Five summers had baked the earth since Dagan walked into the dust. Ninsun's hope, once a fierce flame, had banked to a single, stubborn ember. She spent part of each day at the edge of the village, her eyes scanning the shimmering horizon, looking for a silhouette that never appeared.
The village had regrown, scarred but alive. New huts stood where old ones had burned. Life had stubbornly pushed through the cracks of tragedy, anchored by Ninsun's healing hands.
"He will come back, Mama."
The voice, small but certain, came from beside her. She looked down. Enki stood there, his small hand finding hers. His hair was as dark as the rich soil by the river, and his eyes held a stillness that was far too old for a boy of five.
She forced a smile, squeezing his hand. "I know, my heart."
He was a quiet child, but not a sad one. He had a strange, innate gentleness and a focus that unnerved the other children. While they wrestled and threw stones, Enki would sit silently for hours, utterly captivated by the world's small mechanics.
Ninsun found him one afternoon, not playing, but crouched perfectly still by a line of ants marching toward their mound. He wasn't just watching; he was studying. His eyes traced their path, his head tilting as he observed a single ant struggling with a piece of seed twice its size.
The ant tried to push it, then pull it, then shifted its grip and found a new angle. It moved the immense weight, inch by stubborn inch. Enki's lips moved, silently mimicking the ant's efforts, his small body tensing with a shared, imagined strain. He wasn't seeing an insect; he was witnessing a principle—leverage, perseverance, the triumph of intelligent effort over sheer mass.
Another time, he came to her not with a wildflower, but with a small, crudely woven basket of reeds. It was lopsided, the work of clumsy fingers, but it was unmistakably a container.
"For the comfrey leaves," he said, presenting it with solemn pride. "So they don't get crushed."
Ninsun's breath caught. She had not taught him to weave. He had learned it simply by watching, his mind absorbing the skill of interlocking patterns, just as he'd absorbed the ant's lesson in determination.
He was a quiet child, but the silence was not empty. It was the deep, humming silence of a mind at work, assembling the world from its fundamental principles. He was not just learning her craft; he was seeing through it, to the logic beneath. It was as if a great, silent wisdom slept behind his young eyes, waiting for the right moment to awaken. And sometimes, Ninsun feared what would happen when it did.