Long before the ocean echoed with names like ours,
before tails shimmered in every hue we dared to dream —
there was Nayanja.
She rose from the deep not to be seen,
but because she couldn’t stay hidden any longer.
But even she didn’t know her name at first.
She carried her magic in silence — her tail dark, her shimmer dimmed —
until one fateful day off the coast of New Orleans.
A human spirit guide saw her gliding at the edge of the waters,
beneath the bayou light.
He called her forth with no fear
and whispered a truth she had never heard:
“You have always been more.”
And he gave her a name that would ripple through generations of the Oshún Dynasea:
Nayanja.
The moment he spoke it, her tail transformed —
deep shadow blooming into seafoam green and blush pink light,
like dawn breaking beneath the waves.
She rose from the water,
transformed before his eyes.
And with her rising,
something stirred in the deep.
Because her shimmer made us
remember ourselves.
The lost ones.The unsure.The hidden.The denied.
We saw her —and we swam toward her light.
She became the beacon.
A lighthouse beneath the sea.
A current that awakened everything it touched.
Her becoming breathed life into those
who didn’t yet know what they were.
She made it safe to shine.
And now,
when we rise in shimmer and story,
when we dare to take up space in oceans that once denied us —
we carry her fight, her shimmer, her light.
Because before the sea knew how to hold us,
Nayanja rose.
And that changed everything.
