A hill rose like an island amid the sea of grass. Without discussion they bent their course toward it and climbed to its top. By now the sun was directly overhead. They taught “hill” and “tree,” “sun” and “moon” to their companion. During the morning’s long walk both Adam and Eve had made further connections to the thing’s aura and were beginning to understand it better; or perhaps it had reorganized itself after their pattern. Its powers of speech had advanced well beyond word lists, and they understood in a vague way that it had some ability to get knowledge through means not obvious to them. When they entered into the deep shade of a tree that grew atop the hill, they could see that it had refined its form, with two distinct lower limbs like legs, two arms, and wings like those of El’s host. As well as a head, still just a bright cloud of aura, but beginning to take on humanlike features. “What shall we call you, following soul?” Eve asked it. “As we have taught you various words, we need a word for you.”

“What name would be best?” it asked. “My name is for you.” They understood it to mean that any such name would be an affordance meant for Adam and Eve, and so ought to come readily to mind and flow easily from the tongue. The sprite considered it for a few more moments, and came back with “Mab.”

“Are you of El’s host then?” Adam inquired. “Like the angels that circle the towers of the Palace?”

Mab, hovering between them, considered this at length. “I know not.”

Adam nodded. “El pervaded the things of this, the Second Age, to set them apart from the creations of the Beta Gods,” he said.

“He strove to integrate us,” said Eve, “but he, or we, failed. We are ineluctably children of the Beta Gods.”

“The greatest achievement of the First Age, El called us,” Adam said. “Which made my heart swell with pride at the time; but looking back on it now, I see he made no reference to the Second.”

“Of these matters I know nothing,” Mab admitted, “yet I can learn.”

“The Beta Gods were here first and they made all of this,” Eve said, sweeping her arms across a broad swath of the horizon.

“Then they are making it still,” Mab corrected her, “for I can see the heads of the grass stalks bent heavy with seed, and nuts on the branches of this tree, all pregnant with new life. On yonder branch is a bird’s nest, and within it eggs, and new life is growing in them too. It is altogether different from the manner in which the Hive expands itself, and yet it works—even thrives—despite the indifference of El.”

“It is all the doing of our mother, Spring, who, it is said, still roams the Land,” Eve said.