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against him, he cried, “How great is the design of the One!”
    Most of our creative acts were less dramatic; with mundane measures we shaped the life around us. We made cuttings of lilac and honeysuckle—that shrub beloved by the cats—and stuck them in the soil of the southern slopes. We bent down the branch of the laurel, nicking it where it touched the ground, covering and securing it there with stones. The adam began to build us a bower of willow, standing long cuttings in the ground and weaving the ends together. Within weeks they all sprouted leaves.
    Sometimes we saw light sear the sky, flashing like a jagged branch, leaving bright images on the backs of our eyelids when we closed them. The first time I saw it, I was amazed until the adam explained that there was fire in the sky and in the elements, too. He could send sparks flying from two kinds of stone struck together, and fire might be made in other ways as well. That night he struck from a grooved stone and piece of quartz a tiny spark that we coaxed to life within a hollow bit of wood filled with tinder.
    We dried fruit and harvested almonds and pistachios. We took our meals in the orchard, joined by Adah, the fallow deer, or Chalil, the fox, who came when Adam played the flutes he made from hollow stems. The wolf, Dvash, came to lick honey from our fingers. We brought it often from the long hive we had found in the crook of a tree.
    Standing upon the hillside, I could smell the pomegranate ripening on the stem, the bitter sap of pine, the dill and chicory growing among the heath, the grapes sweet and heavy on the vines of the far slopes. I could distinguish the scat of every animal, the oil of any feather, the nectar of any blossom, the airborne taste of their stamens. And every night I lay down to the seminal bouquet of wet earth and salt that was the adam beside me.
    I roused from sleep when I sensed his waking. I went to him when I sensed his longing. And we knew we were special in all the earth, so that even the trees and mountains and heavens must watch with wistful sighs.
     
     
    I RACED ACROSS THE southern hills, leaping rock and shrub and stream. I was a great runner. I lifted my knees high as I hurdled shrub and brush and stream. Laughter bubbled up from my belly as I took to the foothills, past the grazing onager. It brayed after me, and the sound was like laughter. I knew the adam watched me from below and that the exuberance of my legs and quickness of my breath accelerated his heart. I knew, too, when he launched after me, but he was no match for my start or my speed. Only Levia, the lioness, was my equal.
    I bounded down the hills toward the valley floor. It was midday, and the sun was hot upon me, and its rays loved me, warming the dark honey of my skin, beading sweat between my breasts and among the hairs at my nape. I was small breasted then, lean as the new colts.
    See me! my soul shouted. Watch me run! I ran through the valley like the wind through the meadow in spring. I was tireless, euphoric at my great strength and with the One who had given it to me. I ran faster and faster—faster than I have seen any woman or man run since.
    In my soul I heard laughter—first of the adam, from where I left him in the meadow—but more brightly and keenly, of God. Then—oh, great mystery, such a moment! There came a rush of wind and warmth that was not the sun. It was at my shoulder, in my ear and my face: the One that Is, running alongside me, his laughter honey in my ear.
    I doubled back beneath the shadow of the great mount and chased the hill to the orchard, pursuing the One through the trees, feeling him everywhere—ahead, near the shrub, no there—beyond that tree! Did I see the curve of a shoulder, of a back just disappearing beyond the willow? I laughed, the music like song, the audible sum of elation, hearing behind and beyond it the laughter of God.
    I would have run like that for a day, a week, a lifetime to have only kept it there.