

It was a night when the moon was new. Darkness cloaked the vegetal density and the only light was the light of the porchlight. They came, as they always did, in a trickle and a flood.