The Hive, as seen from above, had the natural irregularity of a tree’s roots and branches. But when they viewed it from closer range they easily discerned a regular pattern of cells. Most of these were six-sided, though some had more or fewer, as might be needed to fit themselves into the larger shape of the Hive without leaving gaps. The walls of the cells had a firmness that gave slightly under a nudge of Adam’s finger. In the hollow center of each cell was a wisp of aura, swirling and condensing into a knot as it sought form. Cells along the tips and edges of the root appeared to be younger, with more fluid boundaries that occasionally tore or burst and leaked a faint gas of aura into the surroundings. Better-established cells in the Hive’s interior had crisp walls housing groomed and structured complexes of pulsing aura. In general the cells did not move, but occasional quick fidgeting in their peripheral vision drew their attention to the manner of the Hive’s growth. Cells would swell and pinch and divide, nudging their neighbors, and the net result of all the nudging was a slow encroachment of Hive-stuff over unoccupied stretches of ground. All of the Hive was suffused with rippling light, mostly white but veined with evanescent streaks of color, and with a murmuring hum that came and went in no pattern that they could make out.

They stood watching and listening for a while longer, and making more such observations as they noticed things of interest. For its part the Hive seemed to show a kind of awareness that they were there. But in the end it could not speak to them in any words they understood, and so they backed away from it and finally turned away from it and began to walk into the open territory beyond that had not yet been claimed by the Hive’s slow spreading. Other than the light radiating from the Hive behind them, this lay in darkness.

Into that darkness they walked. Their progress was halting because the ground, though flat, was not the fine soil of the Garden, but a field of broken stone. The rocks were of various sizes ranging from pebbles that got stuck between their toes up to monoliths the size of tree trunks. Smooth on some surfaces, jagged on others, they reminded Adam and Eve of the fragments of the Garden wall on which they had been treading minutes before. Some had been pocked by impacts, others blackened by fire. Weeds and vines had grown up through cracks between them and matted the occasional patch of open ground. Many of these were abloom with small flowers that stood out as motes of color in the light of the Hive and added some Garden-like cheer to what was otherwise desolate.

Before them, low in the sky, they could see the glimmering smudge of the Red Web. Their simple knowledge of astronomy told them that they were headed west. Had they turned around to look behind them, they might have seen the eastern sky beginning to grow lighter behind the crag.