That each leaf was a little different was no longer a source of confusion, once he got the knack of distributing things around; he could summon forth as many leaves as he wished, and set one next to another. The space in which they abided became larger. By regarding one leaf or another with greater care he was able to bring it into the center of his regard. He organized the leaves on bigger structures, themselves in a way leaflike. Those were branches, and branches could be organized on trees, and he could make as many trees as he chose, and arrange them as he wished: haphazardly, which was a thing called a forest, or dotted around here and there, which was a park, or in neat rows, which was a street. He created one of each, a street lined with red-leaved trees, leading to a park with a forest beyond.

As he gazed upon one tree or another, it would move closer to him, carrying all else along with it. When he grew accustomed to this, though, a change came over his thinking and he found it more fitting to conceive of the trees and the other things as remaining in one place while he moved through it. To fix them in their places, he created the ground.

By its nature, the ground did not alter its shape once he had brought it into being. For its purpose was to keep the trees and other things in a fixed relationship to one another. To serve that purpose it had to be much larger than the trees and the other things that it contained. Therefore it required the conversion of a vast expanse of static into something of an altogether different nature. The static was not easily tamed, but in time he learned how to change it into a thing dark and rigid and hard, and this was adamant. Once made, it would not alter its shape or its position unless he broke it once again into the static from which he had formed it, and made such alterations as he desired. The forest, the street, and the park were thus situated on an island of adamant that held its shape and position in the sea of static.

In the early going he’d had to build the leaf anew every time, but new things were now coming into being without his say-so, and he was stumbling upon them already made. He was rediscovering—becoming alive to—things that had been summoned and organized by him when he wasn’t paying attention. He knew, for example, that the leaf was red. Indeed they had emerged, in the beginning, from their redness; he’d seen motes that were different and assembled them into the leaf.