Beneath Inanna’s Cloak

“The stars remember what men forget — that every scar, every hope, is written across the sky as well as upon the skin.” — Saying of the Stargazers

Kiya and Eadric found themselves at the plateau’s edge, where the stone dropped away into a vast gulf of shadow. The campfires glimmered behind them, their smoke rising like thin offerings to the heavens. Before them stretched the valley below, now half-lost in the darkness, while above the first stars began to burn—clear, cold, eternal. They emerged one by one until the sky was scattered with them like jewels across Inanna’s cloak.

Kiya drew her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, her stylus and papyrus set aside for once. The usual sharpness in her gaze softened as she tilted her face toward the stars. “Did you know it would be like this?” she asked, her voice low, vulnerable in a way she rarely allowed. “When you agreed to guide us through these divine trials?”

Her words were not the clipped precision of calculations, but the hushed wonder of someone confronting mystery. It was as though the ice that often encased her manner had melted, releasing something warmer beneath.

Eadric stood a moment longer, silhouetted against the night, then lowered himself beside her with a weary sigh. His hand absently brushed the river stone that hung from a leather cord around his neck. It was no ornament, but a talisman, one he had carried through countless journeys. His thumb lingered on it as if grounding himself before answering.

“I knew the path,” he said at last. “As a shepherd knows his grazing lands, or a hunter the habits of his quarry. The ridges, the rivers, the dangers—they were familiar to me, etched into my bones.” He gestured toward the camp behind them, where shadows moved around the glow of firelight. Families huddled close, laughter and quiet voices rising, weaving together in rhythms that sounded less like survival and more like belonging.

“But this?” His voice grew quieter, almost reverent. “This is something new. Like a flower blooming in winter. I knew how to keep people alive on the road. I did not know how to watch them change into something greater.”

Kiya studied him in profile, his scarred face marked by lines of hardship and resilience. He was not a man who wasted words, and that gave each one he spoke a weight her careful calculations could never measure.

She found herself smiling, small and rare. “You sound almost like Azariel,” she teased gently, though her tone carried no mockery.

Eadric snorted softly, the corner of his mouth quirking. “I’ve no gift for speeches. Azariel speaks to stir men’s hearts. I speak because silence grows too heavy.” He tilted his head, eyes catching the starlight. “Besides, I’ve lived long enough to know that flowers in winter don’t often last.”

The remark hung between them, edged with something fragile—hope mixed with the fear of its loss. For a long moment, they both turned back to the sky, letting the silence breathe. The stars glittered above like countless eyes, watching, waiting.

Kiya’s fingers brushed the rough stone at her side. She considered the constellations she had charted back in Ur—the measured paths of stars on tablets of clay, reduced to symbols and numbers. But here, in this vast silence with Eadric beside her, the stars were no longer data to be captured. They were alive, pulsing with stories, with omens, with possibility.

“Perhaps,” she said at last, her voice soft but steady, “but sometimes even a winter flower can take root. And in doing so, it teaches us something the endless summer never could.”

Eadric turned, studying her with the same measuring gaze he used to read the wilderness—the tilt of her shoulders, the curve of her mouth, the way the firelight from behind flickered against her cheek.

He did not answer in words, not yet. But the silence between them was no longer heavy. It was full.

The night deepened around them. The fires behind cast a warm glow, but here at the edge of the plateau the darkness pressed close, broken only by the stars overhead. Their voices, hushed and measured, seemed to belong as much to the heavens as to the earth.

Eadric’s fingers strayed again to the river stone at his throat, rubbing its smooth surface with unconscious repetition. At length, he said, “This stone—I picked it from the banks of the Ashun when I was barely older than Marcus. My village was there, before it was swallowed by war.” His tone was matter-of-fact, yet beneath it lay weight, like a boulder hidden beneath shallow water.

Kiya turned her head, surprise softening her features. “You’ve carried it since then?”

“Aye.” He paused, eyes tracing the horizon where the last light lingered. “When everything else was lost—home, kin, even the names of fields I once hunted—it remained. A man holds fast to what he can, even if it is only a stone.”

He shifted, the firelight catching the white lines of old scars along his forearm. Kiya’s gaze lingered there, and he noticed. For a moment, silence stretched. Then he flexed his hand, studying the marks as though seeing them anew.

“Each scar has its tale,” he said quietly. “Some from beasts, some from men, some from my own folly. But I’ve never spoken much of them. What good are old wounds, save to remind us we’re still alive?”

Kiya tilted her head, considering. “They are more than reminders,” she said softly. “They are records—like inscriptions cut into clay. Proof of trials faced and endured. You carry your history upon your skin, Eadric, as I carry mine upon tablets.”

Her words drew a faint smile from him, wry but appreciative. “And what of your history, Kiya? You speak of tablets, but little of yourself. What did you leave behind in Ur?”

She hesitated, her stylus still resting unused at her side. “Order,” she answered at last. “The certainty of numbers, the neatness of lines. I studied in the temple schools—astronomy, architecture, the mathematics of weight and measure. My life was ruled by calculation.” She looked up at the stars, her voice softening. “I believed the world could be charted, every variable accounted for. But then Azariel spoke of a dream that could not be measured, and suddenly… numbers felt too small.”

Eadric studied her profile, the firelight outlining the sharp curve of her cheek. “And so you left the safety of Ur to chase what could not be measured.”

Kiya let out a short laugh, tinged with irony. “Safety? Perhaps. But it was a gilded safety—walls that protected, yes, but also confined. I wanted to build something new, something that required more than repeating the patterns of those who came before.” She glanced at him, her eyes catching the starlight. “Perhaps that is why I find myself here, speaking not of calculations but of winter flowers.”

For a time, neither spoke. The wind whispered across the plateau, carrying the scent of smoke and stone, and the stars above wheeled silently in their endless dance.

At last, Eadric said, his voice low, “You speak like someone who has always had a place in the world, yet chose to leave it. I speak like someone who lost his place long ago, and has never found it again.”

Kiya’s brow furrowed, her tone gentle but firm. “Perhaps that is the difference. Or perhaps that is why our paths crossed here—on this plateau, in this moment. Your scars and my numbers—both incomplete, but together they might build something whole.”

Her words lingered between them, bold in their simplicity. Eadric looked away, his hand tightening on the stone at his throat. But the faint curve of his mouth betrayed what his silence concealed: her words had touched something within him long buried.

The stars shone brighter, as though Inanna herself leaned close to listen.

The stars wheeled higher, spreading their silver lattice across the vault of heaven. The plateau grew colder, its stone radiating the day’s heat in dwindling breaths. Behind them, the murmurs of the camp softened as families settled to rest, fires burning low. At the edge, where shadow met the great drop, Kiya and Eadric lingered still.

Kiya’s eyes drifted from the stars to the faint outline of the valley below, its dark contours barely visible but full of promise. “Do you think,” she asked quietly, “that the valley will welcome us? That the soil will yield to our hands, that the rivers will not betray us?”

Eadric followed her gaze, his expression unreadable. “The land is never friend nor enemy,” he said after a pause. “It is itself. But if we listen—if we walk with respect—it may let us live alongside it.” He rubbed the stone at his throat. “I’ve seen valleys that devoured men and plains that spared them. The difference is not always the land—it is whether men tried to master it, or live with it.”

Kiya nodded slowly, as though tucking his words away like precious equations. Then her voice dropped to something softer, more vulnerable. “I hope…” She hesitated, then let the thought escape. “I hope we can build something that will outlast us. Not walls of mud brick that crumble in time, but a way of living. A place where even a child born with nothing can grow into something greater. A city that doesn’t repeat the mistakes of Ur.”

Eadric glanced at her, his brow furrowing. “You think in spans of generations. I think in spans of seasons. My hope is simpler: that tomorrow we all wake, that no wolf or storm takes us in the night. That the children see another sunrise.”

Her lips curved, though not in mockery. “Both kinds of hope are needed,” she murmured. “One for the days, one for the years.”

Silence stretched between them, companionable this time. The wind brushed across the plateau, tugging strands of Kiya’s dark hair loose. Without thinking, Eadric reached to tuck them back behind her ear. His calloused fingers grazed her skin lightly before he realised what he was doing, and he pulled back as though from fire.

Kiya did not flinch, nor did she speak of it. Instead, she let the gesture hang between them like a fragile lamp in the dark, unacknowledged yet glowing all the same.

She folded her hands in her lap, her gaze steady on the valley. “When the city is built,” she said softly, “I would like to design a great observatory. A place where the stars can be mapped with precision, where future generations can lift their eyes and see the patterns the gods have written. Not merely to know where they are, but to remember that they are part of something vast.”

Eadric’s gaze lingered on her, not the valley, not the sky. “If you build it,” he said simply, “I will make sure it stands.”

The words were plain, without flourish, yet they carried more weight than a thousand vows.

Kiya turned to meet his eyes. For the space of a heartbeat, neither looked away. There was no declaration, no touch, no promise—only a shared understanding, fragile and undeniable. A spark, not yet fire, but enough to kindle warmth against the chill of the night.

Above them, the stars glittered as if in witness, Inanna’s cloak spread wide, sheltering both dreamers and wanderers alike.