THE SERPENT. Things wear out by practice: they do not grow by it. Your hair streams in the wind as if it were trying to stretch itself further and further. But it does not grow longer for all its practice in streaming, because you have not willed it so. When Lilith told me what she had imagined in our silent language (for there were no words then) I bade her desire it and will it; and then, to our great wonder, the thing she had desired and willed created itself in her under the urging of her will. Then I too willed to renew myself as two instead of one; and after many days the miracle happened, and I burst from my skin another snake interlaced with me; and now there are two imaginations, two desires, two wills to create with.
EVE. To desire, to imagine, to will, to create. That is too long a story. Find me one word for it all: you, who are so clever at words.
THE SERPENT. In one word, to conceive. That is the word that means both the beginning in imagination and the end in creation.
EVE. Find me a word for the story Lilith imagined and told you in your silent language: the story that was too wonderful to be true, and yet came true.
THE SERPENT. A poem.
EVE. Find me another word for what Lilith was to me.
THE SERPENT. She was your mother.
EVE. And Adam's mother?
THE SERPENT. Yes.
EVE [about to rise] I will go and tell Adam to conceive.