The Stars of Winter

Chapter 1

     Lillit tipped her head back and groaned. Her legs had gone numb, her eyes were nearly crossed. She had been staring at the stone cylinder for hours and was still no closer to understanding the mix of cuneiform and whirled pictographs etched across its surface. She would have to leave it's mysteries unsolved until she returned to Manhattan.
     She tried to focus on returning, it was the only way she could stomach departing. Going back home in the winter made her feel panicky.
      It was easy to forget that any other world existed outside of the solitary ring of light from her desk lamp. The archives beneath the Morgan Library were rarely visited. But the back storage beyond those visited by the rest of the faculty, was a graveyard. Once a private Victorian Era entrance to the subway tunnels, they were now a senseless, damp and twisted maze that went well beyond the city block occupied by the palatial library above.
     Snaking away from main storage, past crates and files of all sizes. it was blissfully still, removed both from the millions of people above and as seasonless as a cave.
     In contrast, the main archives were sterile white, temperature controlled, modular storage units. Everything there was meticulously preserved and organized. Towards the back wall, a narrow arched door cut through the fluorescent, institutional space. Its presence was a shocking contrast. The arched door was like the gaping mouth of some large, mythical sea beast. Lillit could just squeeze her curves past the mess of leaning paintings and shrouded objects. Long limbs picking through it's crowded depths. She was now in a far corner,  so remote, no one would even see her light.
      It was a place where creaks and drafts take on a sinister life of their own... Forgotten... But not empty.
     Mysterious boxes full of artifacts lined the walls. Their contents once filed away as worthless, perhaps waiting to be discovered anew.
     She sucked her teeth as a rat scurred past her desk. But despite the current occupants, this place, for Lillit, was heaven.
      Normally, she would have spent her entire day off down here. Knees tucked up underneath an oversized sweater. Pulling out and contemplating artifact, after artifact. No particular plan or aim. She certainly wasn't cataloguing back storage out of the kindness of her heart.  
      No, it was a secret and instinctive process. One find led to another. All of it meticulously sketched into the pages of her black notebooks. Notebooks that were beginning to pile up at her appartement, much like the crates around her now.
      The ancient cylinders held her spellbound. She loved the heavy feel of them in her hand. Cool at first then warming with her touch. Touch felt like an important part of the process, but it was also why she had to be so careful. 
     Upstairs she was no one. Just another low level employee. The gift shop girl. dependable and intelligent, but certainly not cleared to handle the five thousand year old objects. She might have been able to apply for a grant and officially get permission to scavenge through the broken bits that no one cared to look through. But to write a grant you needed a clear purpose. She hadn't yet figured out what that was.
      It was allusive, her desire... Sometimes she could almost feel it. All of it, falling into place. Only to have it pass her by like a cool summer breeze.
      To anyone else, her scavenging through the archives would be written off as a naive curiosity.
Not to mention a ticket to the unemployment office.
She had considered stopping. Wrestled with her desire to be a "normal" girl. Spending her days off going to brunch with girlfriends, dressing up and bar hopping through Brooklyn. She had done plenty of that. Had slid out of men's apartments early in the morning, padding out the door with her shoes in her hands. Leaving nothing more than a few stray hairs on a pillow that she would never again visit.
     She did enjoy being a " normal" girl. Relished the hunt. Yet the allure never lasted past one night.
     Night after night, she returned again to the solitary darkness. Picking out shard after shard of fragmented Sumerian seals. Feeling their weight in her palm as she slowly put together the broken pieces. Another piece of the story revealed.
     Her favorite moments where when she spotted the figure of  Inanna. Goddess of all things to the Sumerians. She was life and death. Sex and war. The woman who traveled to the underworld... and returned.
      Inanna was hard to miss. Brazenly naked with a crown of snakes on her head. Her profile  always facing her obstacles, always embracing danger.
But she was far from perfect. Her widowed sister became her enemy and her lover her undoing. So basically, you could say she was a normal girl. It's amazing that such a flawed woman would rise to become a goddess, plummet into the underworld and rise again as the devil.
     Lillit released a chuckle. Of course she would be immersed in Inanna's trip to the underworld. Like her, Lillit was on a journey into darkness. Like Inanna she was being lured home... to a sister ... and to a funeral.