I've dined at Ereshkigal's table on more than one occasion.
Her hospitality is what you might expect of the Kur. The bounty is… large. It's… quiet. Everything is silent in the Queen's hall.
One dines at a long table with the other residents—endless meals in silence. No one looks up—the feast is cups of dust and platters of clay. There is the occasional offering of kispum, the arrival of a blessing from a loved one. The bounty is served over months or years. One doesn't know. One is just… there. Ereshkigal is seated at the head of the table and rarely speaks. The newly dead hang on hooks running the length of the throne room. They hang on walls for three days before being cut down to join the feast.
A dark Queen reigns over a silent land—little ever changes. The land is still; no birds darken the sky, and no creatures move across the land. Water does not flow in the rivers. All is still. Only the Queen and her seven judges travel across the land with purpose.
How I came to be in the land from which no traveler returns is its own story. I know that it was intentional, and it came as the result of endless grief. At the time, this one did not know whose intention it was. There were lessons to be learned and only one place to understand them.
Ereshkigal loves order and things to be… just so. However, she is not in stark contrast to her sister Inanna. She is a goddess of many moods and deep passions. When the mood strikes her, she is headstrong and moved to action. The Kur is a place of somber reflection, its mistress less so. Ereshkigal tends to her role as guardian of the land and the dead, its authority, and the dominion given to her. Nothing more. She is not a reflection of the land nor it of her. Like the inhabitants, she is just there.
When the meal is over, one wanders the land. Slowly and in silent procession. This is a place of eternal twilight that is very… still. There is no dawn, day, or sunset, a land of eternal half-light.
A single unending twilight. Nothing changes—endless stillness.
The air is a palpable thing crawling into your lungs and eyes. The dust creeps through you, staining you. The landscape is shades of red and grey. Other than that, it looks like any different countryside.
The land moves around one more than one moves across it. Months go by. The inhabitants do not speak to one another. Everyone passes in unblinking silence.
One is not sad; one is not unhappy. None mark the passage of time; one… exists. There is no "I" or sense of self. Entering the Kur strips, one of all that one is, and all one was. One has no identity, no sense of self, and limited awareness. From time to time, one finds oneself back in the throne room. There is a vague awareness of now. “Now” is a profound and grounding lesson.
How long this one dwelt in the land from which no traveler returns, one does not know. An hour is a month; a month is decades.
This one wandered the land, passing endless faces, never wondering, never recognizing, never knowing. This one was looking for a face one could not recognize or remember.
The Stillness held the keys to the all, the secret but ever-present pathways to all corners of existence. As I embraced this hush, the land ceased to shift beneath me, and the air grew dense with the weight of realization. My dreams became the bridge between the worlds, echoes of the sun's warmth and the dark's embrace.
With every step, the Priest's lessons resonated strongly, and I began to reclaim fragments of myself, piecing together the mosaic of my identity. I was not Inanna; my journey was not one of descent and ascent but of inward navigation, traversing the Stillness that connects.
The Stillness is a vast canvas, and I learned to paint my path across it, my essence leaving ripples across its tranquil surface. The Stillness was not an abyss but a foundation from which all things could rise. As I traveled south, guided by an innate compass, the world of the living blossomed into being once more.
And unlike Inanna, I did not ascend from the underworld and pass through the seven gates. I entered the Stillness. How long I wandered in the worlds between worlds, I do not know. The Stillness is vast, timeless, and endless, more far-reaching than the Kur; a boundless ocean, an unblinking sky, no sense of up or down. I forced myself to travel south. And then there was a word; “Onward.”
Once again, I found myself in a body, in the world of the living. I came to know my identity.
And there, amidst the cacophony of life, I found myself anew, with the Stillness as my eternal ally, the quiet teacher whose lessons were etched into the core of my being.
