Chikuatta - !exclusive!

That night, she brought the gourd to her mother. Her mother’s face went pale. “Where did you get this?”

Her mother shook her head, exhausted. “Nonsense. The fever talking.” chikuatta

The loggers. Sofía had heard the story as a fairy tale: men with chainsaws who arrived in the village when her mother was a girl. They had offered money for the oldest trees—the ceibas, the ironwoods, the ones the Yanesha called the standing elders . Abuela Clara had refused to show them. One night, the loggers came anyway. They didn’t find the trees. But they found Clara’s youngest son—Sofía’s uncle, a boy of seven—playing near the creek. That night, she brought the gourd to her mother

She cracked the seal with a stone.