When the Storm Learns Her Name.
- Kateb-Nuri-Alim
- 2 minutes ago
- 7 min read
Authors Opening Words
Before you step back into Maye’s world, let me say this plain.
New Orleans is not just a backdrop in this story.
It breathes.
It watches.
It remembers.
Part Three demanded I lean deeper into that rhythm. Not the postcard version with beads and brass bands for tourists. I mean the real pulse. The humid nights where the air sit heavy on your shoulders. The porches where elders rock slow and say, baby, everything that shine ain’t blessed. The corner stores that hear more confessions than any cathedral.
Maye is no longer stumbling into her gift. She knows what she can do now. She knows how to pull a soul clean from a chest without laying a finger on skin. She understands consequence. She understands balance.
But knowing your power and mastering your spirit are two different things, chère.
This chapter tightens the tension. The suspense thickens like gumbo left simmering too long. Because when a woman starts shifting spiritual scales in a city like New Orleans, the ancestors lean in. The streets hum different. Even the Mississippi seem to slow down just to listen.
Part Three is not about spectacle. It is about discipline. It is about that thin line between justice and ego. It is about temptation. The kind that whispers, you could fix it all if you just go a little further.
And that whisper is dangerous.
You will hear more of the city in these pages. The cadence. The warnings. The way somebody might say, chère
, be careful what you carry, and mean more than they speak. Because Maye is carrying weight now. Not just power. Not just souls.
Weight.
This is where she learns that restraint is louder than fury.
Take your time with this one.
The storm does not just know her name now.
It respects it.
Part Three
When the Storm Learns Her Name
A Chronicle of Hunger, Judgment, and the Cost of Power.
By Kātib Shunnar
New Orleans felt different the night the thunder called her by name.
Not loud.
Not chaotic.
Still.
Too still.
The kind of still that make you pause mid step and look around like, wait, what that is.
Maye stood on her narrow balcony in Tremé, iron railing cool under her palms. The street below usually carried music, laughter, somebody arguing about nothing important. But tonight, even the crickets seemed to hush.
She closed her eyes.
And there it was.
That hum beneath her skin.
Every soul she had taken vibrated low, steady, like bass rolling from a car two blocks away. Not screaming. Not fighting. Just present. Absorbed. Contained.
She used to stagger after each extraction. Used to feel like her veins were filled with lightning and broken glass.
Now?
Now it flowed smoother.
And that scared her.
Because horror is not always blood on concrete.
Sometimes it is realizing you are getting comfortable doing what once shook you to your core.
A breeze slid down the street, carrying the smell of rain and river water. Somewhere a screen door creaked open.
“You feel that too, huh,” she murmured.
The city answered in its own way. A streetlight flickered. A dog barked once and then went quiet.
Word had spread.
There is a woman by the water.
If your spirit rotten, she gon’ know.
If your hands dirty, she coming.
At first it was whispers at the barbershop. Low talk at second lines. Aunties fanning themselves on porches saying, mm mm, something shifting out here.
Then it got stranger.
Men who thrived on intimidation started losing their nerve mid sentence. One tried to threaten a woman outside a club on Frenchmen Street and suddenly doubled over, clutching his chest, breath shallow. He survived.
But something inside him did not.
Maye had not touched him.
Had not even been in the same ward.
That was new.
She felt it the moment it happened.
Like a ripple in water that did not originate from her hand.
She went straight to the bayou that night, dress brushing against tall grass, mosquitoes whining in the humid air. The cypress trees stood tall, roots deep in murky water, like elders who seen everything and ain’t impressed by none of it.
“Talk to me,” she whispered, voice steady but tight.
The wind shifted slow.
And for the first time since she awakened, something resisted her authority.
You been harvesting, the silence seemed to say.
“I’ve been correcting.”
Correction require balance,chère.
She stiffened.
“I have balance.”
Do you.
The words were not spoken, but they landed heavy.
Maye inhaled slow, tasting metal and moss in the air. She scanned inward. Counted the souls inside her. Felt their weight, their temperature.
And there it was.
One she had taken too quickly.
A man cruel, yes. Arrogant. Harmful.
But not beyond change.
She had felt his darkness and assumed permanence.
She had not waited.
She had decided.
The realization crawled up her spine.
She had started confusing impatience with justice.
Rain began to fall without warning. Big heavy drops, slapping against water.
“I am not here to devour,” she said out loud. “I am here to balance.”
The marsh did not answer.
But it did not reject her either.
A few days later, she felt the other presence.
Older.
Heavier.
Not hollow like the men she emptied.
Dense.
Layered.
She found it standing under a flickering streetlight near Claiborne Avenue. A woman dressed in white linen, skin glowing warm brown against the dusk, eyes deep as the Mississippi at night.
“You busy, baby,” the woman said, voice smooth but sharp underneath.
Maye did not flinch.
“And you been watching.”
The woman smiled slightly. “Somebody got to.”
The air between them tightened like a snare drum pulled too taut.
“You take souls,” the woman continued, circling slow. “You absorb corruption. But tell me something. Who checking you.”
“I check myself.”
The woman raised one brow.
“Do you.”
That word again.
Maye felt heat rise under her collarbone.
“I remove what harms.”
“And sometimes,” the woman replied softly, “you remove what could have learned.”
The thunder cracked loud overhead, shaking windows down the block.
Maye’s chest tightened.
“I’ve saved lives.”
“Yes,” the woman agreed. “But you almost interrupted growth too.”
Silence stretched between them.
Somewhere a car alarm went off and then died.
“You fear chaos,” the woman said gently. “You fear what once hurt you. So you eliminate it before it breathe.”
Maye swallowed hard.
Was that it.
Was she cleansing the city.
Or protecting her own wounds.
The woman stepped closer and pressed two fingers lightly against Maye’s sternum. Instantly the hum inside her grew louder. The souls vibrated sharp, almost restless.
“You carry weight,” the woman whispered. “Every extraction cost you something. Keep taking without discernment and you won’t know where you end and they begin.”
That hit different.
Because lately Maye had felt flashes. Brief surges of temper that were not entirely hers. Flickers of arrogance that did not belong in her spirit.
Tiny cracks.
The real horror was not becoming a monster in public.
It was becoming one quietly.
“So what,” Maye said, voice low. “I just let evil breathe.”
“No,” the woman answered. “You let humans choose.”
The rain came heavy then, soaking them both.
“Power without patience,” the woman said over the roar, “turn into devastation.”
When Maye blinked, she was alone.
Only rain.
Only thunder.
Only that humming weight inside her ribs.
From that night forward, she shifted.
She still sensed corruption. Still felt it crawl through certain rooms like mildew in old walls.
But she waited.
Watched.
Measured patterns.
Some changed when they felt her presence hovering near.
Some doubled down.
The ones who doubled down. Who chose harm again and again. Who delighted in suffering.
Those she reckoned with.
But now it was deliberate.
Disciplined.
There was a man who ran a quiet trafficking ring near the river, smiling clean in daylight, foul after dark. She watched him for weeks. Gave space for confession, for retreat.
He did not take it.
When she finally stood in front of him in an abandoned warehouse, he laughed.
“You that ghost people talkin’ about,” he sneered. “Ain’t nobody scared of you.”
Maye stepped closer.
“You should be.”
This extraction was different.
No rage.
No rush.
She placed her palm inches from his chest and closed her eyes.
“I gave you time,” she said softly.
He felt it too late.
When she pulled his soul free, it did not tear.
It surrendered.
His body collapsed against concrete, breathing but vacant.
Maye did not stagger.
She did not smile either.
She walked away quiet, rainwater pooling at her feet.
The city shifted again.
But this time it was steadier.
Less panic.
More awareness.
Men started checking themselves before crossing lines. Women moved through certain streets with less tension in their shoulders. Children laughed longer in courtyards.
Maye still walked to the bayou at dusk.
Still let the cypress trees frame her silhouette.
But now when the storm rolled in, it did not test her.
It acknowledged her restraint.
She understood something now.
She was not meant to cleanse the whole city.
She was meant to guard thresholds.
To stand where harm tried to root itself and say, not here, baby.
That was enough.
That was epic in its own way.
New Orleans did not need a tyrant.
It needed a watcher.
A woman who understood that even storms must choose when to flood and when to nourish.
As she turned from the water one evening, thunder rolling low and respectful overhead, she felt grounded in a way she never had before.
She was not hunger.
She was consequence.
And when Maye walk through that humid fog now, the city hold its breath.
Not just in fear.
But in reverence.
Authors Closing Words
Part Three is not about domination.
It is about discipline.
Maye has learned that power alone does not make you righteous. That urgency can disguise ego. That even with the purest intention, you can slip.
The most suspenseful battle she faced was not against predators.
It was against her own impatience.
She stands now stronger. Not because she can take a soul.
But because she knows when not to.
And trust me.
Something older than the storm has taken notice.
Part Four is coming.
And it will not whisper.
Stay tuned.
