The Savannah

The African sun was sinking low, casting a warm amber light over the savannah. The sky, vast and endless, stretched across the horizon like a canvas painted with streaks of gold and deep violet. The land was quiet, but it was the kind of quiet that holds its breath before a storm. And the storm was coming—not just in the form of the distant war that now enveloped the world, but something deeper, something ancient that had begun to stir beneath the surface of South Africa.
Sifiso Nkosi stood motionless atop a rocky outcrop, the wind tugging at his worn khaki shirt. His rifle was slung across his back, though the animals that roamed the bushveld were no threat to him. Sifiso had been a game warden for nearly a decade, guiding tourists and patrolling the boundaries of the preserve. But before that, he had been a warrior, a soldier who had seen battle in far corners of Africa. He had fought many wars, but something about this moment felt different.
The animals knew it too. The herds of wildebeest moved restlessly, and even the great elephants seemed unsettled, their tusks gleaming like white spears in the fading light. Sifiso frowned. The war in Europe was a world away, but the ripples of its chaos had reached even here, to the wild places of South Africa. Yet it was not the Germans or the Allies that troubled him. It was something older, something that made his skin prickle as if the earth itself was trying to warn him.