The October afternoon lay heavy over Everlight Academy, bright and blistering.
The sun stood high, pouring white heat down on the dusty road that ran past the school's low walls. The sky was a deep, perfect blue—cloudless, merciless.
Though the rains had mostly passed, the air still felt swollen and damp. Inside the classroom, fifteen pupils fidgeted at their wooden tables, shirts clinging to their backs. At thirty-two degrees, concentration was a heroic act.
Victry looked up from her marking. The paper before her was a sea of neat, looping blue ink—the homework of a pupil who understood fractions and favored the color green. She rubbed the bridge of her nose, pushing away the faint headache the tropical heat always brought.
Her brown skin glowed softly under the sun. Her periwinkle shirt caught the light with a silky sheen; small gold studs winked in her ears. Box braids brushed her shoulders whenever she bent to her work.
The room had the sleepy, heavy smell of pencil shavings and chalk dust mixed with the metallic hint of sweat. The faint, high-pitched zzzzzz of the old ceiling fan struggled overhead, pushing the hot air around rather than cooling it—a sound Victry barely noticed anymore. A fly traced lazy circles above the window ledge, occasionally bumping the glass. Somewhere near the back row, an eraser rolled with a soft thump to the floor.
"David, keep your ruler on the desk," she said, her voice quiet but firm—a tone that required obedience without demanding it. She did not look up, eyes still scanning a multiplication problem.
"Yes, ma," David mumbled. He was eight, all sharp elbows and relentless energy, currently pretending to measure the circumference of his neighbor Daniel's wrist instead of putting the ruler away.
"Daniel, that's enough whispering," Victry said, finally glancing up, her half-smile already formed.
"But, Teacher, I was only helping him find the right page!" David blurted out, unable to contain himself. He was the class chatterbox, a small engine of noise and good intentions who simply couldn't resist answering every question, even when it wasn't his to answer.
Victry chuckled softly, pushing a stray braid from her face. "Then whisper to your book, David, not to Daniel. If that ruler moves again," she tapped her pen lightly on the desk, "it's writing your next test."
A ripple of giggles passed through the room, easing the heavy heat for a fleeting moment.
At the back, little Eno—the shy girl whose careful handwriting Victry had just admired—fanned herself rapidly with her exercise book. Her letters were small, precise, beautifully formed: patient arrangements of ink among the impatient scrawls of the boys.
"Teacher, please, when will rain fall again?" she asked, her voice a timid thread.
"When the clouds remember us," Victry replied, earning another round of laughter. "Until then, focus before the sun melts your numbers."
She rose from her chair, the wooden floor creaking under her shoes. Moving between the rows with deliberate grace, she corrected a misspelled word here, tapped a shoulder there. Chalk dust clung to her fingers like white pollen.
At Eno's desk she paused, laying a gentle hand on the girl's shoulder.
"Eno, your is and ts are the neatest in the class," she murmured.
The girl blushed and hunched slightly over her work, but the smile she hid was bright and genuine. This was success, Victry thought—the small blossoming of pride that good work earns.
She stopped beside Chinedu next. His mathematics book was a battlefield of crossed-out answers, but the margins were alive: football players mid-kick, a dragon breathing smoke, and—surprisingly accurate—the wobbling ceiling fan above them.
"Chinedu," she said, tracing the dragon's wing with her finger, "this creature looks very focused, even though he's angry."
He looked up, expecting a scolding.
"He looks focused," she added lightly, "but he hasn't solved the sum on page 42. We need your focus here, not just in the margins. You're wasting beautiful concentration, my artist. Finish the sum, then the smoke."
Chinedu's mouth twitched; he bent over his book again. Victry smiled. She knew her formula: a light correction, honest praise, and a small joke.
She glanced toward the noticeboard. The warped board carried the week's theme: Resilience, written in bright marker above a crayon drawing of two stick figures standing under heavy rain. Simple, but profound.
The late-afternoon sunlight crawled across the faded green wall, throwing the window bars into tall, uneven shadows. Victry returned to her desk, the fan's drone the only steady sound.
Another day almost done. Only her second year teaching, and the energy it demanded still felt immense. She missed the quiet mornings of home, the rustle of leaves instead of the roar of Lagos traffic, yet here—amid chalk dust and eager minds—she felt useful. Tonight she would cook jollof rice with market chicken, a small reward for surviving the heat.
The final bell shrilled—sharp and insistent.
Chairs scraped; satchels slammed; a flood of laughter filled the room.
"Goodbye, Teacher Victry!"
"Bye, ma!"
She stood by the door, making sure the exodus stayed orderly, returning smiles, reminding one or two about homework. When the last child's footsteps faded, silence settled—a hollow, echoing quiet. The room felt larger, emptied of its bright chaos. She gathered her papers, straightened a stack of textbooks, and stepped into the corridor.
The air smelled of dust, ink, and hot metal roofing. From the staffroom drifted voices, the clink of cups, and a radio hissing through static.
Mr. Tayo, the mathematics teacher, leaned in the doorway waving pink report forms.
"Ms Victry, you've seen the new sheets? They forgot the handwriting column again—the only one the headmaster insists on!"
She laughed softly. "They always forget the important things. Hand them over."
"Tell Marie to sign attendance before you disappear," he said. "The headmaster's counting signatures now, not teachers."
"I'll sign." She scrawled her name beside Marie's familiar scrawl.
Through the open courtyard she saw a handful of pupils still playing beneath the almond trees, red dust swirling around their feet, laughter ringing like wind chimes.
Mr. Adewale, the headmaster, appeared wiping his forehead with a white handkerchief.
"Ms Victry," he called, voice deep and even. "You've not submitted the reading scores."
"I'll bring them tomorrow, sir," she replied. "I marked them all, but the blank forms vanished again—probably eaten by the same spirit that steals our chalk."
He chuckled. "Forms always vanish in this school. Bring them tomorrow. Inspection's coming."
"Yes, sir."
He nodded and disappeared back into the shade. Victry exchanged a weary smile with Mr. Tayo—another day inside the school's gentle chaos.
---
By half past three she was still at her desk, head bowed over the final stack of books. Her vision blurred. She pressed a palm to her forehead.
Marie, her colleague and closest friend, appeared in the doorway.
"Still at it?" she teased, sliding onto a bench. "Are you ready to go, or trying to break the record for overwork?"
Victry smiled weakly. "No record today. My head's pounding."
"Then stop. Rest, Victry. Paper will still be here tomorrow."
"I know. Maybe it's the heat."
"You need rest and medicine, not maybe."
"I'll take both," Victry said, laughing softly.
A small figure peeked around the frame—Marie's four-year-old daughter, Gift.
"Good morning, ma," she chirped.
Victry laughed. "It's afternoon, dear."
Gift's eyes widened. "Good afternoon, ma'am!" she corrected proudly.
"That's better."
They packed their things, footsteps echoing down the corridor. Outside, the sun slid west, turning the schoolyard gold. Dust rose around their ankles as they walked through the gate.
Beyond the compound the road shimmered, patched with puddle scars from the last rain. Motorcycles buzzed past; women sold roasted corn and fried plantain, smoke curling around wide straw hats. A hawker's bell jingled, promising relief: "Pure water! Ice-cold water!"
Marie bought two sachets, tore one open, and sighed as the cold hit her throat.
"Ah, life. If heaven is this cold, I'll behave till I get there."
Victry pressed the chilled sachet to her forehead. "Then you'd better behave twice."
Gift trotted ahead, sandals slapping the dirt. "Mummy, see goat! The goat is chewing a magazine!"
The animal stood atop a trash heap, chewing solemnly on cardboard. Both women burst out laughing.
They walked again, skirts brushing the dust, voices wandering through lesson plans and gossip—whose pupils mixed up there and their, which parent still owed fees, how the headmaster wore the same brown tie every day.
By the time they reached the junction where their paths diverged, the air smelled of kerosene stoves and ripe oranges. Victry's limbs ached pleasantly; the tiredness felt earned.
She looked at the sinking sun, hazy and orange above the roofs. The day's true success wasn't in perfect test scores but in Eno's shy smile, Chinedu's quiet effort, and the simple fact that she had faced the heat and chaos and was still standing.
"Tomorrow—same heat, same children," Victry said.
Marie grinned. "And the same us. See you, Victry."
"Be safe."
---
Victry walked the final stretch alone, turning from the main road onto the familiar dusty path leading to her small rented room. She unlocked the door; the click of the latch felt like release.
She slipped off her sandals, freeing her sore feet, and pulled the band from her braids so they fell loose across her shoulders.
She wasn't hungry, only weary. Setting her bag on the small wooden table, she remembered David's homework and the doodle he had hidden inside—a stick-figure teacher with an enormous head. She laughed softly, shaking her head.
Outside, the evening wind finally stirred, warm and dusty, carrying radio songs and the hum of distant traffic.
She leaned against the window frame as streetlights flickered to life, one by one—tiny promises against the coming dark.
Tomorrow, she told herself, would be another ordinary, necessary day.
She had no way of knowing that tonight would be the last "ordinary" night the world would ever see.
Because far beyond the clouds, beyond the pull of satellites and the reach of human thought, the Dominion Pulse had begun to descend.
A low hum kissed the edge of the atmosphere—soft, curious, searching.
And before midnight, it would touch Earth.