What Is Chittim?
Chittim is the currency of Leopard People. Chittim are always made of metal (copper, bronze, silver, and gold) and always shaped like curved rods. The most valuable are the large copper ones, which are about the size of an orange and thick as an adult’s thumb. The smallest ones are the size of a dove’s egg. Least valuable are chittim made of gold.
When chittim fall, they never do harm. So one can stand in a rain of chittim and never get hit. There is only one way to earn chittim: by gaining knowledge and wisdom. The smarter you become, the better you process knowledge into wisdom, the more chittim will fall and thus the richer you will be. As a free agent, don’t expect to get rich.
from Fast Facts for Free Agents
3
InitiativeWhen Sunny got home, everything seemed normal. She kicked a soccer ball around with her brothers. She easily stole the ball and wove between them with her fast feet, and because they found this annoying, they talked rubbish about how she looked like a white girl. Her mother, who was home early, made spicy red stew with chicken. Her father came home late and ate alone as he read his newspaper. Not once did the world bloom or shift.
But goodness, she was tired. Exhausted. She tried to read a few pages of Purple Hibiscus, a book she’d begged her mother to buy, but soon she fell asleep. She slept like the dead. When morning came, she felt better. She lay there thinking about what happened yesterday. Whatever Chichi and Orlu had done to her, she would open her mind to it, she decided. Why not?
She quickly dressed in jeans, a yellow T-shirt, leather sandals, and her favorite gold necklace. It was the only costly gift her father had ever given her.
“Be back by four o’clock,” her mother said during breakfast. Sunny was surprised that her mother hadn’t asked a whole bunch of questions. She quickly got up before her luck changed.