Nawirnushu

That night Ziqiqu had placed Nawirnushu in a cold, dark place. On the black earth he shuddered as a chilling wind whirled across a great mountainous expanse.

'Where is this place? My lord is missing in the sky and I cannot see one single star!' He lamented.

The howling of those harsh gales inspired such terror in the man! Frantically, Nawirnushu searched for his gods in his heart, but he could not find them there. A despair seized him.

Yet the Lord Dream is merciful, and in that moment, when sorrow had taken hold of Nawirnushu, Ziqiqu lifted his veil, and the wind ceased. His location changed.

He was lying in his bed, in his own chamber. It was night. Nawirnushu could not see Zumun in the sky, and his pale light did not illuminate his surroundings. For some time he lay over the bed. For some time he lay in silence.

Then a person appeared in the doorway. It was Reshaya, his first wife. Nawirnushu could not see her fully. She was all in shadow.

She said "Husband, you must hasten! The feast cannot start without you!"

Nawirnushu was out of bed. He put on the clothes that had been set out for him. Before him on the dresser lay a gunakku kilt, a finely tailored traditional costume, frayed like feathers, just as the old nugalene of his fair city used to wear.

Reshaya led Nawirnushu out of his room and through the upper courtyard toward the royal garden's patio. Now the face of Zumun shone pure, and his queen was made beautiful by him. She wore iridescent jewelry which glittered in his radiance. A little silver dove sat perched upon her diadem. Her old-fashioned dress was woven from lamb's wool, speckled in stripes of tastefully faint greens, blues, purples, and greys.

Nawirnushu gazed into her eyes, but she did not look back on him with warmth. "My husband, we must not dally!" Reshaya implored.

"Like Ninanna, My wife is beautiful but severe." Nawirnushu conceded, and smiled softly.

The muffled rythym of a drum was heard throughout the palace. The rumbling echoed through the garden when they arrived at the banquet together. Before them, between the palms and ferns, mingled a large crowd of about a hundred and fifty people, gathered around in small circular clusters of chairs. In the centers they shared wine-jars that were a forearm and a half tall, and the feast lay on a long spread at the far end of the patio, piled in enormous quantities of the most succulent goat, steak, cheese, fruit, and sweet breads. The tables faced the far end of the balcony overlooking the royal canal, where a band's instruments were setting up.

Between the frantic banquet and the constant percussion, Nawirnushu lost his foundation, and when he came back to his senses, his queen had left him. It seemed she went one way. It seemed as though she went another way. Nawirnushu decided he would not be bothered by her absence. 'Surely she will delight for many hours in the company of the courtly ladies.' He thought.

Nawirnushu did not desire food, because for some reason the air smelled thickly of juniper, and it did not agree with his stomach, so he decided to walk across the patio between some gatherings of men also wearing the same gunakku kilts. This is a play that Nawirnushu would delight in at parties, mingling among his courtiers in common dress, seeing their hearts at ease before they become aware of his authority. 'A falsehood in good taste', he would say.

Nawirnushu strolled between the gatherings, but upon observing the exchanges of his subjects, he immediately recognized his caprice had been foiled, for he was the only one at the banquet not donning a mask. The circles about which he hovered held many men seated together, giggling in drunkeness behind faces of wide-eyed mirth, sinister arched-brow sneers, and heavy-lipped sorrows.

He tried to listen in on the stories that seemed to so possess them, but to each conversation he seemed to only ever arrive to hear the very end of the punchline, as if an old saying, the meaning of which is made obscure with time even to the most diligent scribe.

Because Nawirnushu did not take pleasure in the conversations of those strange people, he wandered out onto the patio of the royal gardens, surrounded by sweet flowers and softly swaying willow trees, sitting across from mirthful faces, cast orange in torchlight. He took a chair around an untapped drinking vat and in short measure his mouth was flooded with the sweet taste of date beer, and numbed by the faint burn of the alcohol as he drew through the long reed-straw out of the enormous clay jar before him.

As Nawirnushu looked out across the garden balcony's view he gazed upon Zumun, floating in the blackness, shimmering over the canal's surface, his glow stretched across the courtyard's open skyline. The king looked out over his city, and took solace in Nusku's light, which flickered out of every home's window. Likewise along the balcony before him, the players' stage was perfectly aligned with his lord in the sky so as to be lit by Zumun's splendour, and Nusku also danced across the braziers, so that it might aid the fingers of the harpist and the flautist. The musicians prepared their instruments.