SHORT STORY: The other way around

'Mother was too soft' I thought to myself as I watched the ikebe dancers. The drum was so loud that I could barely hear the voices of the two female singers, they were straining their voices, which to me seemed like too much of suffering and punishment for them, they were females after all. Why would they want to waste their precious sopranos on this dancers when the males could do it?  The ikebe females continued to wiggle their waists making their waist beads juggle around it. 

Every two minutes or so,  their male counterparts would bend to the level of their waists and trace the patterns of the delicate 'C' the waists of the females formed... All under the guise of dancing.  To me it all felt like they were belittling the female specie. Males could never measure up to us to we females.  After all they depended on us for everything from childbirth till death.  We fed them breastmilk as children, we allowed them fill us with seed so we can bear them children.  We cook their meals three times each day and enable them have a home to come back to each day.  Males were supposed to be enslaved, they were supposed to serve us, we were meant to be their mistresses.

 I spat on the ground and at once the ceremony stopped. It was my coronation after all and everything was to be done to please the new queen.  We just concluded the seven day ritual that was done for every crown princess before she became the queen and today was the final ceremony done to seal my queenship and representing the beginning of my reign over the kingdom.  

Spitting on the ground was a very bad omen in the kingdom but it implied even worse when a member of the ruling house or a person with a high chieftaincy title did it. It signifies extreme wrath and  punishment to come. Everyone stared, I looked around taking in the different expressions on the faces of my subjects. After a few minutes, I cleared my throat and stood.  

"Never! "  I could hear my own voice echo. 

"Never have I seen such abomination.  Why on earth would the males be seen as our equals?  You males think we already lost our worth, that you can go unpunished after belittling our kind?  Mother was too soft, Oh!  May her blessed soul ascend undeterred to the great beyond. You filthy males seem to have forgotten the reason you were allowed to survive at all. You seem to have forgotten  that our greatest mother earth brought forth the very first ruler of our kingdom from her loins, mother Moremi, who ruled with all her strength, soul and body.  After mating with one of your filthy kind, she kept on bringing forth males,  filthy things!!  They fought our mother because she was alone and couldn't battle,  she was overpowered and imprisoned till she was visited again by mother earth.  Mother Moremi begged mother earth to allow her bare one more child, a female child. And the blessing was given to her. The blessed Child came forth, our mother ileke , daughter of Moremi fought and single-handedly conquered a thousand men,  not of course without the blessings of her mother and mother earth's bestowed gifts.  

The rest of the males that survived battle were then doomed to be slaves. But my mother Arike, daughter of ileke, was born with a soft heart.  Through the kindness of her heart she gifted you males freedom and now you are overstepping your boundaries. You do not know your place anymore". I paused to observe and let my speech sink in. 

Then I shouted "NO!!" and at this point a baby started crying, it was a  male child. 

"Bring him him over" I called out.  The child was brought up to me.  I took the child by its tiny legs,  holding it upside down. I motioned for my sword bearer to give me my sword.  I collected the sword and cut the child's head off. 

Noise erupted at once and I could hear the shrill scream of the child's mother as she burst into tears. 

"Never again are the males to be tolerated" I shouted ensuring my voice was loud enough to cover the ceremony arena.  "Never I say, from today onwards, males are to be stripped of any chieftaincy titles, returned to work at the farms, let them till the ground like they were born to do.  I declare slavery for the male kind.. NOW!!!"