Day 2.5

“The earth brought forth vegetation: plants yielding seed of every kind, and trees of every kind bearing fruit with the seed in it. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day.”

Hang about. Forgot something.

And the gods (for He can split into many when duty calls) stepped forward and touched the trees and the branches and the twigs. And leaves sprung forth: broad, narrow, prickly, elliptic. Different and interesting. Yet all were green – green to contrast the two previous days of blue water and white light only. And the branches shook with pleasure and pride, they whispered amongst themselves, ‘look at us, look at us, we shine with the virtuous natures of this world; green is the colour of goodness, surely.’

The gods stood back and thought. Hmm.

YOU HAVE NOT BEEN GIVEN THE WORD, they said (in one voice for they agree as One, of course), THAT IS FOR LATER CHAPTERS ONLY.

The trees shook again, this time from the winds of godly bellow, and from plain fear: ‘the cruelty! Do not take our murmurs away from us – we could not bear silence now we know the pleasures of free discourse!’

Hmm. In fairness, it seemed churlish to withdraw a godly gift, once granted.

YOU MUST LEARN TO MODERATE YOUR BEHAVIOUR – THE WORD IS SAVED FOR SOMETHING SPECIAL, AS YOU SHALL SEE IN A FEW DAYS.

The trees trembled at this and therefore had to whisper with it. ‘Sorry!’ they called but that only made it worse and their apologetic rustlings echoed through the world. Clearly they can’t regulate themselves, He thought. Bother. And with many arms he once again reached out to touch the offending items: one by one, the leaves began to fall to the ground.

‘The green, the green, it’s going, it’s gone!’ the trees cried but you could hardly hear them at all by now.

RELAX. I’LL LET YOU HAVE YOUR SAY HALF THE TIME. THE OTHER HALF, YOU SHALL JUST HAVE TO STAY QUIET.

‘But our colour!'

If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

THERE, He sighed – and the leaves on the ground and the leaves in the air and the leaves yet to fall from the branches turned brown or russet or auburn or yellow or red or all those colours at once; like tiny sunsets floating downwards.

THERE; NO GREEN TO REGRET. AND IT’LL COME BACK NEXT TIME ROUND, I PROMISE.

At any rate, it was too late to hear any further complaints. Silence everywhere. And some good ideas had presented themselves to the divine mind: seasons and suns and moons – something to break up monotonies and add colour too. As luck would have it, the falling leaves had also been rather beautiful.