Guido and Iliya were not an interlude. They were the bridge — the one the reader needs to cross to understand what happens when Elena the anthropologist finally stops moving and the writer who invented her steps into the light. That bridge has a name now. The Holographer’s Atlas. It stands between Alkebulan and the…
Cartographer. A cartographer doesn’t wait for the map to exist. She goes into unmapped territory, records what’s there with precision, and brings it back in a form others can use. She does that with places. With people. With memory. The market keeps telling her there’s no shelf for it. She keeps mapping anyway. That’s either…
The COMC files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 5 Song-Bearer Dakar flickers past — taxis, market smoke, griots with their lutes. I send Mrs H her update and keep moving. Saint-Louis at night is velvet and brass. A thin man with a battered trumpet sizes me up and tells me the real stories live where women dance barefoot on the…
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 4 Where the Python Coils Karim is waiting at the compound’s edge, boots dusty, bag already on his shoulder. We don’t discuss Tarmo. We don’t need to. “South or east?” he asks. “Whichever way gets us to the next myth.” He grins — rare, infectious — and we walk out into Africa….
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 3 Gold Sandi is gone before I’m out of the shower. I take my time. The bra is a problem — leaking again, that slow persistent gold that has no respect for schedules or dignity. I rifle through my bag for something absorbent, find nothing, stand there dripping and furious. A throat-clearing…
The COMC Files-Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 2 Sandi “I’ll help you,” Sandi murmurs. She does — her hands soft, kindness in the way she peels my dress away. The moment my breasts are free I hear her breath change. I close my eyes, breathing in the steamy hush, pulse still thrumming with gold and fear and the old…
The COMC Files – Alkebulan
Part II Chapter 1 Convergence Mikael Sahel dust still on my boots. Iron tang of gunmetal, old blood — layered beneath my skin by now, permanent. Isaa and his men, gone. Spent shells in the sand. Justice. Never clean, never simple. No victory. Just necessity. Elena. The bright line. The only clarity in this landscape…
The Holographer’s Atlas
The Iliya piece concludes in three parts — March 13, 14, and 15 at 11 AM — on Ream. https://reamstories.com/creator-hub/story/content/mm5evjtfb32335/ebook Some stories ask to be finished in a quieter room. This is one of them. — I.Ph. de Lange
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 36 Kayar Karim ducks outside to find food, returning a while later with a plate of spicy thieboudienne — fish, rice, and vegetables, the flavours bright and grounding. We sit cross-legged on the floor, devouring each bite. For the first time since the storm on the ship, I feel hunger fading and strength seeping…
The COMC Files-Book VI Matriarchs
Chapter 35 El Amal Then it happens. A surge, hot and wild, ripples up my spine. My belly — the curve that has grown over four months — begins to glow. Not faint, not gentle, but intense: a gold, radiant pulse that lights the cramped cabin from within. The world flares yellow-white, power spilling through…
The C.O.M.C. Files 