Eve did not want the responsibility of naming a thing. She didn’t believe in animals or the Earth. She knew everything outside of herself was just a wink from the creator. What a cheap trick, Eve thought.

Adam was sleeping. God had assigned him the task of planting all the trees to teach him that what you water grows. Since giving all his energy to the soil, Adam had been sleeping for days.

Meanwhile, God kept pushing animals out of his brain. Each morning a new, moist creature careened into Eve’s sleeping body to soak in her warmth. Eve didn’t understand what was happening around her. The world was already a strange and delightful place without so many animals.

After speaking nonsense with some squat baby animal, Eve accidentally sat on some berries. They burst inside of her. She swam in the ocean to get clean. Floating on her back in the water, she talked to God. God was into confessions. Since it was his turn, he asked for Eve’s help. He said that even though the whole world was basically one big message of His love, he still needed a helping hand. It is hard to tell a person that you love them. Sometimes you need them to participate.

Or that was the gist of it, at least. Eve’s ears had been bobbing in the ocean water. The sound was either VWUUUM or God’s heavenly voice.

VWUUUM. “Help me.”

VWUUUM VWUUUM. “The world is not real, but you are still here.”

VWUUUM. “Take responsibility for my actions.”

VWUUUM.

One of the things God loved most about Eve was her positive attitude. Eve made sure she never let him down. She even tattooed “yes” on the inside of her bottom lip. Eve and God had the ideal relationship.

After talking with the man upstairs, Eve swam to shore. She laid in the sand to dry her hair and recalled all the animals she had seen. She once looked into the eyes of a dying creature and saw surrender on its face. She remembered chasing a short animal with a fish clasped in its mouth. Hunger fueled them both. Once, an animal had even cried out with disappointment when she wouldn’t hold it. The animal’s anguish left a mottled brown mark on her left breast. Eve realized that God had given her the task of naming the animals because he was afraid of hurting them. God can’t make mistakes, but He still does. God only confides in Eve about this.

She dragged herself up and out of the sand to find Adam. Exciting new ideas of what to name the Earth’s animals now filled her, but as God ached to hold her hand, she ached to have Adam hold hers. His ears gave her words shape and importance.

She found Adam sleeping on his stomach. Red, wet scratches decorated his back from where tiny animals had trampled him on their journey. Gently, she lifted his cheek. She pressed her lips against the warm hair of his head. Under this pressure, he slowly awoke. She smiled down at him and he smiled up at her as the Earth’s air rose in temperature.

Eve told Adam the list of names she’d thought up that morning. Adam’s eyes widened without a sound because before Eve had woken him up, he’d been dreaming of what it would be like to name all the animals of Earth.

Adam craved a sense of direction. Two days after his creation, Adam had stared at the sun and felt a tiny hole widen in his chest. At first, he mistook the hole for hunger, but after eating many fistfuls of hanging fruit, the hole still did not close. Adam did not understand why God would put a hole in his chest.

Adam sought out God’s aid. He swam far into the ocean, further than he would have liked, and floated in fear. He humbly asked God to be his friend.

God himself would admit that he was harder on Adam than on Eve. Adam was God’s first, and in him, God saw the complexity of his own desires. God loved Adam equally to all his creations, yet he did not feel inclined to answer his questions. God was embarrassed. He wished for Adam and Eve to create beauty out of the pain he had accidentally given them. He knew this to be a project that they could only complete if they felt alone. So God answered Adam with silence. The silence that Adam was trying to understand would occupy most of his life.

Adam left the beach and went to find Eve. He embraced her and lifted his eyes to be level with hers. He took in her dark hair and the smile hovering on her lips. The hole inside him ached. He hovered his lips inches away from hers and said, “You won’t believe it, but I dreamt all those names you just told me. In my dream, it was you I heard saying them.”

Riley Quinn Scott is a writer from Los Angeles. Her Instagram is @stuff3d_rabb1t.