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that I know of,” I said. “There’s been some ingestion over in the Copse of Erudition, but I think that’s largely due to the Tree of Hunger being placed between the Tree of Sharp Teeth and the Tree of Putting Two and Two Together.”
    “Ho hum,” boomed God. “Well, where on Earth could they be?”
    God always struck me as a strangely impotent omnipotent. You could often catch Him humming uncertainly to Himself as He floated through the Garden, sometimes stumbling on the odd root, apologizing frequently, desperately trying to make friends with the animals, who out of a sense of obligation nodded their heads, but whose impatience with Him was clear. I felt quite sorry for Him at times. Creation was all too busy being alive, chasing and being chased, and, of course, rutting like wild animals. It simply didn’t have time to deal with some lonely supreme being.
    As it was, I soon came across Adam and Eve. The fairies that had lived at the bottom of the Garden of Eden had been torn apart by a horde of hungry dachshunds, and I was spiriting their fey souls to the nether, when I heard voices coming from a well-appointed cave overlooking a charming swamp. A sign at its entrance read DUNFALLIN. I peeked inside and saw Adam and Eve, but the clueless Neanderthals of my first acquaintance were long gone.
    “Fairies are all very well,” I heard Adam say as he stoked the fire that roared in the cave, “but not in my backyard.”
    “Yes, dear,” said Eve, bending down to pat the head of one of the pack of dachshunds that swarmed around her. “Who’s a good boy?” she said to the dog. “We shall have to start feeding you again.”
    “No need,” interrupted Adam. “Fairy meat’s good enough for them.”
    Adam and Eve had gained language, and with it snobbery and entitlement (I noticed the laminated tag from the Tree of Conceit woven into their clothes). When I introduced myself, they looked me up and down with cold, judgmental eyes, and when I tried to explain how despondent God was, they said that that was no concern of theirs. Well, I didn’t know what to say. I stayed for a while, pleading my case, but they virtually ignored me, and then started making fun of the Darkness, calling it “vacuous” and “dim.” I left before its feelings could be hurt.
     

    Dachshunds: The Reason There Are No Fairies in the World.
     
    When God eventually caught up with them, it was extremely awkward. I was in the neighborhood collecting the last of the gnomes who also had been savaged by Adam and Eve’s dog pack. God said that He felt injured by their behavior. Adam and Eve said they regretted God’s unhappiness in the most formal of tones. God said He loved them, but Adam and Eve declared that they thought His love for them was rather vulgar, and certainly not fitting for one who aspired to the divine. In fact, they said, they were beginning to wonder if paying homage to Him was really the best use of their time. Could He, they asked, show them any proof of His divinity that would make Him worthy of their worship? So it was that God decreed a parade of Creation should be put on for the pair. It did not go well.
    I remember Adam rolling his eyes at the elephant, calling it “shallow” and “insubstantial,” and Eve laughing unkindly at the lions and tigers, declaring, in a hushed tone just loud enough for God to hear, that they were “deliciously kitsch.” When He showed them the vast pools of magma surging red-hot beneath the earth’s crust, Adam affected a yawn, and when He showed them the bluest of blue skies, Eve simply checked her sundial and said they should be getting on. Finally, when God laid bare for them the vast expanse of the Universe, the dark firmament lit with gleaming and wandering stars, the wondrous vastness of Creation, the couple pretended to be distracted by a rock. “That’s mine too,” boomed God, a little too eagerly, allowing Eve to say that they were sure of it, considering how hideous it