When the angel arose, she was Dahira Ruhani, the eternal spirit. Her former name crumbled like dust, scattered on the wind—lost, irretrievable. Only she knew her new name, and when spoken, it chimed like a desert breeze, echoing through hills and canyons. The desert itself echoed it back, sweet and soft, like Rosaleen petals kissed by morning dew.

  Her chariot rose from the sand, coaxed forth by her presence. It had watched, a silent witness to her completed metamorphosis. Before the goddess, it acknowledged her as Ishara, the sign. But that was not her name.

  Still, perhaps she was both? Could the eternal spirit not also be the sign?

  She felt no offense. Erased, but complete, she needed nothing. She would forge new memories, savoring their creation.

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  The chariot, no lowly creature, addressed her with guttural challenges and sharp clicks. It demanded that she make the sign, a simple request that she fulfilled effortlessly. Despite the void of memory, she waved her hands, and the creature stilled, bowing its great body to the sand.

  She mounted its broad, chitinous back, her bare feet resting against its blackened armor. With a gentle nudge, they began their journey into the hills’ shadows. There, she would plant her garden.

  A place to meditate:

  I knelt at the river of stars, its waters cold and silent.

  A place to reflect:

  I drank, and it filled me with light so bright I could no longer see my own reflection.

  A place to question:

  “Who are you?” I asked the stars.

  A place to ponder the riddles of the stars:

  The stars flickered and sang: “We are not your answer. We are your forgetting.”

  And as the stars’ song faded into the desert night, she smiled. She needed no answers. She was Dahira Ruhani, the eternal spirit, and she carried the stars’ light within her.