African American Female Narrator of Young Adult Fantasy Fiction

Carla Lynne Hall

0:00

Audiobooks

Description

This sample tells the story of a mermaid who is caught between duty, and doing what is right. I aimed for a warm and vulnerable performance.

Vocal Characteristics

Language

English

Accents

North American (General) US African American

Transcript

Note: Transcripts are generated using speech recognition software and may contain errors.
The warmth of the woman's life floods my mind. I see her as a child laughing when she winds her arms around the neck of her mother. Then she's older eyes, a light with a different kind of love as she holds out a bowl of rice and peppered catfish with shining dark skin and a wide smile. The man before her is beautiful. I feel her heart lift as he takes the food and their fingers brush later she's telling a small field next to a village, fingers sprinkling seeds into the grooves she's created in the earth as she sings a song to Coco the Orisha of crops. Her voice is sweet and high rising with the heat of the day and then she's holding a baby with the same grin as hers. She presses her face into the folds of the girl's neck, inhaling the child's milky scent. I smile, feeling all the jubilation she has felt and the love that fills her soul. When I opened my eyes, the woman's essence hovers in the cradle of my fingers. I focus on the joy in her memories as I coaxed forth her soul guiding it toward the sapphire of my necklace. The stone absorbs her essence, growing warm against the hollow of my throat. I hold the images of the woman's life in my mind and wonder if the village she came from still stands if her people continued to wait for her, checking the horizon every day to see if she will return tatters of her rapper drift in the water, a faded orange that was once as bright as the mid afternoon sun. I looked down at the hand. Still in mind with its torn pale nails and jagged scars, she will receive God's blessing before she returns to you tomorrow. It is the one thing I am able to do for her. May you be at peace, sister? Um, Oye, will ease your journey back home, releasing the woman's fingers. I turn away, not watching as her body sinks into the depths. A daughter, a wife, a mother. My tears join the salt of the sea.