The Egg-of-all-eggs is dead and the days continue much as those following behind. The coronas measure each one of the days, and the Count of All Days grows larger by very little. What changes is allowed to pass, almost unnoticed. What matters is remembered as echo and idea. Pilgrims continue to leave for the other world and return again, claiming enlightenment. Nothing changes in either realm. But there are stories, scattered and occasional and perhaps dubious stories, where an odd creature gets noticed. Something that isn’t known by sight or by scent is spied in the other realm. Then one young pilgrim returns with the tale about finding a tiny beast tumbling through the emptiest air. The pilgrim looks closely at the creature, noticing that it is young and small but in many ways different than its brothers. Tasting the boy with his smallest head is only reasonable. But then one of the tree monsters—a familiar hunter—falls through the air to fearlessly snatch the boy and claim him. The monster covers both of them with an intense drenching of fear, and the two creatures soon vanish inside a giant gas-bloated machine, and that day is made remarkable.

While telling the story, the pilgrim wonders if that odd new beast was falling on purpose. Maybe he was trying to reach this world. And if so, why did the hunter risk so much to stop him?

Explanations are invented.

Inventions are decorated in smart light and shared with the world. But no explanation looks true, and what is known is just enough to breed curiosity and arrogance.

For another four hundred days, nothing changes.

And then quite suddenly, for reasons that no corona can decipher, war comes to that mad, lesser world.

The battles are furious as well as beautiful. Burning forest and shattered pieces of the reef punch through the demon barrier, enriching the good world. War is an old story, something known and normally unremarkable. There have been many wars among the monsters, some as large as this and almost as fierce. Those in the trees and those on the reef are like siblings: they hate each other because they are too similar. Yet unlike the coronas, they have no good work that needs accomplishing. They do not have a jungle to cultivate or long days to cross. That is why they periodically fight until both sides run short of fire or hatred or willing bodies, and then the monsters weave a false peace that will last another dozen generations, or at least until the monsters again forget how horrible life becomes during war.

Six hundred days pass, and then the exhaustion arrives. Fights become less common, and big flying machines are scarce and fearful, and the coronas who have studied many wars can say with authority that neither side occupies any chance of victory.

Yet there is no peace.

The other world’s madness has never been worse. Both species fight on, and what matters to the good world, to the corona world, is that the monsters have to make new machines. And to build machines, they need fresh scales and skins, bladders and blood from the only source in the Creation.

Both species actively chase the pilgrims, and they battle one another before and during and long after each of these hunts.

And there are many, many pilgrims for the killing: six hundred days of war have spilled minerals into the coronas’ realm. Ash and reef rocks help fuel blooms of food, and nests are molded from fat and love, and every bright egg sprouts a child, and every new child grows to until they are slithering close to one another, fighting for the available space inside a jungle that cannot grow any larger.

Becoming a pilgrim, if only for a sliver of a day, helps calm the crowded soul.

Pilgrims leave by the hundreds, and some die.

Unlike earlier days, even the strong and swift can be slaughtered.

One day the Father-of-all-fathers holds council with the other Firsts and elders and certain important youngsters. Much is discussed. Nothing is decided. Every voice wants the normal ways to return, but the normal peaceful Creation seems impossibly remote. How can they ever fly so far?

Bold talkers wish for a new war.

Maybe this mayhem is a treasure, they argue. They have been given a rare opportunity. What if the coronas were to rise up and batter their weakened foes? If every one of their species plunged through the barrier—a great wave of focused, purposeful flesh—perhaps they could kill every last monster. Then the Creation would be freed of this scourge, and the Count of Days and the beauty of the nights would be assured for all time.

This is what teases, this promise of a peace that never ends.

The council speaks about these matters, other matters, and they talk long about nothing at all.

Nothing is decided.

The coronas will never change.

The Father-of-all-fathers delivers the final verdict. He gathers the coronas into a dense sphere while he floats in the center. Their multitude is a world onto itself, and it has never been so huge and worried. His worries have made him appear older than ever. But he takes his obligations seriously, reminding the coronas that they never kill for the sake of killing, and the other world cannot touch them or hurt them in any significant way, and he refuses to hear or see any words about making this ugly fight their own.

“Our obligation is clear,” he says.

But despite the sounds that he makes, and the light and the stubborn scents—others can’t fail to notice that the old one is offering the expected words, and in ways, he is distinctly unconvinced by his own words.

“Our flight path is set,” he says. “Our world moves where it needs to move.”

This is odd, unexpected phrasing, likening the world to an object passing through air. Why would the world move? The Creation is rigid, invincible and immobile. Just the image of motion strikes a few as being senile.

“We must do our work,” he says.

Nobody doubts that the work is holy, and the Creation as well as both of its worlds depend on their unflagging devotion to the jungle and the food the jungle gives, and to the night that cools the world and lets the world rest before another day.

“Nothing can ever change,” he promises.

Yet the very next day—in the midst of the most ordinary bright morning—one event leads to a place that no one envisions.

The coronas’ world is rich with animals that float and that fly, and a thousand kinds of golden foliage gather as airborne jungles. Heat and endless moisture produce visible growth, moment-by-moment growth. The wooden forests in the other realm are sluggish, thin and impoverished. These jungles are far more productive. This is why so many giant coronas can live inside such a tiny place. Life is an explosion, magnificent and relentless, and on those rare days when the First mention the former Creation, they describe a paradise much like this one, only a thousand times larger, more wondrous and more magnificent than this.

Even when the world is crowded with coronas, like it is now, there are places where few go. The Creation is a sphere, and every sphere reaches its widest place. The demon floor rests against the world. Shadows rule. Wild creatures and weeds are the only inhabitants. A few children—odd, impulsive children as a general rule—like to investigate that useless terrain. They crawl into the tangles and crevices, and they hunt for the odd creatures that live nowhere else. The demon floor is close, slightly weaker than elsewhere, and that is an object of fascination too. But mostly, the odd children are there to make bright light in the darkness, be free of coronas and expectations, enjoying the company of souls just as peculiar as them.

The council of important souls was held yesterday.

Today, a trio of young coronas rise toward the sun with an unexpected claim. They found a creature unlike any other. What they describe is suitable for a dream, not for life. A few adults bother to listen. Then they dismiss the nonsense, offering candidates from among the known species. “No, no,” the children say. “None of those animals fit what we saw.” And not only did they see the beast, they spoke to it, and it spoke to them, after a fashion. Then they promised their new friend to tell no one about him, after which they hurried here with this fine new story.