Presently Egdod grew weary of being looked at and flew back to the Palace. This was still empty, which struck him as being somewhat wrong, but he had seen little need to make improvements. The souls of Town, which, compared to him, had so little power to change things, had put objects in their houses of which he knew the names: chair, table. Ward had done likewise in his Gatehouse. Just to add some variety, Egdod now shaped the adamant of the floor up into a chair, and experimented with sitting down on it. As his body never grew tired, this was no different from standing up or flying except insofar as it added some variety. He made another chair where some other soul might sit. Since the other souls were smaller, he made the chair smaller too. Between the two chairs he raised up a table. It was all without any real point and it was not as satisfying as cultivating plants in his Garden or building mountains, deserts, and swamps. So he soon quit and went out to the Garden to see what new plants had sprouted. Some had appeared with leaves that were colors other than green, and ofttimes those were arranged in clusters, which were called flowers. Their purpose, other than adding variety and pleasing whoever gazed upon them, was not clear to him yet. But in the many years since Egdod had first become conscious and extracted his soul from chaos, he had seen countless things that had no clear purpose. Each time he did, he was confirmed in his belief that all of the things he was making had been familiar to him in the place he must have abided when he had been alive. He must have lived in a place that was shaped like Town. Other souls must have lived there too. His world must have contained leaves, trees, and flowers. Season had followed season, and water had beat upon rocks. The emergence of these things was not an act of creating new out of nothing, but a kind of slow remembrance. The souls building chairs in their houses in Town were likewise trying to remember things that they had once known.

Later Ward came in from the street and entered his Gatehouse so that Egdod could see him through the aperture that joined it to the Palace. Egdod could see that the other was regarding the new furniture with curiosity. Egdod sat down in his big chair, then made a gesture with his hand as if trying to waft Ward into the Palace with a puff of air. He remembered the words and shaped them with his mouth: “Come in.”