“The answer to this riddle—if indeed it amounts to one—is here amid us,” Egdod said.

The other souls looked about curiously, as if the answer were about to fly in among them in the manner of a swarm of bees, but instead Egdod slapped the palm of his hand down on the surface of the table. “Ever since we made a habit of sitting about this table in the evening, I have felt that something was lacking, just as, when we had flower beds but no bees to hum in them, they seemed lonely. This table is lonely. Not only that, but it lacks all purpose since we never put anything upon it save, occasionally, the creations of Thingor and Knotweave when they are making something here.” Egdod was about to go on in this vein but saw now that it was not needed since most of the others were signaling agreement by nodding their heads or changing the shapes of their auras.

“‘Food’ is the name of it,” said Speaksall. “And ‘drink.’”

“Both of those things I now begin to remember,” announced Ward. “And to remember them is to miss them, for I am of half a mind to believe that they once gave me great pleasure.”

“They are for the living,” Spring announced. “Bees must eat, to make wax for their hives and so that they can create more of their kind. We do not make wax. And to create more of our kind is far beyond our powers when we are beset with so many difficulties in making even small creatures such as the one of Knotweave’s conception.”

“Perhaps the reason it could not spin threads out of air was that it had nothing to eat,” said Knotweave.

Thingor nodded. “It would have to obtain the stuff of the threads from somewhere.”

“Be that as it may,” said Greyhame, “it does not touch upon Spring’s essential point, which is that, as we make nothing out of our forms, we do not have any use for food and drink.”

“I do not question this,” Longregard said. “But souls in Town have lately taken up a curious practice, which is that they will sit together in a house and make sounds together. Sounds that serve no purpose other than to please the ones making them, and the ones listening.”

“I have heard it,” said Speaksall. “They got the idea from the humming of the bees, but their sounds have become more complex and more beautiful.”

“I have heard it too,” Egdod admitted, “and I crave hearing more.”

“That is curious,” said Greyhame, “but I do not understand its connection to the matter I was only just speaking of.”

“The connection is clear enough in my mind,” said Ward, “though perhaps it is only because I am now feeling a thing that is akin to pain, though not as disagreeable. I believe it is called hunger. I hunger for food and drink. It is not because I need to make a hive out of stuff exuded from my body. Nor is it because I am attempting to spawn more copies of myself. I want it for the same reason that Egdod craves the hearing of certain sounds: simply because to have it would give me pleasure.”