set_item_description_content query not working for stories created via create_item query

I’m trying to set up a programmatic workflow that will create a story and insert items in the description widget for that story using markdown however it is not working. I’ve double checked everything possible and found that even though the query to set_item_description_content was returning a 200, it had an internal server error in the response body. Further testing revealed that once a story is created via create_item, the description item is set to null for that story and will remain null until I manually open the story via the UI. I was able to post a description to items only after I opened the story up in the UI. This is why I was getting an internal server error, as the query was trying to write to an item that doesn’t exist. I found no query that will create the description item in the story for me so I can proceed to populate it. I also tried adding the markdown as part of the long_text field in the create_item query but that didn’t work. I am at a bit of a loss on how to proceed, does anyone have any insights? Here is what my test query looks like when calling the set_item_description_content query (building it using jq):

{
  query: "mutation ($itemId: ID!, $body: String!) { set_item_description_content(item_id: $itemId, markdown: $body) { success error block_ids } }",
  variables: {
    itemId: previous-created-id,
    body: "## TEST"
  }
} | tojson