“No, but it seemed to me that he was pleased by my having asked them, and he said that I might receive answers later as I became ready to understand such matters.” The girl let herself down to the bed of soft grass where the boy had been sleeping, and reclined on her elbow, then lay down fully.

“You are weary from the questions of El,” the boy said, “just as I was. Sleep well and then we may have further talk when you are refreshed.”

The girl slept until the sun was high, and the boy whiled away the hours playing in the stone bowl, making things from bits of wood and leaves, and watching them float down the stone gutter to the grate where the water spated.

When the girl had awakened, she asked him what he was doing and he spoke of ideas forming in his head of where such floating things could float off to once they had passed out through the grate, supposing that the world beyond the wall was akin to the Garden. He asked the girl whether she had dreamed, and she told a story similar to his, about vague memories of many such conversations in the past between her and El.

“I dreamed thus too,” said the boy, “and it caused me to question my own memory and whether it faithfully captures all that has occurred in the time since we first came into being here in the Garden.”

The girl nodded. “It is strange that we have no memories of that first moment. Either we have been here eternally, or we were created at some instant of time before which we did not exist. In either case it would seem that we are not being perfectly served by our faculties of recollection.”

The boy pondered it for a time and said, “There is a third possibility, which is hinted at by the character of our dreams. And it is that we have been created not just once but many times, as many times or more as the sun has risen over the horizon.”

“Then why are there not many more of our kind in the Garden?” the girl asked.

“Perhaps we fall like leaves and cease to be and are remade.”

The girl nodded. “In the face of El I thought I discerned satisfaction at the answers I gave and the questions I asked. Perhaps we are a thing he remakes from time to time, bettering us with each remaking. The curious dreams we had last night are traces of those earlier girls and boys.”

“There is a way we might judge the truth of this idea,” said the boy, and he pointed to the ground at the girl’s feet. It was muddy there because of the overflow of the fountain, and her feet had left prints in it wherever she had stepped.