“Don’t play with uncultured children,” said the queen,  waving a finger at Muniomuvanda. Every day, the queen hid the heir from children who came to beg for churned milk poured into dogs’ bowls. Yesterday,  her majesty pinched the heir for blinking at a stick girl.  “The sun will melt the red-ochre lotion from your arms and smear it on the dust-legged children,” said the queen, motherly. Afterwards, the servants rubbed the heir’s body with cow-butter lotion, and minced any housefly before it touched his skin. “The dust formed by our cows smear their poverty-stricken faces with dust lotion,” said the queen, sprinkling c-shaped thorns into the hollow footpath of commoners. That midday, the heir chased after a grey pigeon and strayed too far from the choir of mooing cows. Soon, the pigeon’s coo was replaced by the calling of owls.  The heir couldn’t spot the black termite hills. His heart pounded after tripping over cannonballs of elephant poo. The majestic boy crouched under a tree, while the wind whispered through the devil claws that he must give up his dreams of inheriting the chiefdom. Back in the palace, funeral-wishing mourners gathered around the queen like ants on a bone. However, the queen refused to be rubbed with a flickering coal under her tear-fogged eyes. Soon, the queen arranged the hanging of a common boy to please the gods in exchange for the royal soul of the heir. For three nights,  the queen bribed the servants with sour milk to locate the heir. The next day, the horse riders rode on royal mares but returned empty-handed.  Later, the queen flogged the commoners on their buttocks for not blocking the wind from erasing the boy’s footprints. Near the fist-raising Makalani trees, a python found the napping Muniomuvanda, but instead of swallowing him, the python flogged him on his buttocks with its whip-shaped tail. Before the boy could reach the sweat-thirsty dunes, he crawled under the black thorn acacia, and the nipping thorns tore up his lion’s skin shirt. Instantly, the heir howled, for he now looked like a commoner. Afterwards,  he freed himself from the claw-like thorns, but a V-shaped thorn stabbed his baby-soft heel. Later, four black-backed jackals gnashed their sharp teeth and tickled him. In the meantime,  the royal-blood craving jackals waved their bushy tails and fanned a cool air over him under the sweat-sucking sun. By now, the jackals’ calls were replaced by the yapping dogs as the wrist-chained commoners located the missing heir.