Loose black tea, crushed herb tea, mint leaf tea, flower petal tea -- there were superfluous amounts of tea in Nanshe's palace of a home. Back in London, the cupboards of her small, run-down flat had barely enough room for essentials. Here in her new home, created for her widows and for her orphans (and for Shamash), the Sumerian goddess had spared no luxury. One of those luxuries was tea.
All throughout the day, she and her widows had been hard at work baking traditional Indian desserts. Gulab jamun, kulfi, gajjar ka halwa... She knew her children would want them, and the widows were a joy to work with in the kitchen. It took a few tries before Nanshe made a pan of brownies that didn't look like they'd been blowtorched, but the widows were kind and only laughed a little. Truth: Nanshe laughed too.
The palace was alive with laughter today, it seemed to Nanshe. After having slept perhaps too long into the morning with Utu (and later, without him, when he stole away to work downstairs on the protections for the place), there was hardly any chance of dampening her spirits. Even if Utu thought that her invitation was going to end them all in a spot of trouble. Inanna had come, too -- she felt her niece's presence when she arrived -- and with the siblings working together, Nanshe had all faith that the palace would be one of the safest, kindest places on the whole of the earth. Yes, there was much laughter, and much of it was coming from the kitchen.
So much, she almost missed the knock at the door. But it was the presence that could not be ignored. Wiping flour from her hands, she set a kettle of water on the stove for that tea she'd so carefully laid out, then hurried to answer the door.
"Morpheus!" she beamed, extending her hand to draw him through the great sandstone archway. "I'm so glad you came!" And then she looked behind him. There was no one. The smile didn't fade, but she tilted her head in silent question. That question made it to the light after all, a second later. "Is there no one else?" she asked softly, in a voice wholly without judgment.