Ward walked through the aperture and across the expanse of stone and took a seat in the chair that was of a size befitting him. While Egdod had been away shaping the lands beyond, Ward’s body had grown broad and his face had taken on greater definition. Lips, and other things that he was remembering the names of—teeth, tongue—were, it seemed, of use in more perfectly shaping sounds from the hissing chaos of breath. “Flowers beautiful,” he said, more clearly than Egdod could have done. Or at least those were the two words that Egdod recognized; they were embedded in a sentence of greater complexity, joined together with small words that somehow made them work better. Egdod understood that Ward had been spending time in Town with the other souls and that they had developed the art of talking beyond what Egdod, who spent all of his time alone, had yet achieved.

It occurred to him that neither Ward nor any of the others had seen the lands that Egdod had been building. They had no understanding of what he had been doing. One day they would develop their legs, or in some cases wings, to the point where they could range over great distances and see it all with their own eyes. In the meantime, Egdod fancied that he might, by the use of words, try to explain what he had been doing. He embarked on that project but found himself limited by his crude powers of speech, which were not up to the task of conveying even a hint of his creations’ size and complexity. Soon he resorted to gestures and disjointed words, pointing one way and uttering “mountains” and another way “ocean” and so forth. Then he lapsed into silence as he understood the futility of what he was attempting.

That silence was interrupted by a rush of chaotic noise from Ward. Egdod looked at him to see that his aura was getting larger, sending out a tendril of aura in Egdod’s direction. This was a thing that souls in Town did when they were standing close together. Experimentally Egdod did likewise, letting the aura around his head reach out over the table. When it touched and merged with that of Ward, he felt, saw, heard, and smelled new things.